Aurora Starchild
Instagram model Alysia Magen says she used to drink nearly 10 bottles of wine a day before becoming sober. Her drinking problem began when she was in the military as a way to mask the pain of abusive relationships.
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Alysia Magen Turned to Substances to Numb Her Emotions After Being Abused
Alysia Magen is an Air Force veteran and fitness model. She seems to live the quintessential perfect influencer life. But the reality is much different. Magen is a recovering alcoholic who wouldn’t even stop after being 10 seconds away from death. Now, she wants to spread awareness of substance abuse and the importance of asking for help.
Magen says that she turned to alcohol to numb the pain she was feeling from previous abuse she’d experienced. One of those abuses was when she was raped as a senior in high school, tragically losing her virginity.
“I was young, so I kind of took all of it on myself,” Magen told the No Jumper podcast. “Like, I was young, so I was drinking. He was sober. But everyone knew I was a virgin. And it was the brother of a friend.” She added that she’s toughened up from the experience and still has issues opening up to men.
Out of high school, Magen went to college, where her parents paid for her own townhome. But she said that college felt like it was taking forever, and her inability to pay her parents the $300 a month they requested made her feel like she needed to learn how to take care of herself. So, she enlisted in the Air Force in 2009.
An Air Force Demotion Led to More Drinking, Drug Abuse
But in the Air Force, Magen found a new source of trouble. As a bodybuilder, she often posted somewhat revealing photos of herself on Instagram. And after years of doing so, she eventually got in some trouble. Facing ostracization from her peers and an isolating demotion from the military, she turned to alcohol. Magen left soon after, just turning to social media influencing. And her alcoholism got so bad, she would wake up and start drinking shooters of hard alcohol.
“I didn’t know I was an alcoholic, I thought it was just something to manage anxiety,” the veteran told Jam Press (via New York Post). “I would wake up in the morning shaking from withdrawal,” she added.
The social media influencing scene came with a lot of drugs and partying, making Alysia Magen’s substance abuse problems worse. She eventually got into cocaine and opioids. After an overdose, she was rushed to the hospital, where she was told that, if she’d arrived 10 seconds later, she’d have died.
“I was literally seconds from death, but I didn’t care,” she said. “Dealing with all that pain and trauma makes you want to get high to numb the pain. I wanted to get help but when you have negative people in your life, they always try to drag you down.”
Blac Chyna and Rehab Helped Magen Recover
Finally, Magen invested $10,000 into a rehab center. She wanted to get sober and free herself not just from the substances, but her addiction to an abusive partner. Soon after, Blac Chyna asked her to compete against her in a celebrity boxing match. Magen says that the dedication she put toward fitness helped her in her path to recovery.
“I’ve rebirthed in six months,” Magen said. “I didn’t think I needed help because I’d been in the military and had this attitude like ‘nothing affects me.’ But it did and I needed the support, which I eventually got.”
Alysia Magen now wants to inspire others who are afraid to ask for help.
“Now I have recovered, I want to spread the message that everyone should reach out for help if they need it,” she said. “I did not go through all of those things to keep the story inside. So, get the support and help you need because nobody deserves to be abused by the people who are supposed to love them. It changes the way you think about people. You have got to take responsibility and that’s what I did. I said, ‘I can’t do this on my own, but I can do it with help.’”
