Why Chrissy Teigen’s gone teetotal
Model Chrissy Teigen has opened up about her battle with booze
IT’S not an unusual sight to see them on the kind of holiday lesser mortals can only dream about. They’re celebrities, they’re rich, they have money to splurge and time to indulge. And Chrissy Teigen and John Legend seemed to be having the time of their lives on a yacht off the coast of Corsica in the Mediterranean recently, dipping in the ocean, hosing off the saltwater and cuddling on deck while the golden sun shone down on them.
But there was something missing from Chrissy’s getaway this time: booze. The 31-year-old model and presenter of reality TV show Lip Sync Battle has given up the vice after realising she was starting to develop a problem with alcohol.
She made the shift on a previous holiday – in Bali – because she was “point-blank just drinking too much”.
It’s one of the reasons she’s such an over-sharer, she says. Exposing a little too much of her down-there hair (or lack of it) on the red carpet, dozing off at the Oscars, telling reporters she and John had sex at a campaign event for Barack Obama, joking she’d had plastic surgery – these are some of the confessions and escapades the leggy mom of one has become famous for.
But Chrissy says she’s turned her life around. She still has a naughty streak, so fans will still be able to have a good giggle at her gaffes – but all in all she’s a changed person, she says. Abstaining from alcohol is really wonderful, she says. “I don’t miss it. In Bali I’d wake up feeling amazing. My skin felt amazing. I was just so happy.”
It was easy in her profession to drink a lot. “I got used to being in hair and make-up and having a glass of wine,” she says. “Then that glass of wine would carry over into me having one before the awards show. And then a bunch at the awards show.
“And then I felt bad for making kind of an ass of myself in front of people I really respected. You feel horrible. It’s not a good look for me – or for anybody.”
There’s another reason Chrissy is laying off the booze: she and John (38) are hoping to have another child soon.
John and Chrissy are parents to oneyear-old daughter Luna, who was conceived via IVF, and the couple will be going the same route again.
“We’re going to try to have a child,” Chrissy says. “We’re going to have to do something super-hard, which is the IVF process, all over again.”
The star has also been open about struggling with postpartum depression after Luna’s birth. And this, she admits, combined with a family history of alcoholism, worsened her drinking problem.
“I’m the type of person who can’t just have one drink,” she says. “And I became concerned about where all of this was headed.”
Nobody told her she should stop drinking, she adds, or even hinted she might be imbibing too much.
“They just assumed it was okay because I always felt okay the next morning. I knew in my heart it wasn’t right.
“People think it’s cutesy and fun to go on these boozy brunches – but there’s more to it.”
She got to the stage where she was drinking almost every day and enough was enough, she told herself.
‘I felt bad for making kind of an ass of myself’
CHRISSY is hardly alone in the boozy brunch and drunken night out department.
A recent study shows the number of women who drink has been steadily on the rise for the past 60 years – and women under the age of 35 might now be drinking as much as, if not more than, their male peers.
South African women are the heaviest binge drinkers on the African continent, a study by the World Health Organisation showed. As many of 41,2% of South African women confessed to being binge drinkers.
“A binge is an episode of drinking during which time there’s a loss of control with regard to amount and extent,” explains Michael Niss, a Johannesburg psychologist specialising in alcohol abuse. “It usually ends with a blackout.”
In her book, Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, Canadian author Ann Dowsett Johnston – who lived in SA for a time during her childhood – explains why she believes young women are drinking at a more intense rate. “They’re doing it because they can,” she says. “There’s a sense of entitlement: if a man can drink, so can they. And as they go toe to toe in the workplace with men and outnumber them in tertiary enrolment, there’s a sense of privilege that comes with drinking.”
Many women race home from a busy day at the office, shoulders tense, with dinner to prepare – and the easiest, fastest way to unwind is by pouring themselves a quick glass of wine.
“I’d argue that this is so common that wine is now seen not as a drug but as a food,” she says.
Sandra Pretorius, director of Sanca Horizon, an alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre in Boksburg, Gauteng, agrees the push for gender equality is a major contributing factor.
“Women are dealing with the daily stress of competing with men in a corporate environment, coming home to their children, and then also believing that if they work hard, they need to party hard.”
THE media and marketing industries’ focus on alcohol has made women “equate boozing with fun and being the life of the party”, Dowsett Johnston says. She slates the mid-90’s feminisation of the alcohol industry where alcopops ( fizzy spirit coolers), “Mommy Juice” (a brand of wine) and flavoured vodkas became all the rage.
“If you believe the ads, alcohol smooths the way to romance, great friendships and adventure,” she adds. “No one plays it forward to the runny mascara, blackouts and more. Movies, TV, ads – they all contribute to this idea.”
But the experts agree that perhaps the biggest problem with women thinking they can drink men under the table is the fact that physiologically they can’t.
“Women metabolise alcohol differently to men,” Niss explains. “One reason is they have a smaller volume of water in their bodies so there’s less water to dilute the alcohol.
“They also don’t need to drink as much as men before developing health problems.”
Pretorius says women who drink too much are also prone to heart disease, cancer, liver disease and the loss of mental function.
Unlike Chrissy, many women in South Africa don’t feel they can speak up about their alcohol consumption. “There’s a fear of the stigma involved,” Pretorius says. “They’re also bound by responsibilities towards children or families, and things like losing employment.”
But she adds it’s vital to address the problem.
“Bear in mind that alcohol is a mood-altering and addictive substance and when abused it changes how you feel, think and do things. It’s important to try to figure out the reasons you’re drinking more often and trying so hard to escape your reality.” S