Naomi Campbell opens up on 'killing' herself with cocaine after Gianni Versace was murdered

Naomi Campbell has opened up about the grief she experienced following the death of fashion designer Gianna Versace.

Supermodel, and friend, Campbell has spoken about the grief she felt in the wake of Versace’s death admitted that it was ‘very bad’.

“I go into a shock and freak out when it actually happens, and then later is when I break. But I kept the sadness inside, I just dealt with it.”

She continued: “[Late designer] Azzedine Alaïa was my papa. With him, I learnt about chosen families. The same for Gianni Versace.

“He was very sensitive to feeling me, like, he pushed me. He would push me to step outside and go further when I didn’t think I had it within myself to do it. So, when he died, my grief became very bad.

“When I started using, that was one of the things I tried to cover up, was grief. Addiction is such a — it’s just a bulls**t thing, it really is.

“You think, ‘Oh, it’s gonna heal that wound.’ It doesn’t. It can cause such huge fear and anxiety. So I got really angry.”

The mom-of-two checked into rehab back in 1999 after struggling with cocaine addiction.

“When you try to cover something up, your feelings — you spoke about abandonment,” she said.

“I tried to cover that with something. You can’t cover it. I was killing myself. It was very hurtful.”

Campbell says she also faced abandonment issues from her parents, which contributed to her drug use.

"It does still come up sometimes. But I just now have the tools to deal with it now when it comes up," Campbell said.

"I have to think of something outside of myself – something greater than myself."

Campbell made the frank revelations in the series which documents her career alongside her contemporaries Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington.