After many years of painful and expensive plastic surgery, a once naturally pretty Laura Pillorella reveals how she wishes she'd tried therapy first.

A new memoir, by Laura Pillorella about her consuming addiction to plastic surgery, lifts the lid on the reality that exists within the vanity side of the business. After years of using plastic surgery just like a drug, never once feeling satisfied, she admits that she never addressed the crippling inner feelings of self-hatred and shame.

Did any of her plastic surgeons ever suggest this when she came back yet again for another nip, tuck, implant or peel? Seemingly not.

Every woman I have ever known who followed through on plastic surgery, before age 50, had shockingly low self-esteem and disastrous maternal relations. Not to mention their relations with men. As a teenage acne sufferer and yo-yo dieter, I believed for years that being thin with good skin would sort out my life. If only... I achieved a decent body and good skin but still hated myself. The better my outside looked, the worse I felt inside. Like Laura I tried numerous ways of fixing myself, bar the surgeon's knife, but the over-powering need for validation and approval is all-consuming and at the root of most addictive behaviours.

READ MORE