Between Breaths: a Memoir of Panic and Addiction, Elizabeth Vargas

Elizabeth Vargas’s book, Between Breaths: a Memoir of Panic and Addiction, filled me with understanding and empathy more than other addiction books I’ve read. It may have been because her media career represents my childhood dream. She lived and loved her television anchor life and takes readers along to experience the ride.

Yet she still struggled with addiction; she shares that experience with readers as well.

Her lifelong battle with anxiety triggered her repeated alcohol abuse. We learn she carried paralyzing anxiety from her childhood into adulthood, despite efforts to manage and hide it, even during on-screen episodes anchoring ABC’s World News Tonight and 20/20.

Her writing is relatable and reassuring when she reveals the same vulnerabilities that are common to the human experience, despite her highly successful life. At one point, near the end of her twelve-year marriage to Marc Cohn, she describes her escape, her dependency on alcohol this way: “The fragile happiness we once enjoyed began to crumble. And into the lonely void, I poured a glass of chardonnay.”

Once the addiction gripped her, despite hiding and pretending she could function and have a normal life, she, too, had to surrender to recovery, more than once. Her fantasy life dissolved under her lies and pretenses. Just like any every day, average addict. Her notoriety couldn’t save her. Addiction is a leveler in that way, no one is safe from its claws.

Maybe that’s why I valued Elizabeth’s story—there’s comfort in that truth.