Monica Lewinsky said she “just couldn’t see a way out” and contemplated suicide amid the fallout from her affair with former President Bill Clinton.
“The previous several months had been very much, had been very tumultuous, so already my emotional state, my mental health, was wobbly at that point,” the former White House intern shared during her appearance on CNN’s David Axelrod’s “The Axe Files” podcast. The comments were noted by TMZ in a piece published Thursday. It starts at the 27:30 minute mark.
“I still loved the president, I didn’t want this to become public,” she added. “Yes, I went to extreme, I understand it’s hard for people to get that, because I blabbed to, you know, a handful of people which, ironically for me, at the time I thought I was being discreet.” (RELATED: Netflix Releases Awesome ‘Stranger Things’ Season 4 Preview)
Monica Lewinsky says she had suicidal ideations during her Clinton affair scandal. https://t.co/ZZWB8RJmAU
— TMZ (@TMZ) September 30, 2021
“This idea of this becoming public, my dad is an upstanding doctor in the medical community, you know, just what this would do to the whole of my family, anybody who shared my last name, and I felt I just couldn’t see a way out and and I thought maybe that was the solution,” Lewinsky continued. (RELATED: FX Drops Trailer For ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ About President Clinton’s Affair With Monica Lewinsky And The Fallout)
The anti-bullying activist shared that at one point she asked the Office of Independent Counsel’s lawyers working for Ken Starr, who was leading the investigation, what would happen if she died.
“As more of an adult now, I think back ‘how is there not a protocol,’ like that’s a point where you’re supposed to bring a psychologist in or something,” she shared. “How is that not a breaking point in whatever you know their plan for ‘prom night’ was, as they called the operation.”
“It was that night, when, hours and hours later, when I was finally, my mom came from New York, and I was finally able to go home at around 1 in the morning,” she added. “And I was so distraught my mom made me shower with the bathroom door open, so, I mean there was that that concern.”
“And throughout the investigation there were a number of points where I was lucky, you know, I eventually got a therapist,” Lewinsky continued. “I didn’t have a therapist at the time. And I got a forensic psychiatrist a couple weeks into the investigation after it went public.”
An FX anthology titled, “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” that focuses on Clinton’s affair with her and the fallout came out Sept. 7. Lewinsky serves as a producer on the series.