Linda Robson shares how quitting alcohol cold turkey triggered health crisis

12 February 2024 , 10:45

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Linda Robson reveals how quitting alcohol cold turkey triggered health crisis (Image: Dave Benett/WireImage)

Loose Women's Linda Robson revealed quitting booze cold turkey led to her OCD spiralling out of control.

The 65-year-old panellist has been open about her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) in the past. In 2020, she broke down on her return to Loose Women after a year-long hiatus and confessed she was hospitalised due to her severe OCD, in which she would often find herself taking multiple baths a day.

She admitted she became erratic and was obsessed with social media after struggling with a bad reaction to her medication. Her struggles began in early 2017 when she quit her nightly bottle of wine after deep-diving into an item on the ITV programme. Going cold turkey meant she had to up her sleeping pills to sleep, only for the doctor to switch them to diazepam, which caused a bad reaction and sparked her downward spiral.

Her OCD spiralled out of control. She was having five baths a day, had to change the bed and empty the bin continuously, had to carry a toothbrush everywhere and had to keep her phone at exactly 100%.

The 65-year-old panellist has been open about her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) in the past

As the OCD left her hyper, she drank more and more to numb it. It was on a girls' trip to Ibiza in July 2018, that her Loose Women colleagues realised she needed help. She had some treatment but then the drinking began to get worse. At Christmas 2018 police were called to her home and her family were discussing having her sectioned.

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Linda previously discussed her mental health struggles with co-stars Stacey Solomon, Kaye Adams, Jane Moore and Nadia Sawalha on the edition of the popular daytime talk show. Linda said: "I came off the wine... and then I upped the tablets [and] had a really bad reaction. I had bad anxiety my OCD kicked into action."

She reiterated OCD is "not a joke", and confessed it began to take over her life. "The rubbish would have two teabags in it and I would have to take it out," she continued. Stacey admitted on the show that Linda's battles were the first time she'd personally seen a severe case of OCD before a tearful Linda apologised for what she had put her family through.

"We were so worried, we watched you lose weight," Nadia explained. "It was like the dimmer switch was being turned down," Nadia said that it all came to a head when they went on holiday to Ibiza together when Linda finally told them she was struggling.

"That night when we stayed up talking to you," Nadia said. "It was really sad because we saw how much you were struggling."

• Linda’s full interview and shoot is in this week’s OK! magazine. Her book Truth Be Told: Tales from a Baggy Mouth is out on Thursday.

Shelley Spadoni