‘Playboy Messed My Whole Life Up’

The former Playboy playmate got emotional in a new interview with People discussing her battle with mental health and the ups and downs of her wild past, which she says she’s only just beginning to work through.

“It’s not easy to look back at my 20s. I’ve had to face my demons,” Wilkinson, who suffered a series of panic attacks that landed her in the hospital in September, said.

“Playboy really messed my whole life up,” she added.

Describing the moment that led her to seek treatment, the former Girls Next Door star said she felt like she was “dying from depression.”

“I was in a state of panic. I didn’t know what was going on in my head and my body or why I was crying. I had hit rock bottom,” Wilkinson explained.

She continued, “I was hitting the end of my life, and I went into psychosis. I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore.”

With ex-husband and former NFL player, Hank Baskett, by her side in hospital, she was put on antipsychotic medication, and began outpatient therapy three times a week following her release.

The bulk of the trauma Wilkinson says she’s working through, stems from her time living in Hugh Hefner’s mansion in her late teens and early 20s.

“Why did I have sex with Hugh Hefner at that age? Why did I do that?” She asked herself. “Why did I go to the mansion in the first place? Why did I get big boobs? Why am I a sex symbol? Why did I bleach blonde my hair? Why did I do this to myself? Why did I?”

And of course, her painful and very public divorce from Baskett, which came after he cheated on the former model while she was eight months pregnant with their second child.

“It crushed me because I loved him so much and I never really knew what marriage and love was. I never really grew up in a home of marriage and love,” Wilkinson said of their split. “That’s why I haven’t been dating because I still am trying to shake off my divorce. That caused my depression too. I loved Hank and I still do. I will always love him.”

While the pair now have a strong bond as co-parents and friends, these low points in her past put Wilkinson in a place that made it difficult to see beyond her depression.

“It was the lowest place I’ve ever been in my life. I felt like I had no future. I couldn’t see in front of my depression,” Wilkinson, who recently made a career shift to real estate, shared. “I was giving up and I couldn’t find the light. I had no hope.”

She continued, “I wasn’t focusing on myself or my mental health. Here I was a single mom and I’ve been alone for years now. But it’s also easy to feel like the world is caving in on you. I was trying to fight it on my own. I was trying to cure it on my own and you can’t do that. I was isolating, hiding, blaming myself, blaming the world. I was spiraling out of control and I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to survive.”

Now, thanks to medication and therapy, Wilkinson has accepted that this is a part of her and will be a part of her going forward.

“Depression is something that doesn’t just go away. It’s something that stays with you through life. You just have to learn to work with it and accept it. And it’s a part of me,” she says. “What therapy did was that it built this tool system for me. So now I have the strength — I have the strength and the foundation I need to overcome my depression.”

And she’s proud of herself too, for taking on this fight, and for getting the treatment she needed.

“I’m so proud of myself for battling this and finding the solution and getting the treatment I needed. And it’s one step at a time,” she said. “I survived.”