Prince Harry revealed he leaned on alcohol and drugs to ease the pain of his mother’s death. The Duke of Sussex shared these traumatic memories from his childhood in the first episode of his new series. “The Me You Can’t See” is the name of the show he produced with Oprah Winfrey for Apple TV.
Prince Harry used drugs and alcohol because of his childhood’s trauma
When Princess Diana died in Paris in August 1997, Harry was just 12. The trauma of losing his mother at such a young age never left Harry and those terrible memories still affect him. Speaking with his co-host Oprah, Harry recalled his mother’s funeral.
“For me the thing I remember the most was the sound of the horses’ hooves going along the Mall. It was like I was outside of my body and just walking along doing what was expected of me. (I was) showing one tenth of the emotion that everybody else was showing: this was my mom – you never even met her”.
Moreover, Prince Harry added that the trauma of his mother’s death caused him anxiety and panic attacks from ages 28 to 32.
“Every time I put a suit on and tie on … having to do the role, and go, ‘right, game face’, look in the mirror and say, ‘let’s go’. Before I even left the house I was pouring with sweat. I was in fight or flight mode,” he said.
He admitted that using alcohol and drugs was a way to mask how he felt. “I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling”, he told.
The Duke also revealed he felt completely abandoned when his wife Meghan Markle suffered from suicidal thoughts. The lack of support from the royal family was one of the “biggest reasons” the couple left the UK. And commented: “Certainly now I will never be bullied into silence”.