'She told me it was sherbet. I thought that was normal': Kerry Katona admits her mum gave her drugs for the first time at age 14
A singer and reality star has admitted that she first took drugs at the age of 14 - and they were supplied by her mum.
The 44-year-old former Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona, who has now been sober for over 15 years, also said that there was a point when “cocaine was her only friend”.
Speaking in an interview with OK! magazine this week, she said she thought her mum Sue’s “love and affection was in a bag of coke” and that “it was normal”. She explained: “Mum gave me drugs when I was 14. She was my mum, so I thought it was normal. . . . It’s not normal or healthy, is it? That’s a very unhealthy co-dependency.”
The star also said at first she thought the drugs were “disgusting” - but then she experienced her first high. “It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever tasted. But I soon got used to the high it gave me. Cocaine was the only thing that was always there for me,” she said.
She went on to recall how everything changed when she realised she “didn't want to be this person” after sharing a hidden bag of cocaine with her mum. Kerry first checked herself into rehab in 2008, and then again in 2010, and has been sober ever since.
But, the damage of her drug use had already been done. Last year, she had to have reconstructive surgery on her nose because of her years taking cocaine. Showing off the results of the surgery on ITV’s Good Morning Britain last year, the singer said the drug had once been her “crutch”. “It was my best friend, it gave the support I needed, when I needed it,” she said.
She went on: “I didn't do it everyday, I was more of a binger - once I started I couldn't stop. And then I could go months without it. It just became my best friend because everyone was using me really.” Explaining how dependent she was at the time, she admitted: “I actually OD'd at one point and got back up and took another line of cocaine straight away.”
Kerry recalled: “I started drugs when I was 14, before I was famous. My first drug I took was with my mum. I adore my mum and I love my mum, but we've had our ups and downs and my mum wasn't really a mum. She told me it was sherbet and it was speed and I thought that was normal.”
She went on to say that both her and her mum have now moved on from their drug-based past: “My mum wasn't very well. It is what it is, it's happened I can't sit with regret and hatred. I have to accept people who there are. My mum is drug free.”
She also admitted that she has thought about what would happen if her drug use had turned fatal. “I sometimes think what would’ve happened if I’d died from an overdose, like my late husband George. The pain and shame for my family doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said.
Kerry’s ex-husband George Kay died in 2019. His inquest in 2021 heard that he had a fatal seizure after eating a “ball of cocaine”.