Eva Marie Says She Wouldn’t Have Had WWE If Not For Her Sobriety

Eva Marie recently reflected on her recovery from addiction, noting that without it she wouldn’t have had WWE. Marie has been open about her past battle with alcohol addiction and road to recovery. Marie struggled with alcohol abuse before she got to WWE, something she discussed on Total Divas.

Marie spoke about her recovery in her interview on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. She noted that WWE allowed her to go public about her sobriety and that if she hadn’t gotten sober, she never would have had a WWE career. You can see the highlights below:

On What Her Life Looks Like Without Recovery:

“It doesn’t. There’s no way. If I wasn’t sober, I wouldn’t have WWE. WWE was literally a monumental moment in my life, because it was the setup, I came public with my sobriety on Season One of Total Divas without me knowing what I was really doing by coming public with it, it was just I came public to hurry up with my story so that I didn’t walk into the locker rooms and have like Nikki or Brie holding up my mug shot. Me trying to skirt around something that I was so shameful of. So that’s really why I kind of put that out there myself. Because I think if you own all of your own stories or your own transgressions, how are you gonna tell me anything I’ve already told you? “

On the Scene In 8 Mile Where Rabbit Owns His Criticisms:

“That’s my go-to, that’s my analogy that I always use and I always reference, because I feel like everyone’s seen that movie, and they kind of understand what I’m talking about. When it’s like, you own your own story, you own your own narrative, it gives you so much power, because nobody can say anything to you then, because you’ve already owned it. So that’s really what I was doing at that moment, without really knowing how powerful it was going to be for me, not only to be so open and honest about me working a 12-step program or struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, but it really did set up my life fast forward 10 years later to what I’m doing now.

“Because when I got out of treatment, because I don’t know if people really understand that not only was WWE such a life-changing experience for me, on a magnitude of reasons, from the fact of like me always wanting to be a professional athlete. Soccer was really my sport, but the fact that God gave me that element back into my life, because, as you know, having to handle the physicality inside the ring and being able to perform and travel and do all the things within that company is something that my soul was yearning for from not being able to pursue soccer, my dream, but also I was fresh out of treatment five weeks so I had gotten originally, my first audition, because we don’t do them anymore, but they were diva searches at the time. I had gone to my first one a couple of months before, and I was still kind of in my addiction. I mean, I was able to show up to the first call, but then I ended up going into treatment, and when I got out, that was when I got the call back, and it was like five weeks after I had just left treatment. So my life changed really quickly and really fast.”