Elizabeth Vargas Opens Up About How Her Anxiety Fueled Her Alcoholism
RELATED: 4 Different Women Describe Their Ongoing Struggles with Social Anxiety
Here, Elizabeth talks with WomensHealthMag.com further about the connection between mental health issues and alcoholism, her own journey to sobriety, and what she wants other women to learn from her experiences:
WomensHealthMag.com: Why does it matter that so many alcoholics often have anxiety, too?
Elizabeth Vargas: More than any other co-occurring disorder, anxiety leads the way. It’s a very strong link. So knowing about that link lets doctors be more alert and will let them change the ways they treat women who are anxious and alcoholics. It’s a whole different treatment model, because we now know what alcohol does to the body. And women have a lot to deal with and are more likely to self-medicate.
WH: Did knowing that change the way you talked with your own doctor?
EV: Look, I can interview the President of the United States in the Oval Office, but I couldn’t sit in my doctor’s office and volunteer that I was worried about my drinking. I’d wait and hope he’d ask me a question that I’d be forced to answer. Part of me wanted desperately to be reassured that I was OK, and the other part was equally afraid that he’d tell me to stop drinking.
WH: Were you always a big drinker?
EV: I barely drank in high school or in college. Then I drank moderately—like most people do—for 25 years before I started drinking alcoholically. How did that happen? The research on the link between alcoholism and anxiety makes much more sense now: All those years I was self-medicating, but after a while when the anxiety gets higher, the stress is bigger, and the unhappiness is a little bit more pervasive, then you find yourself drinking a little bit more.
RELATED: 8 Signs That Your Partner Might Have a Drinking Problem
WH: How did your drinking escalate?
EV: Wine wasn’t just my reward at the end of the day. I needed that glass of wine. I was self-medicating. I had an enormous amount of stress at work, I was the breadwinner, I supported my entire family, my marriage wasn’t strong, and I had just gone through a humiliating demotion. On top of all that was the undercurrent of anxiety. All those factors led me to slowly but steadily upping the intake. And that’s what I understand now looking back at my drinking.
WH: What happened when you tried to cut back on your own, before heading to rehab in 2014?
EV: You think, “Geez, I need to cut back.” But then you don’t. And so there I was again, thinking, “Why didn’t I cut back? Why can’t I cut back?”
RELATED: ‘My Drunkorexia Sent Me to Rehab When I Was Just 24 Years Old’
WH: Did the drinking eventually make your anxiety worse?
EV: For all those years I thought I was tamping down the anxiety with my white wine, [but] I was actually making it much bigger. I was much more anxious in the last few years when I was drinking alcoholically. So the huge irony in all this is that my anxiety now is much less.
WH: What’s happening inside the body of a woman who has been a chronic, steady drinker for a couple decades?
EV: There are physiological changes that happen to a woman after she’s been drinking daily for a while. It does change the brain. It does change the body. For a lot of women, having about two or three drinks a night seems kind of doable. But even at that level, you’re changing your body. One leading researcher told me that at a certain point, if you’ve been drinking several glasses of wine a day, you’ll need a couple glasses of wine just to feel normal. So in my case, I was no longer having a couple glasses to get than nice buzz that everyone wants. I needed it just to get to the baseline, to function and feel OK.
WH: Without the wine, how are you coping with anxiety now?
EV: Certain things make me anxious. God forbid I get stuck in an elevator. Flying isn’t great for me—or getting caught in a crowd. But those situational anxieties aren’t what triggered my drinking. It was more emotion and fear-based for me. I had huge separation anxiety as a kid. I had panic attacks as a little girl, and they were not subtle. But now when I feel the anxiety, I can sort of stand there and examine it. The minute I start to feel it, I stop and take stock. I ask myself, ‘What’s happening right now? What am I fearful of? How real is that fear?’ That helps me enormously, along with daily meditation and prayer.
WH: Not a day goes by without someone sharing some pithy message on Instagram like “Life is what happens between coffee and wine,” or “Love the wine you’re with.” What do you make of all that?
EV: Think about all the books and movies out right now. There is a whole culture around celebrating women and motherhood and drinking. Liquor companies make a huge effort to target advertising to women. So you just have to be more aware of why you’re drinking, because that’s where the slippery slope is. If you’re trying to numb something, as I was, I had to drink more to numb it. I hope women will hear my cautionary tale and look carefully at how much they’re drinking and ask why.