Luann de Lesseps made headlines last year when she was arrested in Miami shortly before Christmas, charged with disorderly intoxication, resisting arrest, battery on a police officer and more after a drunken altercation in which she reportedly kicked a cop.
Looking back at what happened, the 52-year-old “Real Housewives of New York City” star sees that awful experience marking a turning point in her life.
“It was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Countess Luann de Lesseps tells People in an exclusive new interview. “It was so embarrassing and shameful.”
However, landing behind bars also led her to a life-changing epiphany. “I couldn’t continue living the way I was living,” she admits. “The only place where I felt like I was going to be okay was rehab.”
As a result, she cancelled plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and instead checked herself into a facility to undergo treatment for alcohol addiction. “I needed to be surrounded by people who had the same issues I was having,” she explains. “Rehab was a godsend.”
According to de Lesseps, she had always been a social drinker, but her drinking escalated after her marriage to Tom D’Agostino Jr. ended after just seven months, to the point that she was downing a minimum of seven drinks a day.
“I would start with a martini and maybe have two martinis and then get into the wine at dinner,” she says. “Then I’d have a little bit of vodka soda before going out.”
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Eventually, she admits, alcohol had stopped numbing the pain, bringing her into a Catch-22 situation in which the more she drank, the worse she felt. “I would have the hair-of-the-dog drink the next day, and drink more, and it didn’t feel good,” she says. “Alcohol just stopped working for me.”
Since completing rehab, de Lesseps says she has transformed her life. Not only has she stop drinking, she’s also quit cigarettes while embracing yoga and meditation.
“I was so happy to come back to my work, to come back to my life,” she says of returning to the hit reality show. “The Housewives can be really bitchy sometimes, but when push comes to shove and you’re down and you need to be picked up, the ladies were right there for me.”
While she says she hasn’t been tempted to fall off the wagon, she’s taking things on a day-by-day basis. “Everybody around me says, ‘Luann, you’re not an alcoholic.’ I don’t know if I am or not. All I know is not drinking works for me right now. Will I drink again? I don’t know. I miss good red wine. Not to say that I’ll never have good red wine again. Who know where we’ll all be tomorrow. For today, that’s the choice that I’m making for myself.”
You can read more of her interview in the latest issue of People, which hits newsstands on Friday, April 6.
The new season of “The Real Housewives of New York City” premieres Wednesday, April 4, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Slice.
