It made so much sense when Paula Abdul admitted her addiction to painkillers. The behaviour. The slurred speech. The extended tolerance of Randy Jackson.

Yes, when Paula Abdul admitted that she’d spent 12 years off her box on a cocktail of medication, everything became clear. Simon Cowell‘s teeth hadn’t sent her down a path to insanity. The inexplicable popularity of Danny Gokey hadn’t turned her synapses to mush. It was the drugs.

Except it wasn’t. Paula Abdul has claimed that her statements were taken out of context. Apparently you can take harrowing descriptions of withdrawal out of context now. Who knew?

That’s it. We’ve decided that we’re going on a spa holiday, preferably to that place in California where Paula Abdul went last Thanksgiving. Why? Because we’ve heard so many wonderful things about it. There’s the tennis, for instance, and the golf. And the luxurious spa facilities. And the… oh, how did Paula Abdul put it? Yes, that’s right:

“I could have killed myself… I was freezing cold, then sweating hot, then chattering and in so much pain, it was excruciating.”

Oh, wait, that doesn’t sound very pleasant at all, does it? Previously we thought that Paula Abdul only found her stay there so unbearable because she was using it to kick her 12-year addiction to painkillers – but now she says that she’s never been addicted to painkillers at all, so that can’t be it. It must just be a really rubbish spa.

The moral here – other than never let Paula Abdul endorse ANYTHING is that Paula Abdul has never been addicted to drugs. Yes, we know, a lot of things point to the possibility of Paula Abdul having a drug addiction – her wayward behaviour in public, for instance, and the fact that this week she gave an interview where she stated in very clear terms that she’d been addicted to painkillers for 12 years – but now Paula Abdul is saying that the whole thing is a great big dollop of tish.

And whose fault is it? That’s right, our old friend context. You see, Paula Abdul may have used the interview in Ladies Home Journal to reveal in explicit detail that she was addicted to drugs, the names of all the drugs she was addicted to and the nightmarish conditions of her withdrawal, but she didn’t. Even though she did, she didn’t. It’s very simple. Paula Abdul told a Detroit radio show called Mojo In The Morning:

“It was very stressful for me to hear that and to be quoted saying something. I never said. I’ve never checked into a rehab clinic. I’ve never been addicted or abused drugs, and I’ve never abused alcohol. I’ve never even been drunk in my life.”

Meanwhile, Ladies Home Journal has decided to stand by its story. So one of them is telling a lie – but which one? Either Paula Abdul really was a drug addict or that notorious hotbed of investigative journalism Ladies Home Journal made it all up. There’s only one way to sort this out for good – someone needs to tie Paula Abdul to a chair and time how long it is before she starts crying and seeing ants crawling through her veins instead of blood. Our guess? About eight seconds.

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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.

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