Beverly Johnson got hooked on cocaine during the 1970s when she was attempting to slim down by eating just two eggs and a bowl of ramen a week.
The supermodel has confessed fashion industry colleagues used to encourage her to look “chiseled to the bone.” So, she embarked on an extreme eating regime which often left her shaking with hunger as well as battling a drug addiction.
“We were led to believe that cocaine was not addictive. We didn’t know cocaine was addictive. Everyone used drugs back in the day but that particular drug for models was used because we did not eat,” she told New York Post’s column Page Six. “I remember eating two eggs and a bowl of brown rice a week. I would be shaking in a cab, and I would say pull over because I have to get a bag of M & Ms. I would just stop and get the shakes. We did not eat, and every time you came to work they would say, ‘Yes! Chisel to the bone girl. Yes!” Like, congratulating you. Nobody really told you the truth.”
Johnson went on to reveal she got a “wake-up call” from her mother who put her in front of a “three-way mirror” and forced her to look at her emaciated body.
“It was the first time I saw my bones looking back at me. It was a major wake-up call for me,” the legendary model added.
It comes after Johnson revealed she tied the knot with her fiancé Brian Maillian in secret last year after deciding she wanted to get married to celebrate her 71st birthday.
During an appearance on SiriusXM’s “Sway in the Morning,” she confessed the couple, who have been together for 12 years, sneaked off to Las Vegas to marry in a low-key ceremony.
“Two days before my birthday [on] Oct. 13, he kept saying, ‘What do you want for your birthday?’ I sat up in the bed on Oct. 11 and said, ‘I know what I want for my birthday. I want to get married’ … It was just the right moment,” she explained.
