Elle Macpherson is opening up about her past struggles with alcohol.
The 60-year-old Australian supermodel, who has been sober since 2003, revealed in her upcoming memoir “Elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself” that she used to force herself to throw up from drinking vodka every night after putting her children to bed.
During an appearance on the “Carrie & Tommy” radio show last week, Macpherson said she didn’t try to conceal her addiction issues at the time.
“I didn’t keep it hidden, it was just a function of my life,” she said.
“The father of my children was living in another country and he was only home on the weekends. I was at home with the kids and that’s what I did,” added Macpherson, who shares sons Flynn, now 26, and Cy, now 21, with ex-husband Arpad Busson.
“I used to think if I throw up, I wouldn’t have the alcohol in my system,” Macpherson also said. “How bonkers is that?”
The “Friends” actress explained that her heavy drinking and vomiting were her attempts to “control the outside world so I would feel at peace inside.”
“And ultimately I realized there is nothing outside myself, no people, place or thing, no behavior or habit, that can replace the feeling of inner peace,” Macpherson noted. “Nothing can fulfill you like inner peace.”
She went on, “Trying to fix it all on the outside didn’t work. I tried that for a long time, and I was really good at it, until I started to realize that it was really about what was going on inside, and that if I wanted to address things, I had to look within to find why I was doing it and what I was hoping to achieve.”
The WellCo CEO also shared that she was “excited” when she went to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“I wanted to apply the things that I’d come into in rehab in real life, and that was sort of the craft or the mastery. It’s not enough to know it in your brain, it’s how you implement that into your life,” she explained.
“And also I felt quite disconnected. Disconnected from myself before I went, disconnected from other people, disconnected from my life. And suddenly I was feeling connected. AA is a wonderful community of connections. Sharing my story and feeling that I was in a group of people that understood was very uplifting.”
Macpherson previously opened up about her issues with alcohol last year in an interview with Body+Soul, as she marked 20 years of sobriety.
“Everybody has their own journey and I’m not interested in telling other people what to do but I know that this was a decision that I’ve never regretted,” she said.
“Although it required discipline and persistence, the bottom line is you can’t be well and present in your life if you’re not present and well, and alcohol doesn’t really support that,” Macpherson added. “It’s very difficult to get to know yourself if you’re numbing yourself.”
In her memoir, which comes out Nov. 19, Macpherson revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago, but now she’s in remission.
She said she refused to undergo chemotherapy treatment despite it being strongly recommended by 32 doctors. Instead, Macpherson took a “holistic approach” toward her diagnosis.
“Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she told Women’s Weekly last week. “But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder.”
