Sir Mick Jagger's granddaughter Amba Jackson, 30, says she was 'taking a lot of drugs and was borderline alcoholic' as she struggled to cope at prestigious New York uni

Sir Mick Jagger's granddaughter Amba Jackson has opened up for the first time about her troubled teenage years, revealing she took 'a lot of drugs' and was 'borderline alcoholic' while struggling to cope with life at New York's prestigious Pratt Institute.

Amba, 30, is the daughter of the Rolling Stones star's jewellery designer daughter, Jade Jagger, 54, and her former partner, artist Piers Jackson.

In her debut Substack post on Friday, artist Amba wrote: 'I went to University to study Fashion Design in New York because, at 19, I wanted to be Edie Sedgwick in Factory girl. I was taking a lot of drugs, and the school was easy to get into.'

She admitted she had barely considered whether the college was right for her, choosing it after a friend mentioned the idea and then failed to follow through with their plan to apply together.

Amba, who unlike other members of her famous family has lived most of her life out of the spotlight, continued: 'For a highly sensitive, neurodivergent, mentally unstable, borderline alcoholic adolescent, who wanted to spend a significant amount of time getting drunk and chatting shit with her equally unstable friends, keeping up with schoolwork was challenging.'

'I felt completely broken by the expectations and couldn't understand why I seemed to struggle so much more with tailoring than my peers.'

Amba's choice of inspiration has a striking link to her family's history. Edie Sedgwick, who was played by Sienna Miller in the 2006 film Factory Girl, was a troubled 1960s socialite who became one of Andy Warhol's most famous muses.

Her mother Jade grew up among Warhol's circle in New York, and has previously recalled visiting the pop artist's studio as a child. Warhol even helped look after her.

But behind the image of a fashionable English girl making her way in New York, Amba said she had been struggling with feelings of shame and inadequacy.

'Looking back, I realise I convinced myself that I was superior to all my classmates to avoid the experience of belonging to the group, and to cope with copious amounts of shame,' she wrote.

'I adopted the identity of cool and aloof, mature and slightly messed up English girl, who lived off campus and did her own thing.'

She even compared herself to the disaffected hero of The Catcher in the Rye, saying she felt 'surrounded by phoneys' and was not really friends with anyone on her course.

Her recollections contrast with the picture painted in a 2015 Harper's Bazaar interview with her family, which described her as academically successful.

Her older sister Assisi Jackson, now 34, said Amba was 'working her socks off' at Pratt.

Yet Amba admitted that the pressure of university had one unexpected benefit: it forced her to keep producing art, even when she doubted her abilities.

'For the first time in my life, due to fear of expulsion, I was no longer a blocked and terrified creative, I was a prolific artist,' she explained.

She said she eventually found an outlet for her creativity while spending two years interning with experimental artist and fashion designer Susan Cianciolo in Brooklyn, where she helped make clothes, quilts, collages and dolls.

At first she struggled to understand Susan's unconventional approach, dismissing some of the work as 'mediocre' and saying much of it 'looked like a child had made it'.

But she gradually came to see the studio as a place where the sensitivity she had tried to conceal could be expressed without judgment.

'Her work brought out the sensitivity in me I had always tried to hide,' she said. 'In her studio, sensitivity was not only allowed, it was essential to the making of the work.'

Amba is now hoping to create a similar environment in south Devon.

She says she is seeking planning permission to convert stables on her land into a community art centre, following six years studying art therapy.

Reflecting on what the experience had taught her, she asked: 'What if my emotions aren't perfect, what if they aren't even beautiful? What if they are messy, irregular, changeable, unskilled, loud, unrefined, childish?

'What if I can express these things or these parts of myself and still be loved and appreciated?'