‘I was killing myself with drinking and pills'

Jessica Simpson opens up about her experience with abuse and drugs, and the love that helped save her

To the world, she has presented herself as a lovable, if slightly ditzy, classic Southern blonde.

Jessica Simpson won hearts as pop star Nick Lachey’s wife on the early 2000s MTV show Newlyweds, where she hit headlines for adorably botching up whether the bowl of tuna in her lap was chicken or fish.

It didn’t hurt that the singer, now 39, knew her way around a catchy pop song and burned up the charts with her tune With You, which was dedicated to Nick.

Even as their marriage began to disintegrate in 2005, Jessica maintained her popularity, rocketing to global stardom that same year by squeezing into teeny denim shorts to play Daisy Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard.

Now, as a mother-of-three and married to former American footballer Eric Johnson, Jessica is finally ready to reveal there was a lot more going on behind her big Texas blowdry.

SECRET ADDICTIONS

In her memoir Open Book, out this week, she recounts in lurid detail her romances, and the incredible highs and devastating lows of her time in the spotlight, which began when she was a Christian singer who couldn’t score a gig “because she didn’t look wholesome enough”.

But her rollercoaster story didn’t begin the day she became a performer.

Jessica bravely recounts that she was sexually abused between the ages of six and 12 by a family friend, leading to a lifetime of secret booze and drug addiction.