Kerry Katona has said cocaine became her “best friend” when she was struggling as she opened up about her recent reconstructive nose surgery which repaired holes created by drug abuse.

The former Atomic Kitten singer, 43, revealed her mother introduced her to drugs when she was a teenager by telling her speed was sherbet.

She has now been clean for 14 years and says she “can’t sit with regret” or “hatred” about the past.

Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Thursday, she said: “It started with my second marriage, my first marriage crumbled, I moved back over to England and if you lie down with dogs you get fleas.

“I think cocaine kind of became my crutch, it was my best friend, it gave me the support I needed when I needed it.”

The singer explained she could go months without taking drugs, but whenever she started she would binge for a period.

Reflecting on how she started taking drugs aged 14, she said her mother would give her speed, telling her it was sherbet.

She added: “My mum wasn’t very well and it is what it is. It’s happened. I can’t sit with regret, I can’t sit with hatred. I have to accept people for who they are.

“For a very long time, I lived in a pity party. ‘Poor me, the world owes me a favour. It’s everyone else’s fault but mine’.

“But I have to hold my hands up, I have to take responsibility, let it go because otherwise, (its) like being in a rocking chair, going back and forth.”

National Television Awards 2012 – Arrivals – London
Kerry Katona (Anthony Devlin/PA)

Due to the drug use, a hole began to appear in her septum, which she said she aggravated as a form of “self-harm”.

Opening up about her recent surgery to fix the issue, Katona said: “My nose was collapsing at the front and as you grow older, your ears and your nose get bigger.

“So mine was changing shape because of the passings and the way I still used to blow my nose so they have taken cartilage from my rib to bring it back up and put my old nose how it used to be.”

The mother-of-five also revealed she showed her 10-year-old daughter the hole before she had surgery as she wanted to tell her about it rather than her reading about it in the media.

“Parents buy magazines and I’d rather my children hear it from me and know what I have been through”, she said.

“There’s no burying children’s heads in the sand and trying to protect them, the internet is everywhere. I’m there friend and hopefully I put them off for life.”

Good Morning Britain airs on weekdays from 6am on ITV1 & ITVX.