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Monday, 20 August 2007

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Gail Porter: I self-harmed for six years

TV presenter talks of battle with depression

TV presenter Gail Porter, 36, has revealed that she was hooked on self-harming for six years.

‘Cutting myself was the only way to stop the hurt in my life,’ she says.

‘The pain was sharp, but felt clean and pure. Not like the chaotic pain in my mind. It was as if the new pain displaced the old one.'

Gail tells how she became addicted to slicing her skin with a razor when she was battling depression and the loss of her hair - but denied she had a problem.

'I used to say I’d had a gardening or biking accident,' she admits.

It was the star's five-year-old daughter who gave her the strength to give up the dangerous compulsion, which ended in January.

‘Suddenly I thought of Honey and said, “What am I doing?”,’ Gail explains in her new book Laid Bare.

'It feels great to have gone eight months without hurting myself.’

Alison Adey