Ireland Baldwin Opens Up About Eating Disorder and Addiction
Ireland Baldwin Says Eating Disorders Turned Her Into a “Lifeless” Person
Image Source: Getty/Alberto E. Rodriguez
Red Table Talk (RTT) is known as the place where celebrities open up. And the recent Ireland Baldwin episode is no different. The 26-year-old actress and model gets incredibly candid about her relationship with eating disorders, alcoholism, and drug use in an episode that aired April 27.
In the episode, Baldwin, the daughter of Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, joins the table to talk about her "breaking point."
"I was self-medicating with Xanax and I was drinking. And I have a lot of alcoholism and drug addiction in my family," Baldwin tells RTT co-host Willow Smith in a clip also aired in a preview for the episode. She went to say: "I had isolated all of my real friends, isolated my family. I had no control in anything in my life." Baldwin also said she "tortured" herself with her eating disorders, and revealed that she didn't talk to her parents for a year. "I saw them here and there, but I was so ashamed of what I had become and how I was living. I just became this different person. I was emaciated in every way; I was lifeless," she said.
Baldwin also opened up about her experience in abusive relationships. "And I did go to a treatment centre," Baldwin shared. "I've been through a lot of different kinds of abuse." Not only had she been in a physically abusive relationship, but Baldwin says she later realised that she was at one point being abusive as well. "I had been abusive to people unknowingly, 'cause I'm not hitting them or getting physical," Baldwin said. "There was a lot of learning I had to do and a lot of acceptance of, 'Okay wait, that was abusive behaviour.' "
Baldwin's RTT appearance comes nearly two years after the model and actress shared that she was six years "free of anorexia and bulimia." In an Instagram post earlier this month Baldwin opened up about the current state of her mental health. "I am in the most freeing mental headspace I have ever been in about my body image," Baldwin wrote. But she was also inspired to share some of her negative experiences after Camila Cabello took to the platform to call out paparazzi for snapping bikini photos that make her feel "vulnerable" and "unprepared."
"I have been called some version of fat, ugly, worthless and irrelevant by grown adults on the internet since I was a kid. It's nothing new. Paparazzi have followed me around for whatever boring reason and have snapped photos all up, in, and around my ass, cellulite, back fat, double chin, tits, you name it! It's invasive and super lame, but it's out of my control," Baldwin said.
Baldwin also acknowledged that she still has her bad days. "But overall, I f---ing LOVE food … like romantically. I love my body. I love the way it moves. I love how I feel in it," she says. She finished up the post by saying, "All that matters is I approve of me, and it feels damn good. I am so grateful and lucky to be where I am." Go, Ireland!
