Elle Macpherson is coming clean about getting clean.
The 60-year-old Australian supermodel opens up about her alcohol problem, including how she regularly downed vodka and champagne alone, got black-out drunk and once even smashed a bottle of vodka open to drink from it.
“My life looked amazing to everybody. On the outside I was doing a beautiful job but, deep down inside, I was really struggling,” she writes in her new book, “elle: Life, Lessons & Learning to Trust Yourself” (BenBella Books, out now),
She describes how after the birth of son, Cy, at a London hospital in 2003, she was gifted a bottle of champagne, but warned by her two naturopaths not to drink it so soon after birth as her hormones would “be all over the place.”
“Of course not,” Macpherson told the medical helpers, whom she was close with.
However “after they left and I was alone with Cy in my arms, all I could think about was that bottle of champagne in the ice bucket.”
Macpherson rose to fame in the 80s and 90s with her wholesome Aussie beauty and athletic physique, which earned her the nickname “The Body.” She graced the cover of the “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue” a record five times, and also had an acting career.
But, behind her perfect figure and toothy smile, she was struggling, and things came to a head after she became a mother.
She had her first child, Flynn, in 1998 with her then-partner French financier Arpad “Arki” Busson, 61, and settled in London.
Baby Flynn was very sick and was in and out of the hospital. Arki was often away during the week leaving Macpherson alone with an ill child and her anxiety.
“In the evenings, after I put him to bed, I’d find myself relaxing with a vodka,” she later recalls in an AA meeting.
At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, she was part of the closing ceremony but missed her cue after imbibing beforehand.
“I had drunk enough champagne or vodka to calm my nerves that it had disoriented me,” she writes.
Around that time, she considered going to rehab but Arki told her she was fine.
“I think he was afraid,” she writes. “He didn’t want me to be away from him and I think he was also afraid of change.”
After coming home from the hospital with Cy, Macpherson got pneumonia and was sick for a month. As soon as she was better, she started working and going out again, desperate to show herself and — her sons’ father — that she hadn’t lost herself to motherhood.
“I loved spending time with Arki and … I wanted to prove to him I would be his partner in fun and business while being the mother of his sons,” she writes. “I would go out and drink, party and become sick again. It became a constant repeat: I was in a horrible downward spiral.”
Later, in an AA meeting, she recalls “I found myself having blackouts … I would be talking to somebody and then I would forget what I was saying. They would look at my quizzically as if waiting for me to continue.”
She also drank at home, alone, fueled by both anxiety and a need to maintain a perfect image.
“Often I would drink after I put my children to bed. I would sit down by myself and have shots of vodka and then I’d write to-do lists and letters to my family. I would do he housework, listen to music until around 11 p.m., then go to bed and pass out. I would get up in the morning, run six miles and have a coffee for breakfast,” she writes of an AA confession, adding. “I would sick my fingers down my throat and make sure I vomited three times before I went to sleep. It was always three times.”
Still, she kept up appearance.
“People would tell me I was so organized. I was really proud of hat. I guess I had to be organized because I was drinking and I never wanted anyone to know,” she writes. “So I made sure the house was clean and tidy; I made sure I looked great and I made sure the children were perfect.”
But those closest to her knew something was wrong.
Her naturopaths told her she was harming herself so much they wouldn’t be able to keep working with her, and her therapist suggested rehab.
Before she went to rehab, though, she wanted to summer in Ibiza with her family. Her therapist cautioned against it, but she didn’t heed her advice.
The first few weeks on the Spanish island, Macpherson managed not to drink. But then one night, everyone was going out to the trendy Space nightclub and she was upset not to be able to join Arki and their friends.
So, after the kids were in bed, she tried to open a bottle of vodka. She struggled to open it and got so desperate she smashed the glass top off.
“I hurriedly poured myself a shot that could have been littered with shards of glass. And I drank it,” she later recalls in AA. “I remember thinking, I love this feeling. I’d missed it, sooooo much.”
After three drinks, she had a moment of clarity and was furious with herself. She poured out the rest of the vodka and got a flight back to London while her family remained in Ibiza.
“My youngest son was only six months old and my eldest was five and a half,” she recalls.
The Ibiza trip isn’t the only way rehab was different for the supermodel. She fretted over what clothes to pack after being advised that clothing can’t be tight or revealing because there are sex addicts at the rehab center.
“I had no clothes that were appropriate and I wanted to look cool in rehab,” she writes with a humorous tone.
Once at the facility in Arizona, she was “humiliated and angry” to be grouped with the anorexics — and have her eating overseen by a nutritionist and her working out limited — because she’s thin. Ultimately, though, she said the rehab was right to classify her as such.
“I was somewhat controlling what I was eating, thinking I had to for my work,” she writes.
In rehab, the supermodel also frets about being recognized and goes by “Mac”. Later, she has a sponsor, an older Canadian woman, who only ever knows her as Mac.
“I don’t think she [ever] knew my real name,” writes MacPherson of the woman, who has since passed away.
Her relationship with Arki lasted a couple years after she got out of rehab, but ultimately didn’t survive her sobriety.
A painful split and custody battles followed, but they’ve friendly now. Arki has been supportive as Macpherson has battled breast cancer and opted to forego traditional medical treatment.
“Every day I actively, deliberately feed my wellness and nurture myself,” she writes. “Cancer is not an option for me any more. Like drinking is not an answer for me.”