Did Elizabeth Vargas Fall Off the Wagon Again?

Elizabeth Vargas has shown bravery and strength equally she's shared her battle with alcoholism and anxiety over the last seven years — nearly recently in a new podcast, Centre of the Matter With Elizabeth Vargas — and it seems generous, considering she was pushed into publicly revealing her addiction in the first place.

"I didn't brand that decision to make it public — somebody else did," the Emmy Award-winning journalist tells Yahoo Amusement. "I was at rehab getting help," in 2013, when she was co-anchor of ABC News's 20/twenty and privately struggling, "and somebody chosen up the New York Postal service and New York Daily News and told reporters where I was and what I was dealing with. They called me in rehab. I was forced to effect a public statement from rehab. It was incredibly deplorable. It was very, very upsetting."

She continues, "It'due south interesting — somebody asked me, 'Would you lot take written that book? Would you have given those interviews if that story hadn't been planted?' And I don't know that I would have... Because that period of getting sober for me was the hardest part of my entire life — and I wish I had the opportunity to exercise that in privacy. That was taken from me. Just play the paw you're dealt. It was fabricated public. I felt and so alone and then isolated and then aback. I thought: Perchance if I speak out, I tin merely let a little tiny bit of air out of that balloon of shame and isolation."

Elizabeth Vargas discusses addiction in her new podcast, Eye of the Thing. "I'one thousand very invested, plain, in this topic," she tells Yahoo Entertainment, having gone public with her alcoholism in 2013. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Vargas)

Vargas, 58, has been letting air out ever since — including with her New York Times Best-Selling volume, Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction in 2016, and now with this podcast with the non-profit Partnership to End Addiction, for which she sits on the lath of directors. It sees the accomplished news adult female, who left ABC News in 2018 after more 20 years to host A&E Investigates, talking to people about their addiction journeys. Early guests include former NBA player Chris Herren, Beautiful Boy: A Father'south Journey Through His Son's Habit writer David Sheff and one-time U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy.

It makes for a compelling listen considering, she says, "I've experienced information technology," and "I never felt more alone in my entire life than I did while I was struggling with booze. It was the most isolating and the loneliest I always felt. The just thing that helped with that was meeting with other people who were experiencing the aforementioned thing. And then I really feel similar we demand to puncture that isolation and loneliness that and so many people suffer from in addition to the stress of any anxiety or depression they might be experiencing — and whatever substance abuse they may exist turning to to deal with that. I'm very invested, obviously, in this topic. I experience very strongly about the need to reduce stigma and to assist people go help because it's staggering — less than twenty percent of people in this country who demand help really get information technology."

The pandemic, of course, has made everything worse as far equally isolation and the lack of treatment options, which are elusive to the average American even under the best of circumstances.

"A lot of people are having a tough fourth dimension," Vargas acknowledges. At that place are "millions of Americans experiencing mental health stress due to COVID — and that is on summit of what we already take, which is an epidemic of addiction in this country. Many people are self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. We just really felt that the biggest matter yous can practise to annul the mental health stresses and challenges is to share nearly it and talk virtually information technology and discover out you're not alone in information technology and that other people are feeling the same manner... I just feel [that] is the best fashion to fight against the isolation that people feel effectually addiction and the hopelessness of anxiety and low, which lead to so many of what we phone call 'deaths of despair' in the land."

Her own habit journeying stemmed from debilitating anxiety that started as a child and followed her throughout her life.

"I learned early on, every bit a little girl at historic period 6, to go on my feet a hole-and-corner," she says. "I was very ashamed of information technology because it didn't look like anybody else was suffering the way I was. I had massive panic attacks. It was really, really hard."

She was an "regular army brat," whose family moved every year or two, and never got the back up she needed.

"My parents knew I had panic attacks, but weren't sophisticated enough to understand. At that point, we weren't fifty-fifty helping Vietnam vets," like her dad, "coming dwelling house with PTSD. Nobody was helping the veterans's children on regular army bases," she says. "At that place was no [other] adult in my life long enough to notice that I was suffering. I wonder what my life had been like had there been a therapist or a doctor."

So, she "kept information technology hidden." But equally she learned, "Yous can't go along something like that bottled upward within yourself — it screams for an opening. What eventually happens is yous turn to a substance to ease your mode through that terrible screaming anxiety."

That was what happened in her 20s when she started using alcohol to relieve her anxiety. But a glass of wine soon turned into a bottle, even as her career successes grew and she appeared, always seeming so polished and professional, on Good Morning America and World News This night.

"Statistics bear witness that sixty percent of women who are alcoholics also suffer from anxiety," Vargas says. "For decades, I used vino to soothe and ease that feet. That was a red flag I ignored. I wasn't drinking alcoholically, quote, unquote. I wasn't suffering any consequences. I wasn't drinking to the excess that I did at the cease," when she hit rock lesser later relapsing in 2014.

"People, especially women, ask me all the fourth dimension: 'How practise I know if I accept a trouble?'" she continues. "One of the beginning questions I ask them: 'Enquire yourself why y'all're drinking. If yous're drinking not to experience something, that'due south a red flag.' I drank not to experience anxious. I drank non to feel stressed. I drank not to feel insecure... People who look like they accept information technology all together can still feel great feet and great depression and groovy insecurity. If you're drinking to remove that feeling, even earlier the drinking becomes an actual physical trouble in your life, that's a alert sign — and information technology's a warning sign that I ignored."

Vargas admits she wasn't looking for signs — though eventually they became hard to miss.

"Part of the reason why information technology took me a while to finally get help and admit I was an alcoholic was because I had preconceived ideas most what an alcoholic was," she says. "Nosotros tell ourselves and nosotros assume all sorts of things. 'Well, she's drinking lovely Chardonnay — how could she possibly be an alcoholic?' Aye, well, I'm drinking an entire bottle of information technology every night and maybe fifty-fifty more. That'due south a problem."

And she hadn't washed any work on her underlying issue of anxiety.

"I was and so busy racing abroad from my fear, I never turned to confront it," she says. "Even every bit an adult right now, my anxiety didn't magically go abroad. Information technology's definitely less powerful than it was but part of dealing with anxiety is turning to face those fears and agreement that they're just feelings and many of these fears are of things that volition not happen. Just to have somebody to talk to nigh information technology," kickoff every bit that immature, scared 6-year-old girl, "would have been an astonishing gift."

And then Vargas, a mom of two sons with her ex-husband, hopes talking nigh addiction in her podcast helps others who are suffering and lacking connexion during this crazy time. Though she besides hopes it helps those who aren't addicts.

"The disease of addiction tin strike anybody simply the way cancer or heart disease can," she says. "And it's a chronic affliction, similar diabetes, which needs to exist managed — but nosotros don't as a society look at it this style. At that place is this impatience of: Why aren't you lot better already?"

Vargas with sons Zach and Sam:

She knows well, "There isn't this point where you go: I'm habitation free! I'm done! I don't have to work on this or manage this anymore! Recovery is something you bargain with on a daily basis. There is no such thing every bit you're all articulate and you don't have to piece of work on this any longer."

So, she adds, "We demand to be much more empathetic every bit a social club about how we address this consequence and the assumptions we make about the disease and the shaming and embarrassment around information technology."

Mind to Heart of the Affair With Elizabeth Vargas now .

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Source: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elizabeth-vargas-gets-candid-about-addiction-in-new-podcast-getting-sober-was-the-hardest-part-of-my-entire-life-142943806.html

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