Looking through Alysia Magen’s Instagram page, you’d think the model and content creator lived a perfect, idyllic life.
But behind closed doors, she spent years “barely functioning” and battling alcoholism.
Magen, a US Air Force veteran, shares sultry snaps with her 1.5 million followers. In contrast to the façade she’d carefully built, however, the creator was drinking up to “10 bottles of wine a day” — and was killing himself because of it.
“I didn’t know I was an alcoholic, I thought it was just something to manage anxiety,” the 33-year-old told Jam Press, admitting that she drank “from morning until night” as a coping mechanism for reportedly being physically , emotionally and financially abused by ex-partners.
“I would wake up in the morning shaking from withdrawal,” Magen continued. “At the time I thought that was a panic attack and I would start drinking shooters (spirits) as soon as I woke up.”
According to Magen, she began drinking when she was in the military, with her alcoholism getting worse after she was allegedly demoted for posting a sexy snap of herself on Instagram, alongside one of her in military uniform.
The model — who is now six months sober — said her peers ostracized her as a result, and she spent her last six months in the military in “painful isolation” before she was released from the armed forces in 2017, according to Jam Press.
Magen then fully dedicated himself to social media full-time and fell into a party scene that involved a lot of partying and copious amounts of alcohol.
However, things reached an all-time low when she started taking cocaine and opioids and eventually overdosed and was rushed to a hospital. However, that still wasn’t the turning point the model needed, admitting she had “lost all interest in life.”
“The doctors said if I had been 10 seconds later, I would have died,” she recalled. “I was literally seconds from death but I didn’t care.
“Dealing with all that pain and trauma makes you want to get high to numb the pain,” she continued. “I wanted to get help but when you have negative people in your life, they always try to drag you down.”
In March 2020, Magen decided she had to do something and said she spent $10,000 on a rebab facility to help her recover, work on her sobriety and leave her partner.
However, it was a celebrity encounter with Blac Chyna — who asked Magen to fight her in a celebrity boxing match in June — that set her on a road to recovery. She credited her training with keeping “on the road to recovery.”
“I’ve been reborn in six months,” she gushed before admitting that she previously didn’t think she needed help.
“I’d been in the military and had this attitude like, ‘Nothing affects me,’” she admitted. “But it did and I needed the support, which I eventually got.”
Now that she’s accepted recovery, Magen is urging others to get help when they need it.
“I did not go through all of those things to keep the story inside,” she said. “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,” she added. “I said, ‘I can’t do this on my own but I can do it with help.’”