ELIZABETH VARGAS: EPISODE

TRANSCRIPT:

Colleen: Welcome back to Hot Flashes and Cool Topics. We are thrilled to have Elizabeth Vargas on the show today. Welcome.

Elizabeth Vargas: Thank you. You have the coolest name for a podcast, I think, ever.

Colleen: Thank you. We get that a lot. Thank you.  But no, it kind of came to us and we were like, oh, okay, we like this.

Bridgett:  It came to Colleen. I must give her credit. She’s being generous there

Elizabeth Vargas:  Yay, Colleen.

Colleen:  Oh, thank you. You know, when I was getting ready for this interview and I was researching, you have been through, as a journalist, some of the most pivotal times in our recent history. And I’m curious how, what your feelings are now that the news has changed so much, that it’s social media, constant barrage of information, how difficult is it to be a journalist at this time in our history?

Elizabeth Vargas: Well, it’s not difficult to be a journalist per se. What’s difficult, I think, is the environment in which I find myself. We all find ourselves working. You know, we have social media and that means everybody thinks they know. And social media means everybody thinks they’re an expert. And, you know, and now with AI.

 people will say “I saw something online” and you know it’s fake so I think it’s more um for the audience, for the news consumer out there, there’s like this massive warning label, which is be careful, do your homework, ask questions, use critical thinking. Does that make sense that somebody would post that? Does this really look real? There have been real journalists, colleagues of mine who’ve been duped by deep fakes because they’re so good now and they’re just going to get better. You know, six months from now, it will be even more difficult to tell what’s fake from what’s real. So we have this environment in which people can instantaneously, reflexively post whatever’s on their mind, correct or incorrect, offensive or not, thoughtful or thoughtless. And it’s out there and it’s out there in the ether. And we’re seeing, you know, all sorts of real life. It impacts people. They suffer consequences of misinformation, the spreading of conspiracy theories fester.

You know, I wouldn’t say my job. You know, I’m trained as a journalist. I have a degree in journalism from the best school of journalism in the country. It’s a really great university where we were trained in the law and trained in the ethics and trained in, you know, in digging deep and how to search for records et cetera. I can go on and on and on. You know, we still use those skills. But right now.

My gosh, everybody, you know, I love this whole thing of citizen journalist. It’s like, OK, well, I don’t want to go see a citizen doctor if I think I have a, you know, a strange mole on my body. I want to go see the real doctor who went to school and knows what he or she is doing. So I would just caution that what needs to be out there for consumers of news is that just because somebody says something doesn’t mean it’s actually so. You have to go further and ask questions and dig deeper and not take everything at face value.

Bridgett: Right. And it could be so dangerous, too, because people are so reactionary.

Elizabeth Vargas: Super reactionary. Super reactionary. And right now, you know, we’re in a very fraught time. People have very inflamed passions and opinions on what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in this country, what’s happening in our government. And, you know, they just want to pop off and sound off.

It’s always a little more nuanced than people give it credit for.

Bridgett: Exactly. And, you know, when you were, I was, I read your book and I was reading about things that you were going through. And then when people, something that just shocked me actually was, how people would give other places like Page Six information about you. Things would get leaked about you or about people. Well, fake stuff. Exactly. Exactly.

How do you even deal with that? I mean, I know you said in your book how people would come to you and say, this is what we need to do. How can you deal with people sending fake stuff or even the fact that I don’t know your personal life, what you want to keep personal, then it’s just put out there to the world and you don’t really have control over that.

Elizabeth Vargas: Well, thankfully, my personal life is now boring, officially, according to my two sons. So nobody’s running to Page Six to leak salacious details. Listen, this business is a tough business. You put on your big girl pants before you wait in.

When I had stuff leaked about me, it was usually because there was somebody in my office who wanted to hurt me so they could progress. Well, I know that to be the fact. I had bosses who tried at some point, very hard to protect me and pull these people aside and say, you need to stop this campaign of…

you know, tearing her down because she’s now the anchor of the evening news and represents this network. And this is not good for this network. But, you know, it’s a sad reality of this business that that’s the way it works. And, you know, listen, I’m as competitive as anybody. I have never once in my entire life, it never has even occurred to me to pick up the phone and try and plant a nasty story about somebody, even when it’s true.

You know, it just doesn’t cross my mind. Like, oh, I can call. I wouldn’t even know who to call. But, yeah, that was done. You know, it’s a shame. And those people have to live with what they did, you know.

Colleen: Karma.

Elizabeth Vargas:  I’m a strong, very strong believer in karma and in the universe, you know, taking care of what needs to be taken care of.

Colleen: You started in this business young, right out of college, at a time where there were three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. And you kind of did a little bit with all three. You worked with all three. We can watch news 24-7, and I think a lot of people just get burned out on it. But how has your experience in the news changed over these periods as news has kind of opened up with so much streaming and cable and all that? How has that changed for you?

Elizabeth Vargas: Well, listen, when I started, you know, there was one way to get to the network. You’ve paid your dues on local news. That’s what I did. I spent, you know, six or seven years toiling away in local news and then went to the network, went national. That’s what I mean by that. And at that point, you’re right. You know, there was ABC, CBS and NBC. And I think CNN was just starting at that point.

Millions and millions and millions of viewers. When I anchored World News Tonight at ABC News, we had, I can’t remember, anywhere, like I would say, give or take six,

seven, eight million viewers a night. And, you know, now these Good Morning America had, when I was on Good Morning America, had five million viewers every morning. Now they’re lucky if they get, you know, two to three. It’s a slow…

death of the network news. And we’ve seen this incredible explosion. Like now we’ve got CNN, we’ve got Fox News, we have MSNBC, now they’re renaming themselves, so I don’t know what their new name is. But there’s all sorts of, we’ve got News Nation, the brand new cable news network that I work for. I think it’s great.

There’s nothing wrong with more news. There’s nothing wrong with more of a variety of ways to get your information. The problem is the echo chamber aspect. When you go only to the news site that is no longer just doing straight news, is engaging in editorializing and opinion. And even if it’s not overt, it’s subtle in the stories they choose to cover, in the people they choose to interview about said stories or about the news. I’m only getting the critical take on President Trump because I don’t want to give him any credit for what he might have done or vice versa.

So, you know, that’s the problem. Many of these cable news channels, especially. But, you know, networks are not, you know, it all filters through a person. The difference was I was trained, you know, coming up. And when I worked at ABC, when I worked at NBC, even at News Nation, we try very, very hard to make sure that we’re doing this.

And that’s our mission statement and news statements, news for all America, is that, you know, and the biggest compliment I get is when somebody says, I can’t tell what you think. And that’s great. You shouldn’t be able to tell what I think. There are many, many people working at cable news channels where you can tell what they think. And it’s not like it’s the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post that has an editorial page where people get to spout off on what they think with their name saying, you know, it’s on the editorial page. This is what I think. There’s supposed to be a difference. And too many times now in today’s news environment, we see that line is completely not just blurred, they run a map truck through it. So it’s really important as you watch um to use your critical thinking absolutely, oh does that make sense, wait a minute, this is you know especially with certain networks where you know all you get is anti-Trump. All you get is pro-Trump. There will never be somebody who’s critical of Trump on this network. There will never be somebody who says, you know what, that was actually a good idea on that network. So the problem is, is when everybody’s just going to their silo, there’s this big chasm in the middle and nobody meets and nobody understands that there’s actually much, much more that binds us. And that we share then divides us. And that’s the dangerous point I think we find ourselves in, this politics of division, and it affects everything. It’s not just politics. It’s what we think of culture. I don’t know. Sometimes it makes me sad that we seem to lose sight of what we all have in common and what we all share and focus instead on what we differ on.

I mean, and it, you know, the people watching it, it becomes this issue of where do I go? What do I trust? If we follow that echo chamber that what we want to hear, we want the answers. We want to know the answer to what we want to hear.

Bridgett: Right. Yes. I just want to hear somebody tell me who agrees with me. Somebody who will say I’m right.

Elizabeth Vargas:  And the problem also is that, you know, we think if you disagree with me, you’re a terrible person. Like what happened to just, you know, sometimes, of course, people disagree?

Colleen:  Agree to disagree.

Elizabeth: All the time. It’s fine to disagree. And if you have somebody in your life with whom you disagree, you don’t think that person is a degenerate loser.

You love them, you like them, you care for them and you disagree with them. You know, so I think when you don’t know people and now we’re in this whole cycle of, oh, if if they, you know, support Trump, there are, you know, horrible, horrible people. If they, you know, hate Trump or disagree with Trump, they’re horrible, horrible people. We call them names. Our leaders do that. So I just it’s a real.

I wish this wasn’t happening.

Colleen: Absolutely. We agree with that. And what is your experience with News Nation been like since you started? Because you’re on every night. I am. And you have autonomy when you’re on there to pick and choose kind of because you do stories and the news. So you have a little bit of both, which is kind of what you’ve always done. But what is that experience like?

Elizabeth Vargas: Well, first of all, doing a nightly show, I did that when I did World News Tonight.  I did that when I did Good Morning America. I was the host of 20/20. I replaced Barbara Walters when she left. And that was a weekly show. I loved doing that. So getting back into the daily grind was, you know, it’s huge, it’s a lot of work. But I feel really lucky to be working in this time.

I think this is a very rich news environment. I say that knowing exactly what I’m saying. It’s rich in many ways. Do I have complete autonomy? No, I don’t go in and tell everybody, “these are the stories we’re covering, and here’s who you’re going to book today while I do this.” But I have a lot of sway over that. I will say I…

“I think we should be doing this, or I don’t like the way we’re covering that, or why are we doing this story?” And of course, when it comes to actually doing the interviews, because it’s an interview-driven show, we very rarely have a package, what it’s called, like a report from a reporter that’s edited. Almost the entire show is live interviews. And those interviews are 100% me. I will…

ask the questions, you know, I will prepare, I will do homework. And then usually in my case, like, you know, I don’t know if you guys do this on your podcast, but somebody will say something and you’ll go, oh, well, that’s interesting. And I’ll follow that thread instead. And so, you know, I’ll spend all these hours preparing all these questions. And I would say, you know, two thirds of the time, I’m off on a different line of questioning because of something the guest said.

Colleen:  Yeah, definitely. That happens to us. We don’t have the time limits you do. So we have a little more time. You know, we don’t do that every single day. But so you’ve done some really remarkable stories.

Bridgett: I mean, the Elian Gonzalez, the White Woman Syndrome stories. And it’s kind of investigative. Is there one that you prefer? Do you just like them both?

Elizabeth Vargas:  I like them both.  First of all, I feel incredibly lucky as a woman to still be working in this business. Television news is very, very hard on women. Women are not allowed to age. Women are not allowed to go gray. The man gets gravitas because he’s gray and wrinkled and flabby. And women are like, you’re out.

You know, so I feel really lucky to still be working because I really love this. I really do. And you’re right. I’ve done everything from long form documentary work to breaking news live work. And I don’t have a favorite. I love it all. They’re very, very different. Long form documentary work. You do a very deep dive into a story. You live in it, you know, and I love that.

But, you know, there’s a rush to doing the live breaking news aspect, too. So I really love them both. They’re very different in many ways. But I do. I get a real kick out of both of them.

Colleen: I think you mentioned that you like ad-libbing. You would prefer to just do live without a script. Why is that?

Elizabeth Vargas: That’s part of why live interviews are so nice, because it is all ad-libbing. Now, in live television, I have an earpiece in my ear through which my producers or my director may speak to me and sometimes does, and they give me time cues, like two minutes, one minute wrap, as in time to shut up now.

I have a floor director. It is an open set, so people are milling about. So there is a lot to distract you on live television. So I never, I mean, yes, breaking news if something happens.

I’m trying to remember the last time that, you know, the breaking news thing happened, something very, very late. I think it was when James Comey was indicted. That happened literally minutes before I went on the air. And in that case, the entire show, we did a whole hour and that was all ad libbed. And, you know, then you’re relying on your all of the homework you’ve done, not just over many days, but weeks, months, years. To do smart interviews, our bookers got some great guests and so then you’re just ad-libbing you know the breaking news of what happened what the indictment says somebody handed me the indictment and it was half a page it was like, holy cow there’s nothing here, you know, what does this mean?  So that that was an entirely ad-libbed show, so usually most shows i would say are one-third scripted, like intros into the story itself, the background, the important pertinent information, and then the questions themselves. You know, given the fact that sometimes you’re distracted, I’ll have a question. I put a lot of work into my questions, I’ll be honest, I really do. I try to imagine what the viewer at home was wondering.

Like, you know, what did that mean? Why would that happen? Wait a minute. Is that legal? You know, what could happen if they did that to us?

Bridgett:  And, you know, you’ve addressed your anxiety issues. And when you were just describing all of those things coming in and the people walking around, I thought, oh, my anxiety would be through the roof watching all those pieces. How do you deal with that? Because you, I mean, you’re in such a high anxiety inducing career. How do you keep yourself not distracted when all of that is going on?

Elizabeth Vargas: You have to just focus like a laser beam. I don’t have to do this so much now, but like at some points in my career, I would like literally say focus to myself in my head. You know, if I start, if things started getting distracting.

You just have to focus like a laser beam. Just focus in on my guest and what they’re saying.

Colleen: It would seem that that comes from experience, too. You have been doing this for enough time to kind of be able to weed out, I would think, because when you were talking about it in your book, and you’ve been very honest about your anxiety and your panic attacks and when you were doing World News Tonight, you would grabthe desk and dig your ring into your hand. And now that I’ve seen that, I can’t unsee it because I watched the video and I’m like, she does do that. But no, the average person watching you would have never picked up on that. But you were having that moment of, okay, I have to do this. Like it was more panic before it started.

Elizabeth Vargas: Well, when I did World News Tonight, I was having a lot more issues with anxiety at that point than I am now. And after a while, night after night after night, you don’t feel it quite as much. I am still prone to anxiety. I think some people are just born that way. I have two sons. One of them is prone to anxiety. One of them is not. And because I gave birth to both of them, you know, how each came into the world a little differently that way. That doesn’t mean that the one who wasn’t prone to anxiety won’t also have moments of, you know, he hasn’t yet, but I’m sure he will be. Nobody gets through life without having moments of failure and stress and anxiety and worry. And, you know, that’s part of this great journey we’re all on. We all have hard things and the question always is, how do you handle that? How do you react to that? What do you?  I saw a quote from somebody and it said “the most important question is, what do you do next, after whatever happened you?”  So it’s “I cannot control everything in life that happens to me, what I can control is my next move.” And I think that’s really important too, you know, to understand. I love the Serenity Prayer, which is all about understanding and accepting what I can’t control, having the courage to deal with what I can control and the wisdom to know the difference. I think that I love that prayer because it’s basically a roadmap for life and how to deal with everything life throws your way because everyone will be tested. Nobody escapes trial and tribulation. It happens to all of us. It’s just a matter of when.

Bridgett: And I think those experiences, you grow, you become a deeper understanding person when you go through those experiences. I think your relationships with other people grow because you can have empathy for someone going through it.

Elizabeth Vargas: It also depends on how much you let other people in.  Biggest mistake I made is, I felt so ashamed of my own anxiety. I didn’t tell anybody that I was feeling it, you know, I’m not saying you run around sharing everything in your life with everyone. But, yeah, you know, that was the biggest gift in writing my book. I wrote the book because I struggled and thought I was unique and solitary and special, not special in a good way, but in a cursed way. It’s like, oh my God, I’m the only person this has ever happened to. And I wanted nothing more than to hear somebody else’s story. And I did. I read a lot of books by a lot of other women who were struggling with both anxiety and alcoholism. And those books helped me so, so much because it was the first time I was like, oh, there are other women who are really successful and celebrated who are also really struggling with this. And here’s what they did and here is their story. And it helped me enormously. So, you know, I just I just got an email like literally on Friday. I have to answer her because I haven’t yet, because I really wanted to answer it in a wholesome way. It was from a woman at my network who said, “your book saved you saved my life.” And listen, maybe she’s just being lovely and hyperbolic, but she’s not the only one who has said that. Oh my God, like, what an enormous gift that I could take a very difficult, painful chapter of my life and help somebody else with it.

Bridgett: Right. Your book was so, so honest and in a time where we really were not talking about anxiety and panic attacks and the effect on women like we are now.

Colleen: I think we all have kids that are young adults and they talk about mental health much more openly than we ever did. When you’re writing the book, what was your kind of fear around publishing it during a time where you were, you know, at the height of your, one of the heights of your career, you’re still at the height of your career. You’re doing five days a week. That is a lot. Do you think did you think it was going to have a negative effect on your career? What were your concerns?

Elizabeth Vargas: As I wrote in the book, you know, people had decided to plant stories in Page Six and the gossip columns about what I was going through.

Without my knowledge or permission, obviously. So the story was already out there. I’m not sure I would have written the book, I’ll be very honest, if half the story or a third of the story hadn’t been leaked. In other words, my privacy was already violated.

I’m sure whoever decided to do that, it was more than one person, or maybe it was one person who was very, very busy, didn’t think about this. But, you know, when you are in rehab fighting for your life and it’s so painful and at that point, many people are struggling with the shame.

To have somebody leak it to a nasty site like Page Six was, I don’t know, I would never do that to my worst enemy. It’s really shocking to me that somebody thought, that’s what I’ll do. She’s away getting help and I’m going to, you know, expose it all in the most salacious way possible. So, you know.

Everybody has the right to get better in privacy. And that was taken from me. So the decision to write the book was made a lot easier because, you know, I thought if my story’s out there, I might as well tell it, you know, and tell the real story as opposed to all the really crappy stuff that somebody decided to leak to a gossip columnist. And most importantly,  to make somebody else out there feel a little less lonely as I felt. I’ve never felt so lonely in my life as I did during that time. And I don’t want anybody else to feel that way because you’re not alone.

And we’re a lot better now. I can’t believe like now, like I saw some statistic, like it’s the lowest percentage of adults drinking alcohol in this country, like in a long, long time. People are just, I’m so glad that, you know, people are putting alcohol down. I’m not going to bang the table. If you want to have a drink. I feel very lucky. I can be out with people who drink. It doesn’t bother me.

But I think you’re both right that we’ve gotten much better in the last 10 years about talking about mental health, about self-medicating, about understanding that, you know, that glass of wine or alcoholic beverage might, you know, take the edge off the anxiety in the short term, but it’s going to boomerang and make it worse in the long term. And that’s what you really need to do is treat the cause of the anxiety.

And it’s, you know, we’re just a lot less judgmental and a lot more open about that. And that’s only a good thing. It’s really, really, it’s really good.

Bridgett: Yeah. The takeaways I got from your book was, well, I got so many takeaways, but some were no matter, you can keep trying, you can keep working on this.

If what, like, you know, you went to different locations, different rehabilitation places. Was it three or four times? I know you went to some detox.

Elizabeth Vargas: I went to two rehabs. Two rehabs. And yeah. Oh yeah. No, listen, it is.

It can take a while. I know people who’ve been to 19 rehabs. Matthew Perry, he’d been to, I can’t even remember how many rehabs he’d been to. People have this idea that, oh, you just go to rehab and you get all better. First of all, it doesn’t always happen that way. And quite frequently, it doesn’t happen that way. Secondly, and this is really important. I’ve done a lot of coverage on this. All rehabs are not created equal. I went to two. One was really great and one was really bad. And it’s very, very important if you are seeking help or somebody you love is seeking help, that you do your homework and figure out the best place to go. Because these places aren’t cheap. If you’re going to spend the resources, the money to go, to take the time off to go, you make sure it’s the right one for you because otherwise it’s a waste of everything. And in my case, I actually think the one rehab that wasn’t good did more damage.

Then it wasn’t like it was just a waste of time, it actually hurt me in ways that I think that I look back on it that are a travesty. So you have to be very careful when you pick rehabs. And, you know, there are many, many rehabs out there that are bad, are very bad. You have to be very, very careful, especially in the sort of popular zones like Florida and Southern California. I didn’t go to rehabs in either one of those regions, but I’ve done a lot of reporting on this, that there are a lot of really bad rehabs there who are just looking to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act. And it’s bad. You have to be very careful if you’re looking for help for yourself or somebody else. Is there any oversight?

Colleen:  I was going to say, that’s a really important point because if someone is seeking help, which to begin with, there’s such a stigma to seeking help even now. And I think for women, women talk about it even less. For some reason, the drink at the end of the day or the glass of wine, like you’ve talked about, there’s just that self-medicating factor that they don’t attribute. Oh, I think I’m drinking too much. I think this is calming my anxiety or getting me through the day. But if they do reach that point where they think, I need help. Is there a place they can search? Is there a website or resources that they can search that will give them accredited places that actually will be helping?

Elizabeth: Well, it depends because a lot of this is regulated state by state. You know, there was just Dave Aronberg, who was the former District Attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida, really led this huge effort to clean up.

Florida, they had a revolving door between sober living and rehabs down there. And he did a lot of work to get that cleaned up and closed down. The places that were clearly milking people. Listen, anybody that’s offering, there was one, I can’t remember, there was somebody who came to me because of her sister.

This was a wealthy family and her sister needed, had been in rehab many, many, many times. And she had been told that there was this place that they could stay in like a Four Seasons hotel and for two weeks.

And then they, you know, and they would detox and get medicine and then they’d be fine. That is BS. It’s not the way it works. So anybody, anything promising things that are too good to be true are, you know, red flag everywhere. Any place promising to fly you down, red flag. I mean, there are rehabs that say, oh, no, we’ll fly you down and pick you up at the airport and bring you to this place. And, you know, because what they’re going to then do, is run every test under the sun and bill the government through the Affordable Care Act for money. Bottom line is you want to look for a place you can do. You just ask questions.

But there are several really, really good rehab facilities that have long established reputations that are 12 step oriented, 28 days minimum. If anybody says they can get you sober and clean in less than a month, they’re crazy. It really, it takes time to do this. But you don’t have to necessarily listen.

Addiction and substance use disorder looks a lot of different ways. And there are a lot of people, especially women, especially women in menopause, which I do think looking back played a major role in what happened to me. I think right in the middle of everything going on, I was also perimenopausal. And I was wondering why I was so anxious.

I was going through a hormonal cataclysm. I had just given birth. I gave birth to my second baby when I was almost 44. Naturally, like, like I got pregnant naturally. And then like.

Less than like two years later, I was perimenopausal  and I nursed for almost a year. So I was like I was like a hormonal cyclone. So you layer on top of my anxiety and my stress, and I was the breadwinner and I felt I was overworked and exhausted. And then you’ve got hormonal cyclone in the middle of it. I do think that you know, played a role in it. So , my point is, is that there are a lot of women, especially in perimenopause, you need to be careful and who are reexamining their relationship with alcohol. And that doesn’t necessarily mean I need to go to rehab. It might just mean I join a group, a support group. I’ve interviewed several of these, you know, group leaders.

The author of quit Like a Woman on my podcast that I do for the Partnership to End Addiction because there are a lot of people who are re-examining their relationship with alcohol. Something I wish I had done in my 30s or 40s before it got bad. Like you know, why are you drinking so much? Do you really want to wake up like, I look back now, I cannot believe that I normalized waking up feeling foggy headed or hungover for as long as I did and managed to go to the gym and work it out and, you know, and still go work. I made my own life so much harder by doing this thing. It’s stunning to me that I would do that, that I would make it harder to succeed, make it harder to get through your day, make it harder to be a good mom because you don’t feel good.

And you have to figure out a way to power through.

Bridgett: And it’s so it’s glamorized. I mean, drinking alcohol is glamorized.

Elizabeth Vargas:  Yeah. These alcohol companies target especially young women. They have special concoctions that, you know, just for young women, you know, like it’s crazy.

Bridgett: I’m seeing a lot of people in the menopause world coming out with things talking about how they’ve given up the alcohol. Tamsen Fadal had an event in Las Vegas.

Colleen: Tamsin was on your show, wasn’t she?

Elizabeth Vargas: Yes. Several times. I’ve had her on several times. She’s a great friend.

Bridgett: We’ve had her on. And I went to her event in Las Vegas and giving they were serving non-alcoholic drinks that are coming out. Those are coming out really big now. And I know I was listening to your podcast about the GLP-1s.  I am someone on a GLP-1, not for that reason. And really, I was at that borderline, like BMI 27, high blood pressure, things like that. I do have to pay for it myself. But I have noticed, just as someone personally, and I would have maybe a glass of wine or go out to dinner and have wine. Wine does not taste good to me anymore.

Elizabeth Vargas: Interesting. It is very interesting.

Bridgett:  we’ve interviewed Dr. Alexandra Sowa, who wrote The Ozempic Revolution. She was talking about the book and talking how it can help reduce the alcohol desire. I mean, I might have one glass. I mean, I probably won’t finish it. It does not taste good to me anymore.

Elizabeth: Well, I just interviewed somebody on my show and actually on my Podcast for the Partnership and Addiction. They are doing a study. I’m not sure if they’re still taking people because it might that it might be closed to entrance, but they’re actually doing a study or about to start a study on GLP-1 drugs on people who are not overweight or diabetic or pre-diabetic. So people of normal weight specifically to see how GLP-1’s might affect and they’re all alcoholics. They are now looking at these GLP-1s as a possible treatment for alcoholism. It’s interesting because, you know, it’s being framed as, quote, the “magic pill.” And I don’t know how many times I thought, you know, back when I was still drinking, why can’t somebody just give me a magic pill and make this? And it’s inner work.

For me, it was inner work. So I look at that like, huh, what if there actually really is a magic pill? Now, we don’t know for anybody what the long-term effects of GLP-1s are. That’s the big question mark for anybody taking GLP-1s. But there is anecdotal…

an abundance of anecdotal evidence that it helps with uh alcoholism with cutting back on drinking with addiction to shopping wow all sorts of,

Bridgett:  that hasn’t happened to me yet, (haha)

Colleen: yeah and that hasn’t affected her

Bridgett: but Dr.  Alexandra Sowa I believe it was her, but I could be wrong, so don’t quote me that , but the GLP-1’s actually have been around for about 20 years the medication for the diabetics for the diabetics research of it.

Colleen: They’re just now researching it on people who are not overweight and who are also alcoholic to see if it will help them in that.

Bridgett:  But it was very interesting because I started it  just to  get my metabolic syndrome under control because I wasn’t like obese, but  it was interesting, just the whole connection as I read your book. And as I listened to that podcast, the connection between addiction.

And any addiction. So yes, I would have, what would you call food noise.

Elizabeth Vargas:  Here’s the question. If you’re taking GLP-1s for weight management or diabetes, you have to keep taking it. Like if you stop taking it, the weight will come back. So if you take GLP-1s for addiction, again, raising the same person, does that mean you have to be, does that come back?

Bridgett: Right. And it made me think of me being on a diet, following a weight loss program. And then you get to the point when you’re on the weight loss program where you’re like, ah, you know, I can’t, I can’t do this anymore. I was like, I wonder what the correlation, what that’s like for someone who has an addiction to something else. Like they’re trying their program. They’ve done it for so long.

And then it’s like, oh, it’s so difficult to do this. And then they might have a relapse. I was thinking about that as I read. And when I listened to that podcast as well, that was just something I thought about because there’s points. I don’t know how many diets I’ve been on in my life.

Colleen: And you’re not a heavy person.

Bridgett: But I think what it got to me was when it started to affect metabolic syndrome. Right. When I was like, oh, my blood pressure’s up, my cholesterol’s up.

Everything’s up. My liver enzymes were up, fatty liver, things like that.

Elizabeth: Really? Oh, wow. And is it all helped? Is it all better?

Bridgett: Well, I need to get my blood work done. So I just started in like July. So I talked to my doctor last week. So I’m going to go in, blood work done to see if that’s brought that down. That was my big thing, just longevity of that. But as I listened to that and read your book and just thought about addictions in general, just what

the effect of addictions and how people relapse into addictions and just the work it is. But what I also found so interesting in your book was the root cause what’s back there behind it. And I, you know, in your book, you talked about your anxiety and your childhood and having your father go off to Vietnam and how that can start the anxiety going way, way back when you’re a child.

Elizabeth: Well, I was anxious even before my dad went away, but, um, You know, yeah. And by the way, that’s the problem with the magic pill, is if you just take a pill to make the addiction go away, you never address the underlying cause. You know, you never get to the root of why you would want to numb. Because, you know, everybody I’ve ever met who drinks or…does drugs is trying to numb something. They’re trying to not feel something. And part of recovery is facing it, you know, feeling it and facing it. And if we ever got to a point where, and I’m sure we will, because medicine is pretty amazing, where there is a quote unquote magic pill to, you know, make you stop drinking alcoholically or whatever it is.

You I wonder if then we lose something that sort of, you know, inner exploration of why am I doing this? Because I think everybody, you know, I don’t know. I think I think it’s it’s a worthy thing to turn around and look very, you know, with your eyes wide open that. Why do I do this? What happened that caused me to use this coping skill instead of that healthier coping skill. I think most people could benefit from inner work. You don’t have to suffer from an addiction. You can just be stressed out. You can be picking the wrong guy every time. You can be alone all your life and refusing to allow anybody into your life. There are a lot of things we as human beings do that might not be good for us.

The only way to even begin to change patterns of behavior is to examine, first recognize it and then figure out why am I doing that? That’s not an easy process.

Colleen: No, no, it’s not. And it’s again, mental health is another stigma that we talk about, you know, or people fail to talk about really. And, you know, you had mentioned before about the fact that you had your second son a little later and you went quickly into perimenopause. At the time that was happening, still menopause was not having its moment. Women were not talking about it. Nobody was talking about it. So what was that experience like? Did you even know you were in perimenopause?

Elizabeth Vargas: Yes, because, well, I did because I stopped having my period or I started not, you know, and I remember like going into my doctor and they were like, oh, you’re perimenopausal. And I was like, what? I just gave birth. What do you mean I’m perimenopausal? But nobody mentioned hormone replacement therapy. Nobody mentioned anything.  You’ll have heightened anxiety. Oh, you won’t be able to sleep at night. And I don’t know about you guys, but that’s a snowball. Like if I don’t get enough sleep, I get more anxious. I get, you know, and then the wheels come off the cart if I don’t get sleep. And, you know, for years and years, it took years before somebody finally said, hey, maybe you want to try an estrogen patch. And then another few years before somebody said, by the way, a different doctor, I have a great doctor now.

You should always be on progesterone, you know, if you’re on this estrogen patch. And progesterone helped amazingly with me sleep.

You know, then I had like no energy. And my best friend in the world said she went to a doctor and had her hormones tested. And he was like, after he looked at her panel, he was like, how are you even functioning? You have zero testosterone. Like, and women, again, think testosterone is like, it’s not, we’re not talking libido. We’re talking just like the energy to get up and walk across the room.

I think it is absolutely amazing what people like Tamsen and there are all these doctors that I follow on Instagram.

Colleen: I think we probably had most of them on the show.

Elizabeth Vargas: Dr. Marie Haverford, did you have her on yet?

Colleen: We have not had her on our show, but we follow her on Instagram.

Elizabeth Vargas: They’re making billions, with a B, of dollars because half the population, slightly more than half, are women.

And we’re all going to be perimenopausal and we’re all struggling with something on that spectrum of symptoms. I can’t believe it took business and the medical community so long to, number one, recognize and acknowledge what half the population, human population, is going to have to go through if we’re lucky enough to live that long.

And then to monetize it. I mean, you know, thank goodness there are all these products out there, these supplements and things that you can eat and, you know, things that you can do. And most importantly, finally, a responsible conversation about hormone replacement therapy. It is so typical that the male-dominated medical establishment was like, it’s not safe.

So what if she can’t sleep? So what if she’s a sweaty mess? So what if she’s unable to focus? So what if she’s anxious and jumping out of her skin? I mean, it is egregious that women have had to suffer as long as we’ve suffered with no help until very recently from the medical community. And, you know, it’s.

corporate irresponsibility that businesses didn’t, you know, figure out sooner that this is a big business to help half the population figure out how to live a normal life past the age of 48.

Bridgett: Yes. The dismissiveness.  I mean, my first time I asked about hormones, I was dismissed because my mother had a blood clot, like 12 years before. My mother had a blood clot.

I couldn’t answer how she got it. The answer was ,Well, you’re not getting hormones. Nope. I’m not getting them.

Elizabeth Vargas: But they  finally asked you. Nobody asked me.

Bridgett: Oh, I had to ask. I had to ask for the hormones. But that’s why I was dismissed. Then we always say you can always go to another doctor.

Colleen: Exactly. You don’t have to be loyal to this person. You can break up with your doctor.

We started this podcast in late 2019 before the conversation exploded. And we would get the doctors to come on and speak and be like, we just want women to hear this, that they have options. And, you know, medical schools are not giving enough information or not teaching their students, their medical students about menopause for more than an hour or two of credit. So they’re coming out without the knowledge. It’s not always their fault. They’re not educated on it. And now at least there’s continuing education on it. There’s certifications on it, but this is a very recent conversation for women.

And now it’s kind of turning into, and what we’re finding is that it’s turning into a pivot of post-menopause and longevity. That’s kind of merging into your, how do you be your healthiest life for as long as you can live? You know, it’s not about the number of years.

Elizabeth Vargas: Absolutely. And listen, the longevity movement is a huge thing right now. And we’re not talking about, you know, oh, I want to live, you know, to 130. We’re talking about as, “how do I make my last decade a decade I enjoy and not a decade where I can barely move because I’m so arthritic and I’ve got such brittle bones and I have no muscle density or where, you know, God forbid, you know, you have some sort of

mental, you know, condition, Alzheimer’s or, you know, where you it’s just it’s just a matter of saying, I want my last decade to count and to be as to enjoy it as much as humanly possible.” I think, you know, and that’s part of a lot of what we’re seeing for postmenopausal women is how do you take care of your body and your mind?

In a way that, you know, you will be able to. It’s not a matter of extending your life. It’s a matter of just simply enjoying your life.  I’m thrilled that we’re here. I just I just wish it didn’t take us as long as it did to get here.

Colleen: Right. It took us a long time. Menopause and the 2002 studies and how women have been treated. It’s a disservice to women. It is a total disservice. And, you know, it’s a disservice that medical schools don’t teach more about this.

Elizabeth Vargas: You know, the fact of the matter is, is the average woman lives to 70 or 80 years old. That means half her life, give or take, maybe a little bit less, will be menopausal of some stage. And, you know, we’re just writing them off. I don’t know. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.

Colleen: Exactly. And like you said in the very beginning of this conversation, because a lot of people smell the money, there are a lot of fake products coming out. So women have to be really careful and use their critical thinking saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And so it’s interesting now that we watch that so many companies are like, oh, I can cure your sleeping problem. No, I can do this. Just take the supplement. And women really have to be cautious about it. We have to be our own best medical advocates as we should be in every instance.

What do you find now? You know, you’re in your 60s, correct?  And we have talked to a lot of women who are 60 plus who feel like this is the best decade, that they have this sense of peace, this sense of self-fulfillment, that they know what they want and what they don’t want, which is just as important. How have you found this decade so far?

Elizabeth Vargas:  Well, I’m just starting the decade. And, you know, I feel healthier and better than I’ve ever felt. But, you know, I’m a little bit of an unusual circumstance because I spent my 40s, like, you know, drinking. And it wasn’t until my 50s that I got sober. Early, you know, early 50s. But, listen, I don’t know that I would define it by decade. I just know that…I feel very blessed and lucky to be mom to two amazing young men that I am raising and, and who I teach critical thinking about. We’ve come back to this phrase. I’m, I’m really, I think you need to use critical thinking in every aspect of your life, constantly question constantly, not in a hostile, aggressive way.

People need use their brains. I’m very lucky to have wonderful friends in my life. I’m very lucky to be working. And I think and I’m very lucky that as right now, today, I have my health. And I’ll tell you what, you know, on my quote unquote gratitude list and your good health is something people do not fully appreciate until they don’t have it. I’ve seen people in my life struggle with health issues during COVID. I didn’t, you know, I remember I did finally get COVID and I was really, really sick. But during COVID, I actually got mono for some reason. Nobody can figure out how we were, you know, it’s like, what? But I was so, so sick.

And I remember then thinking, I have never appreciated my health until now. And I would say that to anybody, don’t wait until, really appreciate your health. Like, you know, it’s because I’ve heard this over and over again. People don’t appreciate it until it’s gone. And that’s a shame. So I just feel, you know, none of us knows how long we get to have, you know, and I think that just live each day to its fullest. So that’s how I’m looking at it right now.

Colleen: Well, we couldn’t agree more because just making, being present, I think as we get older, we’re able to be present in the moment much more than we were in our thirties or twenties when our careers were taking off and we were, you know, it was just juggling everything. And now peace and contentment means so much more.

Colleen: thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. It was a wonderful conversation.

Elizabeth Vargas: Yes. Lovely to meet you both. You guys are great.