As the Teen Mom cast members get older, they’ve slowly begun to share more and more secrets about their youth. After all, they were only teenagers for a large portion of the franchise, and at that time, they kept a lot off of the cameras.
In Leah Messer’s upcoming memoir, she’s laying it all out on the table. After revealing rumors of her addiction were true, now Leah is sharing that she was abused as a child.
As it turns out, a lot of what we thought we knew about Leah Messer was wrong. In her upcoming memoir, Hope, Grace & Faith, Leah has put all of her cards on the table about what really happened when the MTV cameras weren’t rolling.
She’s shared the truth about her addiction to pills, penning that she was blacked out on pills during filming after she attempted suicide by driving her car off a cliff.
Now, Leah is opening up about more dark times.
In an excerpt of her upcoming memoir obtained by The Sun, Leah shared that she was sexually abused when she was only five years old.
This happened when her mother Dawn hired a teenage girl to babysit Leah while she was working in a hospital.
“Sometimes she would chase me and try to kiss me, and I would have to run away and hide. I really wanted her to like me, but at the same time, she made me feel weird and uncomfortable,” Leah shared.
After that, Leah shares, the babysitter “started laying down” with Leah while she would take her naps.
“She would put on a movie and as soon as her mother left the room, she would kiss my neck and touch me where no one should ever touch a child,” Leah heartbreakingly shared in her memoir.
“I didn’t like what she was doing,” Leah wrote. “It felt wrong, but she was the only one in that house that was nice to us. I was afraid that if I told her to stop, she wouldn’t want to hang out and play games anymore.”
Leah shared that the sexual abuse continued for “at least six months.”
Unfortunately, Leah didn’t feel like she could share her trauma with her family. She explains that she “felt ashamed” and like she had “done something wrong.”
“I stuffed the memory down so deep it was almost as if it never happened. Except that it did, and it became another loose stone in the foundation of my self-worth,” Leah shared. "It took a long time for me to find my voice because I didn’t know how to love myself enough to say no.”
Click next to read Leah recounting her suicide attempt.
Leah Messer Reveals She Was "Blacked Out" On Pills After Suicide Attempt
For years, the fans of Teen Mom had a longstanding theory about Leah Messer: many believed that she had struggled through and overcome a serious addiction to prescription painkillers.
Now, after years, Leah is confirming these theories.
Although she denied it for some time, Leah is peeling back the curtain about what really happened during those years, and how much of it she spent entirely blacked out.
During the 2014-2015 season of Teen Mom 2, rumors ran rampant that Leah Messer was hooked on prescription painkillers. In fact, even those in Leah’s life were concerned about her alleged use of pills. Her ex-husband Corey Simms and other members of her family were concerned about some of Leah’s actions that were caught on film. One time, Leah held the recently born Addie while almost falling asleep in the middle of a sentence! Leah also often had such a hard time getting out of bed that she sent the girls to school late, or without lunch.
Drug use and addiction are not something that MTV has historically shied away from. Jenelle has discussed her heroin and weed addictions on camera, and production for Teen Mom OG filming was even shut down when Amber Portwood was put in prison for drug and domestic violence charges. Leah, on the other hand, has never talked about drug use on the show, except to insist that she has never been addicted.
When she checked into a treatment facility in 2015, fans and family alike were absolutely convinced that Leah was seeking help for her substance abuse. Now, Leah is opening up about her time in treatment.
Much like the rest of the Teen Mom cast members, Leah Messer felt that not every part of her story was accurately represented by MTV. So like many of her co-stars, she decided to take it into her own hands by writing a book.
Later this year, Leah’s memoir will be hitting shelves. But she gave a sneak peak in an interview with Hollywood Life.
“During the writing process I told myself I get to be extremely vulnerable,” Leah spilled in the interview. She added, The purpose behind the book is for others to be just as vulnerable and be able to share their truth without feeling shameful. For the longest time I think there were a lot of things in my life that happened that I felt ashamed of, definitely.”
She shared a sizable preview with her fans, going on: “Some of it played out on TV, some of it didn’t play out on TV because you can’t fit everything into an hour episode.” And, she revealed she’ll be confirming and going into depth about her substance abuse! “Some things that are in the book would be the whole situation revolving around me having an addiction and how all of that happened and where it led me to,” she said.
Leah went on:
“I was suicidal and I go into details about exactly how I was suicidal and why I was suicidal. And had it not been for my kids, which is why I named my book Hope, Grace and Faith, I wouldn’t be here today. There would be no Leah. My kids wouldn’t have a mom had it not been for also MTV and [manager] Lindsay [Rielly], but yes. Those two things will be in there. There’s also a lot more, so they just really get to see my life from my perspective and not what they’ve seen on TV. So I feel like so many people are going to be able to connect with me more and understand where I came from, my childhood up until leaving for Arizona.”
In more excerpts released by The Sun, Leah opened up about the extent of her addiction.
"The crazy thing is, I didn’t even know I was that out of it when they were filming. I’ve been taking a lot of medications, but I’m not a drug addict,” Leah writes.
She cites the beginning of her addiction as when she received a “botched” spinal tap she was giving birth to Addie.
“At first, the medications helped dull the pain in my body and my mind, but at some point, they stopped helping. Now, I’m starting to think they might be part of the problem.” She went on, “I just want to feel normal, but I’m either in so much physical pain that I can barely stand, or so foggy from the pills that I look like a junkie.”
Although Leah’s mother Dawn helped her get off of the pills, when she reunited with her father who had substance abuse issues of his own, he gave her more pills and re-enabled her addiction.
“A lot of that period of my life is just a blackout to me. Even though people will tell me I did things. I don’t remember, or I’ll watch footage of myself on the show and have no memory of it,” Leah writes.
One of Leah’s biggest fears at the time was losing custody of her girls.
“I have to pretend I’m okay. If I slip up, even a little, it could give the twins’ dad ammunition he could use to get custody of them,” she penned.
At rock bottom, Leah attempted suicide by driving off of a cliff.
“There’s a steep cliff off the side of the road just up ahead. It would be so easy to drive my car over the edge. Then it would all be over. No more worries. No more failure. No more pain,” Leah wrote.
After this dark point, Leah checked into rehab. She now cites that decision as the “best choice” that she ever made.
“I’m still working on myself, growing as a person, and striving to be the best mother I can be,” Leah concludes.
“I can’t control what life throws at us, but what I can do is teach my daughters to live their lives with hope, grace, and faith.”
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