Holly Madison says she considered suicide during her relationship with Hugh Hefner: 'I was in this cycle of misery'

• Holly Madison said she once considered suicide during her relationship with Hugh Hefner.
• "I was in this cycle of misery," the reality star said in a new episode of "Secrets of Playboy."

Holly Madison said she once considered suicide during a particularly difficult time in her relationship with Hugh Hefner.

"The drama between me and the other women became so bad. Like, imagine having sex with somebody in a room full of women who hate you and you know they're all talking shit about you," Madison recalled in a new episode of A&E's "Secrets of Playboy" series.

According to Madison, the conflict between her and other women in the mansion caused her to become depressed.

"There was a point where I felt really low. Like I didn't feel like I had any options," Madison recalled of her relationship with Hefner, who died of natural causes in 2017 at the age of 91.

"There was a point in time, a couple years in, after we had gone out, and after we had all been in the bedroom, everybody was leaving and walking out, and I was in the bathtub, and I just wanted to drown myself," she continued.

Madison added: "I just felt like I was in this cycle of misery. And those feelings would never last long, but you have those moments, like, 'What did I gain from this experience?'"

The "Down the Rabbit Hole" author went on to reveal, however, that she "always had that faith" that "something" would make her experience at the Playboy mansion worthwhile.

Madison, who lived at the mansion as Hefner's main girlfriend from 2001 to 2008, has been open about her struggles with Hefner and other negative aspects of her life at the Los Angeles home.

In another clip from "Secrets of Playboy," the reality star called the atmosphere at the mansion "cult-like." Madison said that she and the other women "were all kind of gaslit" and expected to think of Hefner "as this really good guy."

"And you started to feel like, 'Oh, he's not what they say in the media. He's just a nice man,'" she said.

She went on to reveal that the women living at the Playboy mansion had a 9 o'clock curfew each night, were encouraged to "not have friends over," and weren't "really allowed to leave" unless it was for a major holiday.

Madison even said that Hefner told her to quit her waitressing job, since it made him "jealous." She then relied on the $1,000 per week allowance that the women at the mansion were given as her main source of income.

Representatives for Hefner's estate didn't immediately respond to Insider's previous requests for comment, though Hefner's son Cooper Hefner tweeted a statement in defense of his father on Monday ahead of the docuseries' premiere.

Cooper called the "salacious stories" about his father "a case study of regret becoming revenge."

In a statement shared previously with Insider, Playboy emphasized its commitment to supporting and uplifting women.

"Today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy. We trust and validate these women and their stories and we strongly support those individuals who have come forward to share their experiences," the statement read in part. "As a brand with sex positivity at its core, we believe safety, security, and accountability are paramount. The most important thing we can do right now is actively listen and learn from their experiences."

"Secrets of Playboy" premiered Monday on A&E. You can watch the trailer below.