Recovering alcoholic Fiona O’Loughlin recalls drinking hand sanitiser during her shocking relapse

Recovering alcoholic Fiona O’Loughlin has revealed that she fell off the wagon while filming for I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! in 2018.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, the comedian explained that she made the drastic move of drinking hand sanitiser as alcohol was unavailable in the South African jungle.

While her relapse wasn’t caught on camera, producers eventually figured out what was going on due to the 57-year-old’s slurring speech a few days before she was crowned the winner of the series. 

Fiona, who has candidly discussed her alcohol battle in the past, explained that the pressure of filming for the show became too much for her to handle.

‘My mind started playing games with me. It felt so real, and it is so nonsensical now, but I felt that I was the schmuck and everyone in Australia was laughing at me. I didn’t know what was being edited and what was out there,’ she told the publication.

Looking for a way out of her emotional turmoil, Fiona’ freaked’ and ‘planned’ to drink hand sanitiser while her campmates slept.

‘I just f**king did it. It was disappointing because first, the taste is so vile, it takes so long to get the taste out of your mouth, and then I think you get about 10 minutes of numbness, which is what I was after and then you sleep’.

Fiona added that she replaced alcohol with hand sanitiser on more than one occasion while filming for the show.

It wasn’t long before producers realised what was happening with Fiona and opted to treat her in a medical hut for the next few days rather than pulling her from the competition.

Much to Fiona’s shock, she ended up winning the series and bagged herself $100,000 for her chosen charity, Angel Flight.

The mother-of-five added that while she will soon be marking one year of sobriety, she will ‘always have an alcoholic mind’.

‘It is a cunning, powerful and baffling disease. What I do every single day is just not have that first drink. You can’t get drunk if you don’t have the first drink.’

Fiona’s relapse during the jungle-based adventure show will be discussed further in her upcoming tell-all autobiography, Truths From An Unreliable Witness – Finding Darkness In the Darkest Of Places.

During her battle with alcoholism, Fiona tried to commit suicide three times – and one attempt even left her in a coma for four weeks.

The mother-of-five was left homeless at one point, before turning her life around during a five-month stint in rehab.