Prince Harry Admits To Heavy Drinking, Hard Drugs
Prince Harry has admitted that he turned to “drinking heavily” and experimented with a variety of mind-altering hard drugs in the decades following the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
Harry, 38, spoke with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night and answered questions about his upcoming autobiography, “Spare,” which will be released on Tuesday.
Harry has been promoting the book all week. It contains details about William allegedly fighting with Harry over Meghan Markle and Harry getting a frostbitten “todger” at William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, among other things.
Cooper, 55, questioned Harry about his past use of drugs, including alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and other substances. Harry claimed he did it in response to the passing of his mother, The New York Post reveals.
“It was obvious to us as kids the British press’ part in our mother’s misery and I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily, I never expressed to anybody,” he said. “But I resorted to drinking heavily. Because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from how … whatever I was thinking. And I would, you know, resort to drugs as well.”
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He also said that he felt that using psychedelics, Ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms, helped him.
“I would never recommend people to do this recreationally — but doing it with the right people if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine. For me, they cleared the windshield, the windshield of the misery of loss. They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that– that my mother, that I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy.”
Part of the reason why he turned to drinking and drugs was that after Princess Diana’s tragic fatal car crash in 1997, Harry and William shared “similar thoughts” on the belief that she was really gone.
“Maybe this is all part of a plan,” said Harry. “Then that she would call us and that we would go and join her, yeah.”
He said he held onto this belief for “years.” But when he was 20, he asked to see the police report about the crash that killed his mother, in order to have “proof.”
“Proof that she was in the car. Proof that she was injured. And proof that the very paparazzi that chased her into the tunnel were the ones that were taking photographs– photographs of her lying half dead on the back seat of the car,” he said.
When Cooper asked Prince Harry if he feels that he’s gotten all of the answers about what really happened when Princess Diana died in 1997, Harry said, “Truth be known, no. I don’t think I do. And I don’t think my brother does either. I don’t think the world does.”
