I Hid My Alcohol Addiction Behind Modeling And Traveling

Nothing’s Off the Table with Louis Ruggiero

In this raw and vulnerable episode, Sophie Sumner joins Louis Ruggiero to discuss her six-year journey of sobriety from alcohol. The convers

Key takeaways

Sophie's sobriety was triggered by a Meisner acting class assignment where she had to read a vulnerable letter about her struggles.
The modeling industry often fosters deep insecurity, with Sophie noting that 'my worst moments looked like my best moments online.'

Main topics

Alcohol addiction recovery
Modeling industry pressures

Notable quotes

My worst moments looked like my best moments online.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a powerful testament to the possibility of rebui

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) you Speaker 1 (0:04) We are back. Another episode. Nothing's off the table. Sophie Sumner in the house. Thank you so much for coming. Speaker 2 (0:12) Nothing's off the table. Speaker 1 (0:14) Are you ready? Speaker 2 (0:15) I don't know. Are you ready? Sure. Sure. Why not? Speaker 1 (0:19) All right. So Sophie just hit six years of continuous sobriety. Congrats. Happy belated June 23rd. June Speaker 2 (0:28) 23rd. Baby summer baby. Speaker 1 (0:29) Baby. Yep. It's a good time. It wasn't always rainbows and fairy tales though. Speaker 2 (0:37) No, not always unicorns. Speaker 1 (0:40) We get right to it. We dive right in. We don't beat around the bush. Speaker 2 (0:44) Okay. Speaker 1 (0:46) You ready? May I ask how Speaker 2 (0:47) long you've got? Speaker 1 (0:48) I'll have four years in January. Yeah. Yeah. For like three and a half years now. That's Speaker 2 (0:55) amazing. Congrats. Speaker 1 (0:56) Thank you so much. Whenever Speaker 2 (0:57) anybody tells me how long they get, I get quite emotional about it. no matter how long, whether they say like 40 years or a couple of days, I always, I just feel this connection instantly that I think. Speaker 1 (1:06) You know what? I do too because it took me 10 years to get one year. Speaker 2 (1:12) Like Speaker 1 (1:12) I really tried really hard to not be an alcoholic. And then once I finally accepted like I'm an alcoholic, my life got really good actually. Speaker 2 (1:21) It's Speaker 1 (1:21) like this weird paradox. But that's some of the hope that. I think you'll be able to give the viewers today. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:31) But Speaker 1 (1:31) before we get into the good stuff. Speaker 1 (1:35) We started off with a bang. You ready? Speaker 2 (1:38) I'm ready. Tell Speaker 1 (1:39) us about your last day drinking. Speaker 2 (1:40) Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh. My last day drinking. Do you know, I've never done this, but I have a photo. which is really bizarre. I haven't thought about this for a long time. So it was, if anything, just another day I had woken up, hungover. I was rummaging around in my kitchen to see what was possibly there. It could be anything. It's normally, it was wine towards the end, which is just bizarre because I would have to drink a lot of wine to get drunk. And ultimately I was like drinking to pass out, but that's another story. And so I, and I, I think I had, I'd had a photo shoot the day before or something. And then that day I had an event and I remember just going through the motions and I was like looking in the mirror, like I'd done a hundred times before. And I was looking at myself dead in the eye and I was like, just stop, just don't drink today. And I'd done that a million times before where I was like, just, just why can't you just not do this? Like so angry. And this girl staring back at me just had like a puffy face, a red face, her eyes were watering. And it was like, you're the soul. I mean, that sounds very dramatic, but seriously, it was like the light was going off. The lights were really dim inside, no matter how hard I was trying to be sparkly. And I went to this event and then I had a, this is so bizarre, I had an acting class. And at the acting class, they made you read out a story that you hadn't. told anyone. So for anyone out there, it's called Meisner and you basically have to read a letter and tell people something you haven't told anyone. And I wrote this story to my parents, this letter, and it was like, I'm just the daughter you don't want. And it was real sad. Speaker 1 (3:18) It was a Speaker 2 (3:18) real, real depressingly sad. And I literally wrote in this letter, I don't know what's going on, but it's not alcohol. I could never give up alcohol. I know that's not the problem. It was like my brain couldn't. think that I was an alcoholic because I could never give up alcohol. And so in this acting class, I was meant to read this letter out in a week, right? That was the assignment. You got it and then you read it out the next week. And it had been four months of me just putting this thing off. And eventually the teacher was like, this is crazy. Read it out. And I read it out. That night got blackout drunk. And then the next day was the day that I woke up and things were just... kind of weird. I went to the, yeah, that must've been my last night drinking. Sorry. It was six years ago. But the last night was I read that to a class. I pretended like I was fine. I was like, this is something that happened years ago. I'm fine guys. And I went out that night and I got blackout drunk. And the next morning I woke up and I was like, I need help. And I don't know whether doing that assignment and saying something out loud triggered something. And I was, I rung a friend that I, Speaker 2 (4:31) I wasn't an alcoholic. It was a friend that had told me he was like a sex addict years ago. And I just rung him and I was like, I need help. And that was the first time I'd asked for help. I don't know why it was that night. I don't know what gave me the courage to go to an acting class when I was drinking every night. And towards the end of a lot of people's drinkings, that's truly rock bottom and really, really hard. And I don't know why. And so he put me... He put me in contact with someone who put me in contact with someone. And the next day I was at someone's house. And so the journey kind of began. But for some reason that morning I took a picture that I... One day I'll share it. It's just... And I still have obviously the photo and I look back and this girl just... I just look broken. Just so sad. But yeah, I guess it was just bizarre. It's like a... magic moment how that stopped because I'd never been able to stop before. Speaker 1 (5:31) I'm going to go out on a whim here and say you're from England somewhere. Tell us about your first drink and kind of your upbringing and how drinking got introduced. And no one likes to. No one thinks they're gonna grow up and say you know what Sophie when I grow up I want to be an Speaker 2 (5:51) alcoholic. Right? Speaker 1 (5:51) That's what I want to be. I Speaker 2 (5:53) know. How Speaker 1 (5:53) did it happen? Speaker 2 (5:54) I didn't even know what alcoholic was. I didn't know like we didn't have Back in my day, we didn't have a cool podcast like this where people could describe what they were going through You know, I had no idea existed an alcoholic to me, I learned in my 20s, I thought was an old rock star like Keith Richards. I don't know. I had no idea. So I had a very lovely upbringing in Oxford. I was in the countryside in England. Parents had wine at night, but not really. Nobody around me was kind of drinking. I had a very, very happy household. This is going to sound like a Julie Andrews movie where everyone starts singing. Speaker 2 (6:32) ducks and chickens and a little pony. And we had dogs and rabbits. And I was really lucky. I went to a very precious school. I was good. And the first drink I had was with a girl called Hannah. Oh, Hannah. And we must've been like 13. And maybe Hannah had older sisters, but we were at my house. And for some reason, I think we asked my parents to get us a drink. And we got WKDs, which were these awful Speaker 2 (7:02) sugary Alka Pops and they were blue. And I remember we just drunk all of these WKDs. And then I was like, bearing in mind, I Speaker 1 (7:08) have Speaker 2 (7:08) no idea what Hannah was doing at this moment, but I was like, what's next? Like, what else can I kind of, and we went into my parents' liquor cabinet. I don't know, really, it was a shelf. And it just sounds a bit more bougie if you say cabinet, but we went on the shelf and I found like some port and just rogue drinks that they, cause they didn't really drink. They would just have wine with dinner. And then we And then I drunk all this port and all this stuff. And then Hannah threw up in the spare bedroom. And I remember being like 13 and drunk and trying to clear up this like bright red, blue. Hannah vomit. And all I can remember is I can still smell. I just went and got an air freshener because I was like, my parents can't find out. I mean, of course they were going to find out there was a huge stain on Speaker 1 (7:53) the floor, but I was like, nobody will know Speaker 2 (7:55) about this. And I sprayed all this like a Febreze. And to this day, if I smell that Febreze, I gag. Speaker 1 (8:04) I Speaker 2 (8:04) can't take it. So yeah, that was the first time drinking. I don't think I threw up, but I... And I don't remember it being enlightening. I don't remember it being, you know, a lot of people like, I had my first drink and I was like, oh my gosh, I found freedom. No, I was just young and we just drunk. But I definitely, even then I kept on, you know what I mean? That first time. But maybe that's common. I don't know. Speaker 1 (8:29) Real quick. You guys know my story. I was suicidal with a 10 month old child at home and nearly a million dollars in debt. Want to know the one thing I learned the hard way? Gambling addiction is not the same as drug or alcohol addiction. You can't just throw a gambler into a regular rehab and replace the word alcohol or drugs with gambling. That's why I partnered with Algamus. They're the oldest privately funded gambling specific inpatient treatment center in the country. They've been doing this and only this for over 30 years. It's a real home out in Arizona. It's a small program and the majority of the staff there are also in recovery from gambling. They get it. If you're where I was or you love somebody who is, call 1-888-NO-WAGER. That's 1-888-669-2437. One call is all it takes to start your journey in recovery. I feel like a lot of people... Their experience with drinking the first time is is either similar to yours where it's like it was great It was cool. It wasn't like oh I need to do this again or it was like wow that was the best thing ever I want to feel like this every day for the rest of my life, which wasn't my experience with drinking It was my experience with drugs. Mm Speaker 2 (9:42) -hmm, but Speaker 1 (9:42) with drinking I was kind of like man Speaker 1 (9:47) I'd love to kind of hear about the progression and how it went from innocent little Sophie to... Speaker 1 (9:57) Alcoholics, Sophie. Speaker 2 (9:58) Me too. I'd like to figure that one out. So I think there's definitely an age. I got to like 15, 16 and I moved schools and I'd been very sporty. Like this is... my flex, but no Americans have heard of it and it's so depressing. But there's a sport called netball. Have you heard of netball? Has anyone in here heard of netball? No, never. See, it's so annoying. So I was very good at this sport called netball that's big in every country but America. And I was playing for like South of England. I was doing it every night. But then I moved. I moved schools and went to the, I went from a private school to the local school. And I just kind of like stopped. I was big in tennis. I played tennis for Oxford and I just kind of like stopped with the sport as much. And I don't know if that was moving schools, but I also think like boys were introduced and we were going out and we were going to the skate park to watch the boys skate and we were going to house parties and life just really started, I guess, at like 15, more of the outside life. And I didn't have the mental like obsession to. carry on with sports. So it naturally flooded into partying. And then a friend of mine, long story short, basically sent off my photo to a modeling competition. And I went through at 17, this thing for Britain's Next Top Model, which was a show in the UK. And I didn't get on, but they were like, you must come back next year. So then I was introduced to this world of modeling. And when I was 15, I signed to an agency in London. And I'd been the gawky kid. And then suddenly, anyway, this has got nothing to do with drinking, but just a bit of backstory for you guys. But I do remember that I had a photo shoot at 17 years old and it was a big one and I had to get to London. And I went to a friend's house party and I got really drunk and I woke up and I was a mess. And I had to figure out how to get from Oxford to London, which is kind of far when you're that young. And somehow I did it and somehow, whatever. And I turned up and the photographer looked at me and was like, you're not the model, are you? was disgusted because I hadn't really slept and I was hungover. I think about that now and I was like, God, if I really cared about that, if I cared about something more than drinking, you wouldn't have done it. It was one of my first big photo shoots. I wouldn't have gone to a house party and stayed up all night. I never forgot that. I never forgot him saying that to me and my whole modeling career. I had huge imposter syndrome. and never thought that I was a model, never said it out loud. And that was a lot tied in with my drinking and self-esteem that I can get to kind of later. But I, so I then, when after I did the show, Britain's Next Top Model, I got on, I was 18. I started dating this really cute guy in a band. And like Kate Moss was big at that time with Pete Doherty. And I was like, I'm like Kate Moss and Pete Doherty. And I signed to her agency and I was like, this is so cool. And he was the lead singer of a band and I was in his music video, you know. And our friend owned a pub and we were there all the time and we just drunk, but like everyone drunk and it was fun. And the pub called me Trouble on Bubble. And for my 21st, he got me a champagne bucket with Trouble on Bubble inscribed on it. You know, drinking was so much part of our life and our social life and modeling and our