Real Housewives of New York Leah McSweeney Shares Update on Sobriety

NBCUMV Leah McSweeney in 2019

Real Housewives of New York star Leah McSweeney shared an update on her sobriety in a June 28, 2020, Instagram post. In the photo, McSweeney showed off a pink, bedazzled sobriety coin with gold letters. The caption read, “It’s been a trippy 90 days.”

Other Real Housewives showed support in the comments, including Real Housewives of Orange County member, Braunwyn Windham-Burke, who shared a string of heart emojis. Margaret Josephs from The Real Housewives of New Jersey also commented, writing, “Congrats lovey!!”

When a commenter on the post asked how they could get a bedazzled chip themselves, it sparked debate in the comments section about whether or not the chip represented 3 years sober, or 90 days. McSweeney replied, “@panda_12518 clearly there are no meetings to get my 90 day chip and my mentor gifted me with this. It’s my 90 day coin. End of story.”

McSweeney was Sober for 9 Years

According to People, McSweeney was sober for nine years but began drinking again six months before she started filming The Real Housewives of New York. On the show, McSweeney has shared her struggles with drinking and relationship with alcohol, opening up about her past to the audience.

In a column on motherhood written by McSweeney in 2016 on Hypebae.com, she shared a bit about the story of her sobriety. She got sober when her daughter, Kier Marie, was 2 years old. McSweeney wrote, “the worse thing was I had become a kind of mother I never ever imagined myself being. I was withdrawn, distracted, depressed and addicted. Looking back now I see I needed to go through this nightmare to come out on the other side of things. I needed to almost lose MOB. I needed to lose that paycheck, I needed to come close to losing my daughter, I needed to have the Earth shaken under me to have a complete spiritual experience that led me to the 12-step program that ended up saving my life, and my business. And gave me the gift of motherhood.”

So far on Season 12, there have been many moments where we see McSweeney getting drunk, which once resulted in her skinny-dipping and throwing tiki torches during a trip to Ramona Singer’s Southampton home.

McSweeney is Open About Mental Health

In addition to being open about her past with drinking, McSweeney is also outspoken about mental health. In a May 28, 2020, Instagram post, McSweeney wrote a caption about what drove her to drink that night in Newport, Rhode Island, sharing that she was feeling “vulnerable.”

“I want to preface this episode by saying I went on this trip to Rhode Island not really wanting to even go. I didn’t know the women that well at this point, and I was in an already-vulnerable mood. I wanted my sister there for support. She was also six months postpartum and looking forward to her first baby-free overnight trip. Moms: haven’t we all been there?” McSweeney wrote in the caption.

On her Instagram page, McSweeney has also advertised a free Zoom mental health support group run by her sister, Sarah McSweeney, and mother Bunny. McSweeney’s mother is a practicing therapist, according to a May 29, 2020, Instagram post. In the caption, McSweeney wrote, “This change in our life due to the pandemic is nothing any of us were prepared for and the mental health ramifications are really brutal.”

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