God bless Barry Keoghan. For all manner of things, really – his luxurious hair, that rock solid jawline, those scenes in Saltburn – but mostly for being one of the few celebrities to speak honestly about the fact he used to take lots of cocaine.

In a podcast released recently, the actor revealed he'd got clean and sober at 32, the same age his mother tragically died of a heroin overdose.

Keoghan admitted that it took three attempts at rehab and a near death experience before he recognised he had a problem with substance abuse.

'I technically did die for a few seconds,' he told Benny Blanco on his Friends Keep Secrets podcast, of the moment he ended up in a medical emergency because of cocaine use. 'I'm clean now, I've been clean for two and a half years.'

He told the hosts that he abstains from everything, including alcohol. 'I like to think I'm allergic to alcohol, because my reaction is cocaine.'

As someone who has also had to get clean from this most pernicious of party drugs, Keoghan's words landed in my chest with a thud of recognition.

Because while it might be easy to see his story as one of Hollywood excess, the star has revealed a truth about cocaine that few dare to admit: most people get into trouble with it because they are already in trouble with alcohol. They black out, lose track of huge chunks of their evenings, and quickly discover that with a small line of coke, they can keep knocking back booze without any of the (immediate) consequences.

Where there is alcohol and money, you can bet your bottom dollar – or a round of cocktails – that there is cocaine. Having destroyed much of the cartilage in my nose through drugs, I am still acutely aware of how widespread cocaine use is. According to statistics, deaths caused by the drug are at an all time high, with nearly a million adults a year taking it in powdered form.

It's almost a decade since I last touched drugs or alcohol, but I can still sniff out the signs of someone who is high.

A recent girls' night out was a case in point. I rarely accept invitations to evenings like this any more, because I know I'm too old and too sober – but in order to maintain friendships, I force myself to go to one a year.

It was dinner and cocktails (sickly sweet mocktails for me) and within minutes of arriving I'd managed to identify the person at the table on coke. The signs are obvious, when you know what to look for. As we like to say in recovery circles: 'It takes one to know one.'

The woman in question had one of those teeny-tiny designer handbags clamped to her side, just big enough to carry a lipstick, a vape and a gram of cocaine. She repeatedly excused herself to go to the loo, claiming that a mixture of childbirth and perimenopause had given her a weak bladder.

I nodded politely, and with no judgment: I remembered how in my 30s, before I was shipped off to rehab, I used heavy periods as an excuse for my constant trips to the toilet.

I was trapped in a seedy web of deceit, lying to my husband almost constantly. I would tell him I was going out for 'just one drink' only to disappear for hours on end, often returning the next morning just as he was taking our four-year-old daughter to nursery. I was lucky that by dint of being middle class, I got to go to rehab. I knew that there was a parallel version of my life, where my future involved social services, divorce and prison.

I remembered those awful days as I watched the woman on our girls' night out. Like most people who take cocaine, she barely ate any food, instead choosing to chew off the inside of her own mouth, and the ear of the person sitting next to her (thankfully, not me). 

Her pupils were dilated, her eyes devoid of sparkle. I wanted to pull her into a hug and tell her there was another way, but I knew from my own experience that this would go down about as well as the idea of having to watch that scene from Saltburn with your grandparents.

This is why I feel so grateful to Keoghan for his openness about cocaine addiction.

Because though there are plenty of people out there who have become dependent on this nasty drug – and had their lives ruined by it – there aren't many who are willing to admit to it. As for that woman from our dinner, and all the many coke users out there like her (perhaps you yourself are one), they need to see examples of people pulling through the hell of cocaine dependency.

They need to know there is life after the secret shame of coke snorting, that there is something so much better on the other side. Most of all, they need to know that if Barry and I can do it, then anyone can.

Please Harper, not a teen skincare range

I tell you what I want, what I really, really want: for 14-year-old Harper Beckham not to launch a skincare brand. Alas, it seems that this is wishful thinking, judging by an interview this week with her mum, Victoria.

'She [Harper] used to have beautiful skin but then, like all young girls, she was enticed by certain beauty brands and she was putting a lot of product on her face that wasn't suitable for her skin,' Posh told a podcast this week. 'She [Harper] said, "I really want to create a brand because I know what I want... and I don't want other people to have to go through what I have been through."'

Instead of foisting more skincare on teenage beauty obsessives, can we try reminding them of how wonderful they are, regardless of whether or not they have a face full of perfectly normal teenage spots?

• A survey has found a fifth of Britons are sentimental hoarders, with 26 per cent keeping their first teddy, 22 per hanging on to shoes that are too painful to wear, and 11 per cent cluttering drawers and garages with love letters from old flames. Reading this, I felt a wave of shame about my own tendency to hang on to things I don't need, including a £300-a-month storage unit on an industrial estate somewhere in south London. Time to declutter, methinks, if only for the sake of my bank account.

My tip to win Traitors...

I can't believe we're going to have to wait until the autumn to watch the second celebrity version of The Traitors. What a treat (and a tease) it was for the BBC to reveal the stars as they arrived in Scotland at the weekend. The contestant I'm most looking forward to seeing is comedian Joanne McNally, one of the funniest stars to have come out of Ireland in recent years. However long she ends up staying in the Traitors castle, she's got an exceptionally bright future ahead of her. 

First time I've agreed with Ryanair boss! 

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary wants to ban the tradition of early morning pints at the airport because drunk, aggressive passengers are causing almost daily diversions to flights. As an alcoholic, I find the normalisation of drinking while travelling most strange – not to mention dangerous, especially given I once relapsed on a plane to America (airports are notoriously risky places for people in early sobriety). For once, I actually agree with O'Leary on something. Like a Ryanair flight being on time, there's a first for everything!