Olly Alexander opens up about living with an eating disorder and self harming as a teenager in candid conversation with Pete Wicks

Daily Mail​

4 hours ago

Olly Alexander has opened up about living with an eating disorder and self harming as a teenager in a candid chat with Pete Wicks.
The singer, 34, appeared on Wednesday's episode of the podcast Pete Wicks: Man Made, which talks to modern male role models about what it means to be one.
In the honest chat, Olly revealed that his mental health took a downward spiral in his teen years after the breakdown of his parents' marriage and his struggle to understand his sexuality.
Olly said he began self harming as a way of 'gaining control' over his life, and said it was almost as though he used it to punish himself because he felt he didn't deserve to feel good.
He also became bulimic, an eating disorders where people binge eat then rid then purge their bodies of the extra food, which he said got so severe he developed a heart condition.
'My parents split when I was 13,' he said. 'My house growing up was quite chaotic. There was a lot going on that wasn't just me trying to figure out my sexuality and I hid this from my mum for a long, long time, but I was self-harming. I was cutting myself.
He added: 'I was bulimic for a long time. I had an eating disorder and I was giving myself an irregular heart.
'I was making myself ill basically from everything I was doing and I went to hospital with my mum and I had hidden everything from her for so long about how bad I was feeling and what I was doing to myself.
'Then finally when she found out, I just was like, I can't keep doing this. But obviously I kept doing it actually for a few years afterwards but it was definitely a shift that moment and it carried on to my early 20s where I just had a lot of harmful behaviours.'
Olly said that it wasn't until he signed a record deal and his manager urged him to see a therapist that he did. He has been with the same therapist for 10 years.
'And where are you now in terms of how you feel about yourself and how you feel about the man that you've become?' Pete asked.
Olly began: 'I don't always feel amazing but I feel I've been on a journey and I'm grateful for the journey and it's the foundation I have within myself I think is now really strong because of knocks I felt I was taking and trying to figure out how it made me feel with the help of professional support and stuff.
'I feel like "Oh wow I know a lot about myself now".'
In 2018, Olly won GQ's Live Act Of The Year Award and in his acceptance speech, he spoke out about male suicide rates.
Speaking to Pete, he expressed how he felt it was an important topic to address as suicide is the biggest killer of men.
'I remember saying in my acceptance speech something similar to about how I'd never expected to be here and I mentioned how suicide is the biggest killer of men,' he said.
'I wanted to say it because I was like, "look, we need to talk about this." I know that I have all these issues of being a man related to my sexuality and how I feel about masculinity and I'm trying to get somewhere with it.
'But I'm not the only one that feels this way and every man's going to feel differently about their identity or their gender but everybody struggles. I think men, especially, aren't good or don't have the tools necessary to talk about it and it's created this huge crisis that's been going on for a long, long time.
'It's still the biggest killer of men under a certain age and I remember just bringing that up and feeling like gosh was that probably not the right thing to say at an awards show?'
Pete added: 'It absolutely is because it's about starting a conversation for people to accept that there are a million different ways to be a man.'
Elsewhere in the interview, Olly revealed his art teacher Mr Corker was the first man he felt safe around.
Pete asked the star: 'So that's someone that you actually knew, someone who was in your life and someone was there for that formative years, why?'
Olly said: 'Well, I'll be honest, Pete, it was so hard to pick. I was like, I can't pick any male role models. It made me feel sad.'
He continued: 'Well I really liked him because he was very chill. First couple years in secondary school I was picked on at, generally hated school but then in a few years in I had some really good friends and we were just a little unit and we would just hang out in the art class every free period or at lunchtime just drawing and Mr. Corker would just let us hang out and he was always just very chilled out very encouraging.
'He was quite young so he's one of those teachers where the kids just like him and he would just let us chill out in the art room and he was always so encouraging because I thought maybe I would go to art school and I just always appreciated that that he had this very chill, safe vibe about him.'
Pete said: 'I mean, safe is a really incredible word to use. Is that the first time maybe that you'd been around a man that had made you feel safe?'
'I don't know,' Olly replied. 'I think, yeah, I felt unsafe, not in a massively serious way, but just didn't know how to be myself around a lot of guys.
'But this guy, Mr. Corker, he just seemed to not care so you could be yourself around him.'
If you've been affected by this article call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org or visit https://www.thecalmzone.net/get-support for confidential support.