Luann Reveals Dark Past Before Drunken Assault Arrest: ‘I Binge To Cover My Emotions’

Luann de Lesseps admitted she had a dark past of self-medicating with alcohol in the years leading up to her Christmas Eve assault arrest.

“I’ve been self-medicating for a while,” the RHONY star confessed. “Let’s be honest, I binge in order to cover my emotions.”

De Lesseps returned home from rehab on Wednesday night’s The Real Housewives of New York. She said her failed marriages – in particular, her seven-month relationship to Tom D’Agostino – were the primary reason she would binge drink.

“It was shame, it was failed marriages, it was all of those things,” De Lesseps told Dorinda Medley. “I’m standing in front of the judge in the morning and he’s reading off these charges. I could hardly believe it. That was me?”

The New York housewife said she was returning to New York as a sober version of herself.

“I totally intend on changing my life back in New York. I just want to take a break from alcohol because it’s been so long where I have not drank almost,” she told the camera.

As RadarOnline.com readers know, De Lesseps recently struck a plea deal in her case after being charged with one felony and two misdemeanors on Christmas Eve last year. The New York housewife ended up behind bars in Palm Beach after allegedly assaulting and threatening cops while drunk.

Meanwhile, back home, Medley, Bethenny Frankel, Carole Radziwill, Sonja Morgan and Ramona Singer poked fun at the jailbird when visiting a gym ran by former prisoners in NYC. The ladies laughed off De Lesseps’ arrest while taking fake mug shots of their own.

“I am petrified to be the next mug shot in the group of girls. Luann’s mug shot just reeks of cold and loneliness,” said Medley.

Also in the episode, the ladies painfully reacted to the tragic news that former RHONY star Jill Zarin’s husband Bobby passed away.

Zarin broke down in tears when she came face to face with Frankel at the funeral after the two had been estranged for six years.

“I’m so proud of you,” Zarin told Frankel in between sobs. “I just have to tell you, Bobby loved you.”