Elle Macpherson Opens up About Addiction & Refusing Chemo in Her New Memoir — Get It for 20% off Now

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Elle Macpherson is one of the most famous supermodels from the 80s, but her rise to the top was anything but easy.

The 60-year-old fashion icon is revealing the hard truths about her life in a new memoir, elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself, which will be out Tuesday, Nov. 19. It chronicles her rough road with alcoholism and her controversial choice to forgo chemotherapy during her breast cancer battle in 2017.

“I was in a horrible downward spiral. Often, I would drink after I put my children to bed. I would sit down by myself and have shots of vodka…” she wrote in her book, per an excerpt obtained by Today. In a Nov. 15 appearance on the morning talk show, she elaborated on her addiction to alcohol.

“It’s not just drinking, we can be addicted to fear, we can be addicted to drama… we can have emotional relationships when we don’t really want to,” she noted. “It’s about really addressing those things that are behind the addiction… The addiction is just the symptoms. And for me, drinking was just behind the symptoms of those things.” She checked herself into rehab 20 years ago and has been sober ever since.

The pivot from addiction to sobriety also led her down the path of wellness and the founding of her company, WelleCo, in 2014. It also might be the reason why she chose an alternative medicinal journey when she was diagnosed with breast cancer three years later. Macpherson’s doctor wanted her to have a mastectomy along with chemo, radiation, and hormone therapy. Instead, she went against the advice of her doctor to seek out holistic options.

Macpherson kept the news to herself for seven years, revealing the news for the first time in September to The Australian Women’s Weekly. “It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways,” she told the media outlet. She shared the hard decisions she had to make in her memoir, writing, “Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been harder.”

She’s considered to be in remission now and feels incredible after working with a naturopathic doctor for eight months along with an osteopath, a holistic dentist, and a chiropractor. “I feel so alive, vibrant, I have a sense of vitality that I never had before. I’m in love, my children are thriving,” she told Today. “I feel like many people feel… that 60 was at the end of the road… I just feel so grateful for the life I’ve had… I feel enthused.”

Before you go, click here to see all the best celebrity memoirs you can read right now.