“I first started to wonder if I had an issue, so I read other people’s books, and they helped me enormously. It’s very scary to put it out there, but if I can help one person feel less alone, then I’m really happy about that,” explains Vargas.
She wrote her first book, Between Breaths A Memoir of Anxiety and Addiction, which will be available in September. Writing this memoir was no easy task, but it is something that really helped her through the process. “Partially therapeutic, at times painful, and yet also, at times, very liberating,” she says. “This was about admitting what I did, what I suffered with, and how I overcame it,” she says.
Vargas feels lucky and grateful that she had a network of family and friends that stood by her when she was going through this difficult time because many times people don’t have that support system. She checked into rehab for alcohol abuse in November 2013 and then went back less than a year later to be treated for alcohol dependency. She’s been through a lot during these last couple of years and we’re glad to hear she’s doing so much better and back at her job at 20/20.
There are many resources for alcohol abuse and anxiety, and a good place to find the help you need is at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). They have a variety of treatments and services that are effective in helping people with counseling, care management, medication, recovery support systems, and much more.
