Lucy Hale Opens Up For The First Time About Eating Disorders, Relationships & Addiction | E224

You have to go to a dark place sometimes to like get to that point. (sniffs) Ooh. Um. (sniffs) We are so excited to have Lucy Hale. She's been in the spotlight since she was just a kid. Stars on the hit show, Pretty Little Liars. And now a movie star. Not what you were expecting? You might be the first real deep conversation I've had. It's dark, disgusting, and scary. I wish I could go back and tell my 16-year-old self, "Buckle up, girl, (laughs) we're gonna go through some..."

Lucy Hale!

Lucy Hale. Lucy Hale, everybody.

When you have those successes in life, we have an assumption that it'll fix a bunch of stuff. What didn't it fix?

I struggled with an eating disorder, because society makes it really freaking hard (laughs) to like the way you look. I hated myself so much that I couldn't even give it basic needs, like food. I did not feel worthy of the success, or the career, or the people in my life. And then the coping mechanisms were, like, incredibly self-destructive. I've been working on getting sober since I was 20. I just, like, held onto that belief that real Lucy came out when she was drinking. I tried to change for my mom. I tried to change for my career. One of my best friends died of alcoholism, and that still didn't make me want to get sober. None of that ... works. Alcohol isn't the problem. The problem is this feeling inside of me. I have to try it a different way.

Was there a darkest day?

Oh boy. (sniffs)

I just wanna start this episode with a message of thanks. A thank you to everybody that tunes in to listen to this podcast. By doing so, you've enabled me to live out my dream, but also for many members of our team to live out their dreams too. It's one of the greatest privileges I could never have dreamed of or imagined in my life to get to do this, to get to learn from these people, to get to have these conversations, to get to interrogate them from a very selfish perspective, trying to solve problems I have in my life. So, I feel like I owe you a huge thank you for being here and for listening to these episodes and for making this platform what it is. Can I ask you a favor? I can't tell you how much, um, you can change the course of this podcast, the, the, the course of the guests we're able to invite to the show, and to the course of everything that we do here just by doing one simple thing. And that simple thing is hitting that subscribe button. Helps this channel more than I could ever explain. The guests on this platform are incredible because so many of you have hit that button. And I know when we think about what we wanna do together over the next year on this show, a lot of it is gonna be fueled by the amount of you that are subscribed and that tune into this show every week. So, thank you. Let's keep doing this. And I can't wait to see what this year brings for this show, for us as a community, and for this platform. Lucy.