Let’s say American Idol is a family. Who would Paula Abdul be? Correct, she’d be your aggressive, incoherent, substance-addled mother.

That’s right – not your drunk mother or your mentally ill mother. Your substance-addled mother. Paula Abdul has finally revealed that she’s been addicted to prescription painkillers for 12 years. and she went to rehab last year to get better.

Silly Paula Abdul – this now means that the chances of her interrupting an American Idol episode to burp the theme-tune to Quincy or start licking her own chair are greatly reduced. And why else would we watch it? For the singing? Please.

Paula Abdul is America’s sweetheart, in that she’s got a slightly Muslim-y surname, she looks like she’s always off her shit on over-the-counter medication and when she talks she’s all like “meurgh meurgh meurgh” and nobody can really understand what she’s saying. But under that glazed, boggle-eyed facade, a dark secret has been gnawing away at Paula Abdul, and now she’s finally ready to reveal it to the world.

Paula Abdul had a 12-year dependency on painkilliers.

Wait. That’s it? That was a secret? Everyone knew that Paula Abdul was constantly off her face on painkillers, surely. We even mentioned it two paragraphs ago. That’s how little of a secret it was. Pfff. Frankly we were hoping for something a little more shocking, like a revelation that Paula Abdul drinks a bottle of bleach before breakfast or that her brain is actually made of stoat offal. Anyway, here’s how Paula Abdul broke this actually quite rubbish news to Ladies’ Home Journal, which is apparently a thing that exists:

Last Thanksgiving, determined to overcome her habit, she checked into the La Costa Resort and Spa to wean herself off her medications in one fell swoop. “I could have killed myself…. Withdrawal — it’s the worst thing. I was freezing cold, then sweating hot, then chattering and in so much pain, it was excruciating. But at my very core, I did not like existing the way I had been.”

Paula Abdul then went on to describe how she’d been hooked on a combination of painkillers, muscle relaxant, nerve medication and a patch that delivered her a chemical 80 times stronger than morphine. But for good reason, though – since 1991 Paula Abdul has injured her back, broken her leg, hurt her neck in a car accident and become partially paralysed in a plane crash. It’s a bit like an episode of Mr Bean, isn’t it? A really crap episode of Mr Bean. That goes on for 12 years. And stars an idiot.

News of Paula Abdul’s recovery is extraordinarily bittersweet, though – while it’s good that she’s better, it means that never again will Paula Abdul smash up her face on a dog. Or go on TV slurring and dribbling like a maniac. Or have a screaming meltdown in an airport. Or interrupt an important conference call to weep and bellow about poo.

And, really, what is Paula Abdul without any of that. Vapour, that’s what. Vapour with a haircut.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!