If you're wondering why you haven't seen Elizabeth Vargas on ABC News as of late, it's because she recently completed treatment for a long-standing (and mostly private) battle with alcoholism.

In an interview with George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, which aired yesterday, Vargas opened up for the first time about her battle with the bottle. She first started drinking slowly, but then began drinking so much that she had to start making excuses for it. "I started thinking, 'Well, you know, I'll only drink, you know, on weekends,"' she recalled. "'I'll only drink, you know, two glasses of wine a night. I won't drink on nights before I have to get up and do "Good Morning America."' But those deals never work."

Then, she started noticing that her drinking affected everyone around her, including her husband (Walking in Memphis singer Marc Cohn) and her two children. "'You have a problem. You're an alcoholic,'" she recalled her husband saying to her, adding that "it made me really angry, really angry. But he was right." She then started noticing that her children were noticing the change in her behavior as well. "At night I -- that was a ritual," she said. "I should've realized it was a problem way back when Zachary, my oldest son, was born. And he used to call my nightly glass of wine 'mommy's juice.' You know, and I thought that was hysterical. It didn't occur to me that that was a problem."

She finally realized that she had a problem when she showed up to an interview for 20/20 and realized she was "in no shape" to do the interview that day. It was right then and there that she realized that she needed to get help. "I mean, denial is huge for any alcoholic, especially for a functioning alcoholic, because I, you know, I'm not living under a bridge. I haven't been arrested," she said. "I felt like I had to be perfect, which is ridiculous. Nobody's perfect."

Check out the video interview with Elizabeth below. What are your thoughts on this? Leave them in the comments section below!


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