I dont know if I was born an alcoholic, but I was definitely born
anxious. The alcoholism came to me later in life, after years of drinking to ease stress and worry, and to fend off panic. But the anxiety? It was there from the start. My earliest memories are infused with it. It was a steady theme throughout my childhood, and it is the background music of my adult life. Sometimes it was loud and intrusive; other times you could barely hear it. But it never left me. I dabbled in drinking in high school, didnt drink at all in college, and then after graduation drank moderately (or at least what I thought was moderately) for nearly two decades. But even from the start, in my early twenties, I liked alcohol. I liked the way it made me feel. Theres a sweet feeling that you get from those first few glasses of wine. The world is softer, smoother, more golden; the tension drains from the tightly clenched muscles in my neck and shoulders. I could finally breathe. I would go out with my friends after work in local news. Everyone seemed smarter and prettier and more interesting, even me. We would toast our good fortune, celebrate the newscast we had just put on live TV, clink our glasses to another victory in the ferociously competitive business in which we all worked. The nervous worry and the edginess I carried with me all day would melt away, and I would bask in a chardonnay glow. Some people chase that alcohol glow their whole life, and somehow they make it through, or they learn along the way that there are other, better ways to ease anxiety. I did not. Drinking started out to be something that felt lovely and luxurious. It was a romance of sorts. It ended with me on the brink of dying from alcohol poisoning, of losing every single thing and every single person I treasured. It sent me to a hardscrabble rehab in Tennessee, where I spent a grim Christmas
Excerpted from the book BETWEEN BREATHS: A MEMOIR OF
PANIC AND ADDICTION. Copyright 2016 by Elizabeth Vargas. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
alone, my two precious children nine hundred miles away, opening
gifts without their mom. There is nothing remotely romantic about that. My problem was that at some point, the alcohol stopped working. The more I chased that glow, the more elusive it became. Determined to rediscover it, I would drink more. One or two glasses a night became three or four. The relief I once enjoyed was now slipping from my greedy hands, leaving me with my anxiety tapping on the door. Drinking too much nearly always had consequences simple hangovers at first, nothing a Gatorade and an hour at the gym couldnt fix. But the opening in the window between when alcohol made me feel better and when it extracted its heavy toll became narrower and narrower. The hangovers morphed from bleary, shaky mornings to entire days when I counted the hours until I could go home and have another glass of wine, so desperate I was for that relief. And it wasnt just anxiety I was looking to drown. It was fear. I was insecure and terrified someone would wake up and say Hey, what are you doing here? You dont belong here! and then unceremoniously show me the exit. That fear was there whether I was in a newsroom or at a dinner party, board meeting, or movie premiere. The world would see me for the fraud that some part of me had always believed I was. Deep down, I wasnt a confident, in-control network news anchor and the happily married mother of two wonderful children enjoying life in one of the most exciting cities in the world. Inside I was still a panicked five-yearold living in abject terror. I was living a double life, hiding the anxious, worried version of myself that spent her entire life poised at the starting line, every muscle tensed, straining to hear the sound of the shot that would send her sprinting in panic as if her life depended on it. I spent most of my life believing I was the only one who hid her secret self from the world, that everyone else was as perfect and happy as
Excerpted from the book BETWEEN BREATHS: A MEMOIR OF
PANIC AND ADDICTION. Copyright 2016 by Elizabeth Vargas. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
they seemed to be. I know better now. Everyone has something that scares them. Everyone must make a choice at some point whether to be brave. Everyone has a story. Mine begins with a frightened little girl . . .
Excerpted from the book BETWEEN BREATHS: A MEMOIR OF
PANIC AND ADDICTION. Copyright 2016 by Elizabeth Vargas. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.