Jackie ‘O’ Henderson reveals the one sign of her secret drug and alcohol addiction after revealing she kept her battle hidden from her loved ones

Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has revealed the only sign pointing to her secret drug and alcohol addiction.

The radio host, 49, detailed her battle with addiction and secret rehab stint for the first time on The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Thursday in an emotional segment.

She told how she fell into a deep addiction after the collapse of her marriage to British photographer Lee Henderson in 2018 and again during the Covid-19 lockdown.

At the height of her addiction, Jackie was taking about 10 to 12 Stilnox/Zolpidem sleeping pills and 24 Panadeine Forte a day and washing them down with alcohol – which doctors warn is very dangerous.

However, she kept her addiction battle a secret from her loved ones and said she had been suffering from Covid for a long time when she took an extended absence from work in November 2022 to check into the Betty Ford Clinic in California.

Now Jackie has revealed the one sign of her struggles after her family and friends became concerned about her isolation and binge drinking.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning HeraldShe said her friends noticed her forgetfulness during a blackout and often reminded her, “Jackie, we were talking about that last night, remember?”

This led to her writing down her real-time phone conversations on Post-it Notes to later remind her of what they had talked about in an attempt to hide her struggles.

Her personal assistant Brittany Woodford also began noticing empty blister packs of medication and felt conflicted with her duty to Jackie’s well-being and her role as an employee.

“It was so hard to be in that – to see someone you love suffer,” Brittany, 35, explained. ‘There is a limit: she is like my sister, but also my boss.’

She said she eventually decided to leave kind letters for Jackie to urge her to get help, but her efforts were in vain at the time.

Meanwhile, her best friend Gemma O’Neill, who eventually convinced Jackie to go to rehab, said her friend had begun to completely isolate herself.

“For a while I thought she had developed agoraphobia,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Honestly, that’s what I was hoping for because the reality was so far from what I could have ever imagined.”

Although her mother Julie Last was unaware of her drug addiction, she also expressed concerns about Jackie’s drinking, but said her daughter would become defensive and yell at her.

Eventually, Jackie confided in her best friend Gemma about her struggles, which led to them secretly leaving Australia to attend the Betty Ford Clinic in California.

Jackie said Betty Ford told her not to change “anything” about her use before she arrived because it could be “dangerous,” so she was still taking pills the day she flew to the US.

Known for treating Hollywood stars including Keith Urban, Robert Downey Jr. And Lindsay LohanBetty Ford charges between $45,000 and $90,000 AUD for a one-month stay, depending on the program.

Jackie explained the depths of her addiction in an emotional segment of her self-titled radio show on Tuesday, revealing that her struggles first began more than 15 years ago.

At the time, she was prescribed a strong opioid painkiller for endometriosis – a disease in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus and causes severe pain.

“I was prescribed that and I noticed that I was taking it more than I needed at the time and I realized that could be a bit of a problem so I stopped taking it at the time,” she said.

However, Jackie went back to the medication after her 2018 split from British photographer Lee, with whom she shares daughter Kitty, 13.

“I went back to it as a way to get to someone happy, and it was a way to escape and it was such the wrong thing to do,” she admitted.

Jackie said she started taking a few codeine and one Stilnox “here and there” with a glass of wine, which she described as a “blackout” situation.

“You can still be awake and have no idea what’s going on,” Jackie said.

“It’s like you function, but you have no memory.”

However, what really ‘kickstarted’ Jackie’s harrowing addiction was isolating at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she said she was ‘struggling’ and feeling ‘so sad’.

“The dosage started to increase and it got extreme and I was averaging about 24 Panadeine Forte a day and then I was averaging 10 to 12 Stilnox,” she said.

“Someone was watching me because I don’t know how I woke up on that dose most days.”

Jackie checked into a 28-day stay at The Betty Ford Clinic in November 2022, but none of her colleagues – not even her co-host Kyle Sandilands – were aware of the reason behind her absence.

Reading an excerpt from the prologue of her memoir, she said: “The whole team wishes me well, I’m sure they’re curious about my temporary leave, but none of them really know why I’m stepping back.

“But it must be so.”

She apologized to her listeners and tearfully admitted that she “lied” by “omission” when she publicly shared on her radio show that she was struggling with long Covid-19 at the time.

“I want to apologize to our listeners and to everyone in my life that I haven’t been involved with in this. “I had to focus on that part first, especially that recovery over the first year,” she said.