Quote · The Louis Theroux Podcast
S8 EP4: Cara Delevingne discusses getting sober, engagement rumours, and being Karl Lagerfeld's muse
Where this was said
Substances: The Role They Played
At 20:55 · chapter starts 20:10
Louis moves carefully into the territory of substance use, and Cara is precise about the distinction that mattered most to her: it wasn't that she was constantly high, it was that her relationship with drugs was the problem. They were her comfort in loneliness, her reward after hard work, her emotional regulator. Rather than taking time off after a film shoot, she'd use benders as the holiday. She draws an interesting distinction with alcohol — the hangovers, the loss of control, the spinning — none of which appealed to her. Drugs offered a particular kind of control that alcohol didn't, even if that control was illusory. This tension between the desire for control and the actual effects of what she was taking becomes a recurring motif throughout the episode. [1] — Cara Delevingne "They were my best friend. They were my support. They were the thing that I could control my emotions with, I thought. They kept me going. T…" 20:55
Cara didn't take ketamine recreationally — she used it to disappear. She describes doing enormous lines not for a buzz but to fully tranquilise herself, developing a tolerance so extreme that a dose she considered small would knock out a six-foot-five man. She wore it as bravado at the time. In retrospect, it was terrifying.
