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At a sleepover before Valentine’s Day a friend threw for her daughter at their home, Broyles said she took unfamiliar sleeping medication and drank too much wine, causing her to blackout and hallucinate.
Twelve- and 13-year-old girls who attended the party and their parents have said Broyles vomited into a laundry hamper and allegedly acted in a “vile, cruel, and bigoted” way toward the young guests.
In her post on Thursday, she wrote that she had “checked myself into rehab a couple weeks ago and am already making dramatic progress.” She acknowledged she “hit rock bottom” after years of drinking to cope with anxiety. “I’ve gone the longest I’ve ever gone without a drink in more than a decade.”
Broyles described the fallout and media coverage of the slumber party incident — which also reportedly included swearing and ridiculing the girls she was chaperoning — as “the longest 9 days of my life.”
The anguish, Broyles said, led her to contemplate killing herself after absconding to a hotel room 1,300 miles from home to in search of “sanctuary away from sanctimonious ridicule.”
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“I don’t remember what all I drank before I sent a couple suicidal texts to close friends and sent a tweet out [now deleted] that said, ‘You guys win. I’ll just kill myself.’ I blacked out and woke up on a gurney.”
Broyles ended up in an emergency room, she said.
The former journalist also wrote on Medium about the pressures of her broadcast career and a previous unsuccessful run for office in Oklahoma as well as a decades-long struggle with her self-worth, severe anxiety, insomnia and — while she was in college — anorexia.
“Now’s the time to take on my own fight that I’ve been running from for 20 years: facing my mental health challenges head on,” she said of her decision to seek treatment. “I don’t know what the journey ahead for me looks like, but I’m grateful to be alive with a fighting spirit and keep my promise — I’m not done yet.”
Broyles said she decided speak about her experience in part to let others know there’s a way out of the cycle of drug and alcohol abuse to cope with mental health issues.
“I’m sharing this because I should’ve gotten help sooner, and if you’re suffering, please know, there is help,” she said. “Unfortunately, I had to hit rock bottom to realize it.”
source: people.com
