Amber Valletta, model and actress, on July 11, spoke about her battle with addiction and gave a detailed account of her journey with drug abuse for about fifteen minutes.

Forty-year old Valletta, all smiles, confessed that she suffered from a disease called addiction. In her speech, she said that she was coming out to the world as an addict.

Valletta said, "When I was 8, I started trying to get out of myself. I sniffed markers, I sniffed glue, fingernail polish, anything that could give me a buzz. Then I found drugs that were around the culture of my family. By 10 I had been high. By 18 I moved to Europe, I found cocaine and alcohol. I was in a business where drugs and alcohol were widely accepted. They were given to me."

The actress, who made huge achievements in the entertainment like being featured on the Vogue cover at the age of 25, said that drugs affected her life in every aspect - affecting her relationship with her friends and family, her job. When she had landed herself in a multi-million dollar deal, she showed up for the first day of her campaign high and drunk. Her biggest mistake was that when she visited her uncle, while he was almost on the deathbed, she stil showed up high and drunk and felt like doing more drugs at that point of time.

At the age of 25, fearing death, Valletta decided to receive help for her addiction. She believed that her addiction is genetically predisposed to her and that as soon as she realised what it was doing to her body, she decided to come out of it. She, being very brave, added that though she was brought up by a single mother, she would never blame her upbringing or anything that happened to her for her addiction.

She painfully admitted that from a very young age of ten, she got addicted to being high and when she moved to Europe at the age of 18, she decided to try cocaine and alcohol.

Her honesty has won her immense respect. She said that she decided to come out about her addiction so as to help other people admit that they need to seek help about their addiction too.

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