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Elle Macpherson revealed that she used to secretly take shots of vodka after putting her sons to bed before her 2003 rehab stint.
The now-sober supermodel, 60, got candid about her past struggles with alcoholism while promoting her new memoir, “Elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself,” on the Carrie and Tommy radio show last week.
Macpherson explained that as an “Aussie,” drinking is “part of [the] culture,” which made it harder to “identify” that she had a problem.
“I was not messy at all. I was very organized in fact. I was a highly functioning, controlled drinker,” she said. “It took other people — people in health and wellness — to say to me, ‘Elle you’re not living life on life’s terms. You’re just numbing your feelings to get through the days.'”
“And I couldn’t really put two and two together because, for me, an alcoholic was somebody who was living on the streets or drinking in the morning and what I found is that any addiction … anything that we do over and over again that is self-damaging can be detrimental to us.”
Although Macpherson didn’t keep her addiction issues “hidden” at the time, she said most people didn’t know the extent of her alcoholism.
“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,” Macpherson said of her nightly drinking.
The model shares sons Flynn, now 26, and Cy, now 21, with ex-husband Arpad Busson.
In her book, Macpherson, who also has OCD, explained that she used to make herself throw up exactly three times every night after making herself sick from so much vodka.
“I used to think if I throw up I won’t have the alcohol in my system,” she added on the radio show. “How bonkers is that?”
The Australian native explained that her alcoholism and vomiting were her attempts to “control the outside world” so that she would “feel 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,” she said. “Nothing can fulfill you like inner peace.”
She continued, “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.”
After years of feeling “so uncomfortable inside [her]self,” the model went to rehab and later joined Alcoholics Anonymous.
“I was excited because 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,” she said of her first AA meeting.
“It’s not enough to know it in your brain, it’s how you implement that into your life,” she explained.
During the height of her alcoholism, Mcpherson said she felt “disconnected” from everyone and everything in her life — but AA changed that.
“Suddenly I was feeling connected,” she said. “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 drew back the curtain on several topics in her new memoir, which details everything from her early years in the modeling industry to her secret breast cancer battle.
In the book, out Nov. 19, Macpherson revealed she refused to undergo chemotherapy treatment after being diagnosed with cancer seven years ago.
The model decided to treat her condition using a “holistic approach” — despite over 30 doctors suggesting otherwise.
She is now in remission.
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