Lulu was ‘so ashamed’ as she battled alcoholism

Lulu was “very secretive” as she battled alcoholism because she felt “so ashamed”.
The 76-year-old pop veteran recently opened up about her battle with booze for the first time and now she’s revealed she managed to keep her drinking problem from her family as well as music industry pals including Sir Elton John.
During an appearance on UK TV show This Morning on Wednesday (24.09.25), she explained: “It was never bad because I was never a fall-down drunk.
“My son didn’t know. He said: ‘Wait a minute, Mum, are you sure … ?’ and Elton [John] said: ‘How the f*** did I miss that?'”
Lulu then apologised for swearing on live TV adding: “I’m so sorry, I am so sorry. Also, it’s me trying to push the story. How did I miss that?”
She went on to say: “I was very secretive, I was so ashamed of it. I would go out and have a drink, a couple of drinks.
“I would go home, and have another drink. You know you’re an alcoholic if you can’t stop. I have a lot of friends who have a drink and say: ‘Oh I’ve had enough,’ but I couldn’t do that …
“I was a highly-functioning alcoholic, that’s why nobody knew. I would fall asleep sozzled. I’d set the alarm, wake up for work the next day, brush myself off and go to work.”
Lulu also explained how she confessed her secret to her sister, who encouraged the singer to check herself into a rehab clinic in 2013.
She said: “I had a birthday party and everyone left except my sister and her kids because two of them live with me. My niece said: ‘Oh so and so, he’s hanging on by his fingernails’ … Talking about his problem with alcohol, and I don’t know where it came from, I said: ‘He’s not the only one’.
“My sister said very kindly: ‘I know, and I’ve known for some time’. The cat was out of the bag. It was if someone up there liked me. I now had to get sharing.
“I couldn’t ask for help before but in that moment I looked at my sister and said: ‘I have to go to rehab, don’t I?’ She said: ‘I think so.’ I was there the next day.”
Lulu recently spoke out about her battle with addiction in an interview with The Times newspaper, saying: “I was a secret drinker.
“I think I always wanted to be Miss Perfect, the ‘best Lulu’, and I was terrified of being like my father.
“For years, I made a choice not to talk about [my alcoholism] publicly. I chose to wait until I had the language to understand it before I could start spouting off.
“I’ve learnt a lot from other people, their memoirs, and self-help books too, so maybe I can be of some help now.”
Lulu believes her drinking was “controllable” until she reached her sixties and her son Jordan Frieda, now 48, left home.
She told the publication: “For me, it had been controllable until I got into my sixties.
“After I became menopausal, with both my parents gone, the empty nest, looking around and seeing all the young kids in the music industry, I became more and more reliant on it and so it just got worse.
“For many years, and I can’t say how many, I had not been happy with the way I felt, not at all happy and [yet] unable to ask for help.”