In BETWEEN BREATHS, ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas gives readers a first-person account of her battle with alcoholism. She starts with stories from her childhood, relating events that created her life-long struggles with anxiety and panic attacks. When she was a child and displayed her emotions by crying, she was told that "big girls don't cry." As a result, she learned to hold back her emotions and keep all the fear and anxiety bottled up inside. She became a champion at hiding her anxiety on the outside, even though she couldn't control her pain on the inside.

"[Vargas] tells quite a moving story; her writing style is very personal and insightful, and you can almost feel her pain."

As she grew older, like legions of alcoholics before her, she found herself turning to alcohol as a way of numbing the pain. The drinking started with just a glass or two of wine after work, to wind down with her friends. Then, when a couple of glasses no longer did the job, she drank more and more and more.

After one drinking binge, she wound up in the ER with no idea how she got there. She blacked out for 13 hours and couldn't remember a thing. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.4, which many times leads to death. Until this point, she was in total denial that she had a problem with alcohol. After this scare, she went for her first round of detox and therapy, followed by several more rounds. Each time, she would return to her life and her work, determined to give up alcohol. But in each of those instances, when her life got tough and she needed to numb the pain, she turned back to alcohol --- until the last trip to rehab in 2013. She has been sober for nearly three years now.

Vargas stunned viewers, myself included, when she revealed her drinking problem on national television to interviewer George Stephanopoulos. Alcoholism cost her her marriage, and nearly both her job and her life. She tells quite a moving story; her writing style is very personal and insightful, and you can almost feel her pain. She holds nothing back, sharing all her guilt, anxiety and fears with the reader. I didn't get the sense that Vargas wrote this book to make money. I believe she truly wanted to share her story with others in the hopes that those who are going through a similar ordeal will feel some comfort knowing they are not alone in their battle with this terrible disease. Vargas has succeeded in achieving this important objective.