Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger is opening up about the battle with bulimia, which she nearly paid for with her voice.
“It is such a horrible, paralyzing disease and it was such a dark time for me,” Nicole told Cosmopolitan UK about struggling with an eating disorder in her 20s. “I felt so alone… But I made myself so alone. You hide it from the world, you isolate yourself.”
Even though she started losing her voice and had trouble singing at shows, Nicole said she didn’t realize the true gravity of her problem until her manager found her passed out.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to lose everything I love if I don’t love myself.’ One day when you feel like you’ve reached the end, you just say, ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’” said Nicole, 36. “It’s sad to see how I wasted my life. I had such a great life on the outside, the Dolls were on top of the world but I was miserable on the inside. I’m never letting that happen again; you only get one life – I was 27 only once.”
The former X Factor UK judge said she wanted to open up about her struggle to prove it’s possible to overcome eating disorders.
“I can empathize so much with people who have demons and voices in their heads, who aren’t nice to themselves. It robs you of living your life. But you can recover and you can get rid of it forever,” said Nicole, who is now a solo singer. “I did it and that’s why it’s so important for me to share my story… But you can beat it — do not give up because you’re so special and you’re meant for such great things.”
