EXCLUSIVE: Princess Diana's Buried Drugs and Sex Secrets Exposed on What Would Have Been Tragic Royal's 65th Birthday

Princess Diana is at the center of explosive claims her private struggles with drugs and sex were carefully buried by those around her – as her fans and family mark what would have been the tragic royal's 65th birthday.

RadarOnline.com can reveal the late Princess of Wales, who died aged 36 in a Paris car crash in 1997, is alleged to have relied on cocaine during the most turbulent years of her marriage breakdown, while juggling a complicated friendship with singer George Michael and a fraught relationship with Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed.

The claims, drawn from conversations with her closest pals, as well as private letters and newly surfaced accounts from people who said they were close to Diana, suggest a woman battling profound emotional pain behind the public image of compassion and charity work.

One long‑time acquaintance of late singer George Michael's told us: "George told me in great detail how he became Diana's dealer, and I believe a lot of the cocaine I supplied him with was also going to her."

He said he first noticed the change in the early 1990s.

"I noticed he was ordering a lot more coke, even for him, and when I asked why, he just said it was for a very special friend and he was sworn to secrecy," the source said. "Eventually he admitted that the friend was Diana, and that she had begged him for something to make her feel confident and happy again."

The source claimed Michael described smuggling small bags of cocaine into Diana's Apartment 8 at Kensington Palace, hidden in cheap jewelry boxes and trinket parcels so they would evade palace staff and security checks.

He said: "George told me he was sweating buckets bringing it into the apartment because he knew it would be global news if one of her security team found it on him."

According to the insider, the arrangement continued for around four years, with Diana sending trusted aides in cars to collect drugs from Michael's house in Highgate and from his contacts around London.

Another source, who said they decided to speak out to highlight how addiction can affect anyone, described Diana's emotional state at the time as increasingly fragile.

They said: "The public needs to know this, firstly to see the truth about how messed up Diana was by the Royal Family and Prince Charles. Second, I hope it makes people feel more compassion for drug addicts around the world."

The source added: "The royals will hopefully feel sympathy for Diana when they hear she turned to drugs to numb her pain, and hopefully they'll extend a bit more compassion to the addicts we all see on the streets."

The insider linked Diana's drug use to the period between the announcement of her separation from the then-Prince Charles and the finalization of their divorce, describing how she withdrew from public life and scaled back charity work, making it easier for her cocaine habit to go unnoticed.

They said: "I'm not sure if the drug use ever got really messy for her, as she only took coke and pills off and on when she was feeling really low. But it definitely became a problem she had to fix."

The source added that they assumed she discussed the issue with therapists and sought professional help as she tried to stop.

According to the same account, the turning point came when Michael, himself heavily involved with hard drugs, suggested heroin as a further escape.

The source said: "George really shocked me when he told me he once offered her heroin. He said he only mentioned it when he was high as a kite and, in hindsight, he should never have offered it to her."

He added: "He told her it was the best way for him to escape his mind, but that suggestion seemed to jolt her into realizing she had developed a real drug problem. She knew getting into heroin was absolutely not for her, so she drew the line and decided to kick her coke habit."

Diana's vulnerability is also reflected in her private correspondence, including in a handwritten letter from October 1993 to her butler Paul Burrell, in which she expressed fears Charles was plotting a car accident to clear the way for a new relationship.

Friends now see the note as part of a wider pattern of paranoia, which they believe was intensified by her reliance on drugs and by the emotional turmoil of her collapsing marriage.

Other letters and postcards recently released from the actor Terence Stamp's estate further illuminate how Diana mixed dark humor with confessions about antidepressants and emotional strain.

In one letter she wrote to her famous pal: "Touched to the core by your understanding of my job/role and what comes with it!"

She also quipped about prescription medication: "Three cheers for Prozac, not the American variety I hasten to add!"

In later cards she joked about "Prozac withdrawals" and sent risqué postcards to Stamp featuring sexual cartoons, hinting at a woman using wit and flirtation to cope with scrutiny and loneliness.

One of her cards thanked the actor for the champagne enjoyed during what she described as a "lunch a la yeast!"

The message featured a cartoon couple in bed beneath the caption "Why did God invent S-X?"

Inside was the punchline: "So that married people do something at least twice a year."

Diana's relationship with Dodi Fayed has also been recast in light of allegations about his own heavy cocaine use.

Hollywood figures who knew Fayed in the 1980s recalled him hosting "3Cs" parties – champagne, cocaine and caviar – and described him as a man driven more by drugs than by romance.

One source told us: "Cocaine was what drove Dodi. People saw him photographed with actresses and models, but he showed very little sexual interest in anyone. The great love of his life was drugs."

Sources close to Diana said she was aware of Fayed's drug problems and had tried to wean him off cocaine in the weeks before their deaths, as she worked to address her own past reliance on prescription medications and illicit drugs.

They describe two damaged people colliding at the end of a tumultuous decade – Diana haunted by bulimia and depression, and Fayed consumed by addiction and paranoia about the possibility of being kidnapped for ransom due to his business tycoon father Mohamed Al Fayed's immense wealth.

A source said: "What emerges from these accounts is a portrait of Diana as a woman caught in a web of emotional pain, dependency and secrecy; a princess who turned to cocaine to feel 'happy and confident,' and who joked in private about Prozac and sex, but was secretly and desperately trying to manage the spiraling drug use of the man who would die beside her in Paris."

Diana died at 4am on 31 August, 1997, after her heart was ruptured in a high-speed car crash in Paris' Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

Singer Michael, found dead at home on Christmas Day in 2016, aged 53, after dying from liver and heart problems, kept a recording of him chatting to Diana about her marriage breakdown while he was high on cannabis.

The conversation was recorded by an answering machine at his home in North London. Diana is heard telling Michael about her break-up, saying: "It's been pretty grim, but we're near the end of it. Not a very loving, compassionate family, this one I'm leaving."

Diana and Michael clicked when they met backstage at a 1989 World Aids Day concert in London's Wembley Stadium.

A biography on Michael called Freedom, The Ultimate Tribute 1963-2016 detailed how the pair became each other's closest confidantes, sharing intimate meetings and late-night calls.

Michael is said to have told pals he believed he could have slept with Diana as he knew she secretly fancied him.

And his childhood pal Andros Georgiou has told how Michael was invited by Diana to Kensington Palace several times "for what she called a 'chinwag.'"

He added: "George said she made a point of touching his arm, and her hello and goodbye hugs lingered."