Why did Holly Madison want to drown herself in a bathtub?
by Ana Walia | Wed, 26 Jan 2022 14:43:25 GMT
Image Source: Bollywood Trendy, Colourbox

Holly Madison is opening up about feeling trapped at the Playboy Mansion in 'Secrets of Playboy'. 

In her December 2021 interview and in the episodes of ‘Secrets of Playboy’, Holly Madison shared that when she started dating Hugh, she felt being trapped by some of the mansion’s rules and Hugh’s personal preferences for her. She added that he flipped out at her after she decided to cut her hair short. Explaining the incident, she said, "My hair was really long naturally. And I was just like, I'm gonna go chop my hair off so I can at least look a little different. I came back with short hair. And he flipped out on me. And he was screaming at me and said it made me look old, hard, and cheap."

Further in her interview, Holly shared that even when she wanted to leave, she couldn’t because Hugh had a form of blackmail on her. "His friends were always so supportive and speaking so highly of him. But that's the only side of him they ever saw. They had no idea what was going on behind closed doors and how the women were treated,” she added.

Holly alleged, "When I lived at the mansion, I was afraid to leave. Something that was always lingering in the back of my mind, I think since the very beginning, was that if I left there was just this mountain of revenge porn just waiting to come out. When you would go out with Hef, he's taking all kinds of naked pictures of these women when we're wasted out of our minds. And he would print out like eight copies for him and all the women, you pass them around. It was just gross."

Holly who has been extremely vocal about the abusive, toxic, and dark environment at the Playboy Mansion shared that she felt like she was trapped in a cycle of gross things and did not have an idea what to do. She added that she did not want to be intimate with him and other women especially the ones who she knew hated her and were trash-talking about her. The reality TV star added, “drinking pretty heavily every night we went out, [as] it was my way of coping with the situation after we got back home."

Two years into the relationship with Hugh, she realized that she did not want this anymore and explained, "I didn't feel like I had any options. I remember there was a point in time, a couple of years in after we had gone out and after we'd all been in the bedroom. Everybody was leaving and walking out and I was in the bathtub. I just wanted to drown myself. I just felt like I was in this cycle of misery. And you know those feelings would never last long. But you have those moments like what did I gain from this experience? I knew there would be something I always had that faith that there will be something that would make it worth it."

Holly Madison shared that she wanted to drown herself once in a bathtub. Image Source: Glamour

During the interview for ‘Secrets of Playboy’, Holly rewatched some clips from ‘The Girls Next Door’ and said, "The show gave me confidence, it gave me a sense of purpose. The contrast between the first three years I lived there and the last three-and-a-half years, it was night and day. I can see myself getting my self-esteem back. I had a job at the Playboy studio for the show, and I ended up really loving it. I seem like I'm on my way to being a little more normal, like a little more of a functional human." While watching an old clip in which Hugh is reading a card she wrote for him while she was crying, Holly said that she was embarrassed and stressed and feel f-----g stupid. I'm supposed to be filming like this romantic scene but he's dating other people. The show was doing a lot for me, in terms of self-esteem and as far as other opportunities that would come to me later, but I wasn't really seeing that. I still felt like I was very stuck in the same situation,” she explained.

In 2008, during her last year, Hugh got meaner and during one altercation between the two, Hugh called her ‘c----‘ and she was done. She explained, "At that point, there were no women to pit me against, there was none of that left. And that's when I had the realization, and I was like 'Whoa he's been the problem the whole time.' I had been locked into the mentality of the mansion, and had felt like there's no other future for me outside. But I finally saw him for who he was and I had to go. I just felt it so strongly that I had to leave.”

The reality TV star shared that her time at the mansion had caused a lot of trauma for her and she had different types of therapy since she left. Holly lastly added, “When I decided to leave, it was pretty sudden so I wouldn't say it was so much that I had a plan. I just had more to fall back on. I'd been really careful with my money and making investments and I knew that there was at least a fan base for Girls Next Door. So maybe I could turn that into something? And it worked out really well."

Talking about the 2015 memoir, she said it wasn’t motivated by money or revenge and added, "What I love about my book is I feel some people are finding it and they read it and they recognize parallel situations in emotionally abusive relationships that they might be in. I've heard a lot of feedback like that. And I love it that people are talking about abuses of power and imbalances in relationships. And I hope that helps some people."

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