Kendra Wilkinson Defends Getting High at a Sublime Concert the Day Hugh Hefner Died: ‘I Owe Him Nothing’ (Exclusive)

When Playboy founder Hugh Hefner passed away in September 2017 at the age of 91, Kendra Wilkinson didn’t sit at home and grieve.

Hours after the news broke, Wilkinson says she got high at a Sublime concert in California.

“I smoked a lot of weed,” Wilkinson, 38, recalls exclusively in a new interview with PEOPLE. Although it’s been 20 years since she first rose to fame at age 18 as one of Hefner’s girlfriends, the reality star says she’s only just beginning to unpack the trauma of her time in his Playboy world.

Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson October 8, 2006

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

“Look, at the end of the day I don’t owe Hef anything,” she says. “I’m not going to sit here and protect him. Hugh Hefner chose to date millions of girls, didn’t he? It’s not my responsibility. And whatever happened to him, to his relationships, that was his business. It is not my responsibility to protect a man because of his life choices.”

Kendra Wilkinson breaks silence on her mental health battle: ‘I was dying of depression’ (Exclusive)

Now, two decades after she and Hefner first started dating, Wilkinson — who is currently in therapy — has more perspective. “I deeply regretted it [afterwards]. I got to the point where I started hating myself [and asking], ‘Why did I have sex with Hugh Hefner?’” she says of Hefner, who was 60 years her senior. “I hated my tits, my body, my face. I got to the point where I started hating myself.”

After Wilkinson left the mansion, she married former NFL player Hank Baskett, 41, at her former residence in June 2009, walking down the aisle while pregnant with Hank Jr., now 14, who born that December. (She and Baskett — who divorced in 2019 — later welcomed daughter Alijah Mary, 9, in 2014.)

Hank Baskett and Kendra Wilkinson in 2009.

Jason Merritt/Getty

In September, Wilkinson was hospitalized and diagnosed with anxiety and depression and put on antipsychotics. “It’s not easy to look back on your 20s. I had to face my demons,” says Wilkinson. She now admits that Playboy “messed up her whole life”.

“Do you know how many people pressured me to stand up for Hef with all his accusations and all that stuff? It is not my responsibility to advocate for someone like that,” she says. “That’s what started to drive me because people were saying, ‘Well, why don’t you stand up for him?’ And I had a marriage with my ex-husband and now two kids that I have to focus on now, not Hugh Hefner.”

Kendra Wilkinson needed ‘intensive treatment’ after her divorce caused deep depression: ‘I was so lost’

While Wilkinson is finally ready to talk about her experiences, she says she too would like to move on as she continues her career in real estate. “Hef kept showing up in my life and there were times when I wanted to stop it. I’m like, ‘Hef’s not a part of my life anymore. Can we not include Hef in our thriving lives?” she says.

“He was five years of my life. He is not my life,” she emphasizes. “There were moments when I tried to part with Playboy and it simply followed me through time. I had to really face the truth about everything.”

Looking back on her growth, Wilkinson is proud of how far she’s come since those tough times. “I have so much good ahead of me. I have two of the most amazing children who are good, solid human beings, and I feel like I just hit rebirth,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Whatever that hurricane I was a part of is far away now.”

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Source: HIS Education