Instagram influencer Ruby Matthews — who works as a model as well as a parenting blogger — said on Instagram that she stayed thin before having children with a diet of "tapas and cocaine."
"I did a lot of cocaine. Like, a lot. So basically, I just smoked cigarettes, had long blacks, and did coke," she said. "And in between, I had tapas. My life was tapas and cocaine."
Matthews discussed her cocaine habit in a question and answer session Tuesday on Instagram, where she has nearly 200,000 followers. The Instagram stories where she talked about her drug use have since expired, but videos still circulate online.
She said her cocaine use was an addiction.
"A lot of people never understood how I could eat and still be so thin, but I guess it's pretty easy to hide an addiction," she said. "People don't realise how easy it is to hide something, whether it's addiction, depression, or anxiety. It's pretty easy to hide those little things."
Matthews said that she wasn't alone in using cocaine. Many other Instagram influencers, she said, use cocaine as well to stay skinny.
"I need to be careful what I'm saying here, but in the [influencer and modeling] industry, everyone loves the baggies," she said. "But that is how most physiques are maintained, that's how exactly my physique was maintained."
On Wednesday, Matthews posted an old photo of herself and said she had "no desire to look like that ever again" and was glad things have changed in the modeling industry.
In her Instagram story, Matthews said she gave up cocaine use when she learned she was pregnant. Matthews has a history of health issues when it comes to pregnancy: She had a miscarriage when she was 16 and needed surgery while she was pregnant in 2017, before the birth of her second child.
Matthews didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's request for comment.
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