Between Breaths by Elizabeth Vargas

Author:Elizabeth Vargas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

I went on to spend the next two years on a campaign of mostly controlled drinking, sprinkled with bouts of sobriety and a handful of terrifying binges. The biggest problem was that I still did not believe I was an alcoholic. I was deeply steeped in denial. I have a drinking problem, I thought. I sometimes drink too much. But I am not an alcoholic. It’s so crazy that as I write it, I can’t believe I thought that. But I did, and that kept me from ever seeking help or advice from the very people who knew best how to deal with it: other alcoholics.

Instead, I lived with my secret. I kept doing my job—usually to everyone’s satisfaction. I was leading a double life: one as a network news anchor, traveling the world, reporting stories, in front of an intense and unforgiving television camera lens; the other as a woman who was sneaking drinks and hiding it from her husband and her friends. I would be able to string together a few days, sometimes a few weeks, without drinking, and then one night, the thought would pop into my head that it sure would be nice to have a glass of wine before going home from the office. Next thing you know, I was off to the races—perched on a tall stool in an elegant bar, ordering a drink. But try as I might to recapture the amber glow of sipping chardonnay, secret drinking wasn’t quite as nice. What used to be luxurious now felt faintly pathetic. I worried that people would notice me sitting and imbibing alone, so I would pretend to be waiting for someone, even feigning a phone call from my phantom friend. “Oh that’s all right,” I would say gaily into the dead cell phone pressed to my ear. “I just sat down. Take your time. I will meet you there!” I would also take great care to vary the places I went, fearful I would see someone I knew or that the bartender would notice I had been there a few too many times and tip off the gossip columns. WHAT NETWORK NEWS ANCHOR DRINKS ALONE EVERY NIGHT BEFORE HEADING HOME TO HER FAMILY? The possible headlines made me shudder. But what is astonishing is that the fear of being exposed didn’t make me stop. It reminds me of something I read in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous: “However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where alcohol has been involved we have been strangely insane.” Instead, I would usually order a second glass, check to make sure I had some breath mints, and then head home… my self-imposed isolation growing, along with my lies. My sister tells me it was around this time that I began to disappear from their lives. My secret life—my drinking, my anxiety, my unhappiness, my insecurity—wrapped me up tight. I was caught in a straitjacket of my own making. I did not tell anyone what I was feeling.

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