Davina McCall details shame and 'sobbing for 90 days' as she struggled to get sober

Long Lost Family presenter Davina McCall has opened up on the moment she realised she had to get clean from drugs. The 56-year-old mum of two has been open about her struggles with narcotics in her younger years and, speaking to Dragons' Den star Steven Bartlett, she confessed to feeling "shame" after a friend called her out on her behaviour.

"My best friend had said she was going to take me [see] to Santana [the band]. She didn't use or drink...She got me into her car...and she shut the door and she said, I'm actually not going to take you to Santana. I need to tell you some things," Davina revealed earnestly.

"And she said, 'I know that you've been lying to me.' Weirdly, I'd been off heroin for a month at that point, because I'd been away...I'd gone away nannying for someone for two weeks and got clean. I'd also been with my mum in Morocco, so I had no heroin for a month.

"But I had just come off the back of a 24 hour cocaine bender, which had made me realise that heroin wasn't my problem. All drugs were my problem.

"If I wasn't taking heroin, I couldn't take cocaine normally either. I couldn't just take it for four hours and then go to bed. I had to take it for 24 hours. I was an animal," the presenter reflected.

She continued explaining her friend had told her she was "the topic of conversation that every dinner party". "Shame starts piling on," Davina admitted. "I didn't really know what to say, because I couldn't really argue with what she was saying."

Although she admitted to storming off on her friend, the encounter gave her plenty to think about.

"[I] walk away from her immediately burst into tears and think, I'm not going to turn around and let her see I'm crying...get inside...go straight to bed.

Davina admits that at this point she had tried eliminating things from her life which she thought were causing her drug use. She had moved out of her boyfriend's home and quit her job.

Despite this, she remained an addict until that evening. Waking up after an hour she thought: "I'm going to phone someone for help. I'm f*****. I can't do this anymore.

She recalled the woman she turned to simply listened and told her she could come along to a NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting with her. "She didn't ask me what was going on. She didn't ask which was exactly right," Davina said.

"So I went to a meeting that night. Just spent the next two weeks going to meetings every day and for 90 days after. Sobbing, just sobbing in every meeting of surrender.

"NA taught me how to live, how to change and how to heal myself. I owe NA my life, literally!" she exclaimed.

"But it also gave me my career. Having tried to get a job at MTV while I was using all those years the time they say, come in for an interview, we're going to finally screen test you after three years of trying, I was six months clean and I didn't mess it up.

"I turned up on time. In fact, I turned up a bit early. That was new for me. I turned up clean and smelling like flowers and with a smile on my face and colour in my cheeks. That was new for me."