She's obsessed with plastic surgery and has undergone more than 100 operations - Alicia Douvall has an addiction but can a controversial rehab clinic cure her? Guy Adams reports
Douvall isn't dependent on cocaine, alcohol, painkillers, or any of the other substances that traditionally lead to a celebrity's downfall. Instead, she suffers an unlikely obsession: she is addicted to cosmetic surgery. "I've had so many operations that I can't feel my stomach, my left breast, or anything under my right arm," says Douvall, who first went under the knife as a teenager. Now aged 29, she has clocked up more cosmetic procedures than she can count, saying only that the exact figure is more than a hundred.
"I've had 15 boob jobs. I've changed my eyes and nose, had facelifts. My philosophy is 'if it can be changed, it will be'. It's got to the stage where doctors in Britain refuse to treat me any more, so I've been flying to the US for surgery and lying about my medical history."
Douvall's addiction is related to a psychiatric problem called body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which she was diagnosed with several years ago. It is a condition on the obsessive compulsive disorder spectrum which causes victims to become preoccupied with their physical appearance, fretting over small or non-existent defects.
A cynic might say that in the old days BDD was known as vanity. But actually, it's the reverse: sufferers believe they are hideous, rather than attractive. They avoid mirrors, and spend hours each day worrying about being ugly. In extreme cases, they become deeply depressed, and reclusive. The suicide rate for victims in the US is 45 times the national average.
Douvall is a textbook case. Though outwardly attractive (she is, after all, a professional model) and intelligent, her adult life has been consumed by concerns that she is unspeakably hideous. She takes anti-depressants and sleeping pills, and has repeatedly submitted herself to the cosmetic surgeon's knife. "I'm on a quest for change," she says. "Every two weeks, I'll go see another doctor. Often I'll walk in, not even knowing what I want doing, and say something like 'what do you think might be wrong?' or 'what do you think of my eyes?' I keep hoping I might wake up one day feeling happy with myself."
Douvall recently discovered that submitting herself to the medical version of cut-and-pasting isn't the only way to deal with BDD. She was speaking at the exclusive Passages Addiction Centre in Malibu, near Los Angeles, where she spent four weeks being treated and filmed for a reality TV show, called Rehab. This sometimes compelling, if slightly tasteless series, which begins this week on the satellite channel Living, follows seven "fallen celebrities" who have agreed to undergo intensive courses of therapy in an attempt to find a potential cure for addictions that have ruined both their lives and careers.
It will show former Bay City Roller Les McKeown, Happy Mondays backing singer Rowetta, and Robin Le Mesurier, the musician son of actor John and Hattie Jacques, attempting to cure alcoholism. Model Cassie Sumner is treated for bulimia, Victoria Sellers attempts to kick drugs, and Karate Kid star Sean Kanan tries to wean himself off prescription painkillers. Tacky though it sounds, it also provides a priceless insight into the rehab industry. Passages, on a hillside overlooking the Pacific ocean, is one of the world's most exclusive clinics. It resembles a boutique luxury hotel, and charges well-heeled clients, who have included the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, an eye-watering $78,000 a month for their pains.
Unlike almost every clinic, Passages does not treat patients with a version of the traditional "12-step programme". Instead, its founder, Chris Prentiss, has pioneered a regime that rejects the notion that alcoholism and drug addictions are incurable diseases, and instead views them as symptoms of deeper psychological problems. Prentiss, who founded the clinic after helping wean his son Pax off heroin and alcohol, believes that most addictions stem from a person's failure to come to terms with a traumatic past event. Through intensive therapy sessions, his team work to identify this event, before forcing patients to look at it in a positive light – trying to convince them that, as Voltaire said, everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
"If someone has been abused as a child, or says 'I was raped when I was six', we help them reframe it, by showing them that it was actually a perfect event in their lives, because it made them who they are," says Prentiss. "We show them, for example, that wisdom and strength and information didn't come from their ho-hum days, it came from these power points."
Prentiss claims, perhaps in a bid to justify his exorbitant fees, to have an 85 per cent success rate at "curing" addiction. This is three times higher than rival clinics such as the Betty Ford Centre, but has been widely questioned. Some critics have dubbed him a snake-oil salesman. Yet Douvall's experience frames him in at least a moderately positive light. The model, who was born plain Sarah House, and had a comfortable upbringing in Sussex, was originally sceptical about her chances of being treated, and planned to celebrate her release from the clinic by having a "toe facelift" – an highly-complex operation to straighten her feet.
"You couldn't have got a bigger cynic than me," she says. "I didn't believe in counselling or rehab, or in a person being able to change." But after intensive therapy sessions at Passages, many of them filmed, Douvall reveals the cause of her BDD: she was abused as a child (details are not broadcast, apparently for legal reasons) and was also assaulted by an ex boyfriend, destroying her self confidence. She became a teenage mother – her daughter is now 13 – effectively cutting short her adolescence.
During the treatment, Douvall says she was reduced to tears three or four times a day by the the acupuncturists, hypnotherapists and assorted counsellors. After the cameras stopped rolling, she stayed at Passages for an additional fortnight to continue treatment. Today, though she doesn't claim to be "cured" of her cosmetic surgery addiction, Douvall's condition has at least improved. Shortly before leaving Passages, she cancelled her planned "toe facelift".
"It was one of the toughest things I ever had to do," she says. "They break you down to build you up, and keep chipping away until they find a crack. But they do it because it helps, and I now think everyone should go into rehab at least once in their lives. After all, who can say they're perfect?"
‘I was so happy to be pregnant but I couldn’t smile with dodgy facial implants ...that ruined it’ – says Alicia Douvall
WHEN Alicia Douvall went to hospital to give birth to her baby she was brimming with excitement.
Normal enough, but the plastic surgery addict was actually thrilled because it meant she could have cosmetic work done once the baby popped out.
Former glamour model and kiss-and-tell queen Alicia, 32, gave birth to second daughter Papaya Coco last Christmas, with her 16-year-old daughter Georgia acting as her birthing partner.
It was filmed for new BBC Three TV show Glamour Model Mum, Baby & Me which stars Alicia and both her daughters.
Now Alicia, who has spent more than £1million on more than 100 cosmetic procedures — and almost died several times from surgical complications — admits she was emailing cosmetic surgeons abroad from her maternity ward.
However, this time it was for corrective surgery to fix dodgy facial implants she had done before she realised she was pregnant which had disfigured her face and left her unable to smile.
She has promised both her newborn daughter and Georgia that it was her final surgery, and six months on is sticking to it.
Alicia, 32, told TV Biz: “I had implants in my nose, top lip and chin and I couldn’t move my lips or my mouth or smile. I stayed indoors for my whole pregnancy, and it stripped me of everything.
“I wasn’t counting down to the birth of my daughter, I was counting down the days until I could have my facial implants taken out.
“The day Papaya was born I was emailing the surgeon from the hospital — I was so desperate.
“It had overtaken everything. I couldn’t go out, I felt like a complete monster. I’ve had bad plastic surgery before but this distorted me and it hurt every day.”
Alicia’s surgery addiction was so bad she went to rehab three times to try and battle it.
Despite knowing this, surgeons still operated on her.
Glamour girl Alicia had been assured her facial implants were the “new big thing” in America but they left her suffering from constant pain and depression throughout her pregnancy.
However, despite the pain and trauma, new mum Alicia admits she’s almost thankful to the surgeon who did the unnecessary work on her face, as she believes he has finally cured her of the addiction she once feared would kill her. She said: “The surgery was awful but it actually finally put me off having anything else done.
“Before this, even nearly dying didn’t put me off.
“I finally realised that these surgeons were only after my money.
“I looked in the mirror and he’d completely distorted my face, just for money. It made me realise I am never going to do it again. I will never play Russian Roulette with my health or my looks ever again. It felt like I’d had a car crash and been disfigured but it was as if I’d driven my own car into a brick wall and done this.”
Alicia’s desperation to have her facial implants taken out and try and return herself to “normal” before her baby’s birth even saw her offer to undergo surgery AWAKE.
Alicia said: “Losing my smile was horrible. I even went to a surgeon when I was pregnant and offered to do surgery under hypnotism because the anaesthetic would have harmed my baby. I was so happy to be pregnant but I couldn’t smile and that ruined it. I felt so self conscious of my face and not being able to talk properly.”
Alicia’s new documentary follows the birth of her baby and the subsequent plastic surgery which saw her force daughter Georgia to miss a mock A-level to accompany her and look after seven-week-old Papaya while she was in the theatre.
Alicia says: “Papaya’s put a new perspective on my life and made me realise what I really want from life.
“With Georgia I didn’t have that opportunity because my parents brought her up on-and-off for the first eight years and because she was premature she was in an incubator for the first two months so it was harder to bond.”
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