How Natalie Cole battled her drug addiction

London, Sept 26 : Natalie Cole has revealed how she battled her drug addiction.

The Grammy Award winning singer's addiction to heroin and crack cocaine was so serious that she once crashed her car while high and her young son, Robert, nearly drowned in the family pool when she was on a drug binge.

Cole hit rock bottom when she refused to leave a burning building because she needed to score.

In her 2000 autobiography, 'Angel on My Shoulder', she writes: "Smoke poured under the door to my hotel suite. It was so thick that it was getting hard to breathe." She was trapped in the room with her bodyguard, and, in the belief that they were doomed, he suggested they have sex. Cole had other ideas. "No thanks,' I said, 'If I'm going to go, I'm not going straight.' I fished my freebase kit out of my purse and started cooking cocaine.'"

When they were rescued, Cole realised it was time to address her addiction. She went into rehab in 1983.

"I literally lay my life in their hands, not knowing if there was a career left for me, not knowing if I could keep custody of my son," she said.

"At some point everything starts disintegrating around you, and you have to make a choice. That one commitment to do whatever it takes means exactly what it says. It's not easy," she added.

ANI