Raquel Leviss, Bethenny Frankel Podcast Recap: Most Shocking Scandoval Reveals

Raquel Leviss on Love Addiction & Alcohol

Leviss took the time to go to counseling with a therapist and learned what it meant to have a Love Addiction. After the season finale, she checked herself into a treatment center in Phoenix, Arizona. “It was a really scary decision to make because I knew I needed help, but I didn’t know what to expect going in,” she told Frankel.

She added that meeting people in the facility was hard at first. “I was already carrying so much shame that it was difficult for me to be like, ‘Hi, I’m Raquel!’” she said. “But as time went on I was able to warm up and really share my story in an authentic, honest way, and I was met with grace and compassion from my peers, and a big part of my journey is learning to be compassionate with myself as well.”

“Do you forgive yourself?” Frankel asked her candidly. “Yeah, I do,” Leviss said.

She then explained that the facility helped her “understand her behaviors.”

“My goal was to really get down to the bottom of, ‘OK, why am I choosing men that are unavailable? Why do I keep finding myself in unhealthy relationships? What are the things that I need to change about my behavior?'” Leviss ponders. “And in knowing that I needed to make a change, I first had to know what leads to those behaviors.”

“Part of the reason why I wanted to take some time away is just because it was so chaotic and loud, and there was such vitriol online,” she said of her experience.

She learned a lot about Love Addiction while in therapy. “It took me a while to accept, but I learned about love addiction, and it’s a real thing,” she said. “It’s where you confuse intensity for intimacy. and those chemical changes in the brain are the same chemical changes that happen when you take drugs.

“So it is addictive, and it explains why I couldn’t stop seeing this person,” she added. “It also doesn’t excuse the fact that it happened, but now I know better.” She also revealed that she turned to alcohol during filming season 10. “So when I was filming, I was drinking a lot to ease that anxiety,” she said. “And in a reality TV environment, I wasn’t getting that safe space to express my emotions in a healthy way.”

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