I Won Miss America — But Never Imagined That Addiction Would Follow

WhenIwas 16 years old, I competed in my first pageant in the Miss America Organization because of a friend who asked me to compete with her. I won. 

The very first minute I stepped onto that stage, I felt a burst of adrenaline. When I felt the crown placed upon my head, I felt alive. I was immediately hooked. 

I grew up at a time when they didn’t give participation trophies to everyone. There was only one girl, one winner, one crown. And I so desperately wanted to be that (almost always white) ideal. I looked up to her, I respected her, and I envied her “all-American” look. She was everything I wasn’t. 

Still, the branding of Miss America was built on “the girl next door.” And that was the shiny allure — that any girl in America could get there.

Winning a beauty pageant is like a high — the ultimate validation in a world where I otherwise felt othered. Every pageant win after the first was like a fresh hit. But, the thing about highs is that there are extremely worse lows — like losing. And when I say losing, I mean being awarded first runner-up. 

You might be thinking, “Cry me a river,” right? But I’d gotten to a place where not winning felt like the worst hangover multiplied by a million. To add insult to injury, I felt vulnerable and exposed. 

You know what you need to do to survive when you have a hangover? Order a greasy burger and iced coffee ASAP. Imagine that when it arrives, you tear through the packaging like the feral shell of a human you are, and when your little hunger gremlins are just about to rejoice, you see…a salad. Not a juicy burger. You got a wilted salad when you thought you deserved — no, wait, needed — that greasy burger. Realizing that your order got mixed up, you picture some rando chomping away at your burger. And it’s painful. 

Being first runner-up feels like that. Someone else’s name is called, you’re shoved to the side, and you’re watching some girl wear your crown. Beaten down and crushed, you pick yourself back up swearing to the universe, God, family, plants, whomever, that you’re never going to do [insert substance of choice here] again. And then … you experience the withdrawal, so you end up going back for more of the same. 

I spent eight years of my life, from 16 to 24, competing in this very cycle of pageant after pageant. After 10 in total, I’ve placed as a winner, first runner-up, second runner-up, and there was a time when I got nothing. But like any good addict, I realized you must know that your relief comes in the form of a good dealer — in my case, the panel of seven judges. You have to vibe, build trust, rapport, and in desperate cases, you may have to sell your soul. 

I won the ultimate championship, or the “Super Bowl” of pageants, as we call it: Miss America. The dream of a million girls. On Sept. 15, 2013, with 12 million people watching, I stood on the pageant stage and heard my name called as “Your new Miss America!” 

I thought I had made it. I was 24 years old, living in the supposed prime of my beauty and reveling in the upside of fame — chatting with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, hanging in a Super Bowl suite with Steven Tyler, and getting flown all across America to take pictures and sign autographs. Sounds fun, right? But after the initial high wore off, the harsh reality of the job set in. 

Instead of feeling like a queen, wearing my crown to appearances after the pageant made me feel like I was an animal at the zoo. I hated the feeling of eyes on me, judging my every move, action, word and gesture. Not to mention the superficial comments on my hair, makeup, nails, toes, skin color, and body — to the point where one event organizer called the Miss America office to report my underarms weren’t cleanly shaven. What in the actual fuck?

I hated having to be gracious when an old Indian uncle came up to me and said “So, Miss America, can you cook?” reducing my image to a trad-wife.  The struggle of balancing Indian culture while growing up in America has been and will continue to be the most challenging thing I navigate in my lifetime. On top of having to live up to the model minority myth, women also have the outsized pressure of having to “do it all”: be exceptionally beautiful to Eurocentric standards, win Miss America, get into medical school, be a chef in the kitchen, have kids, get your body back immediately after, and maintain a happy household. We’re trained to worry about “what will everyone else think?” and the deadly combination means that inevitably, the insecurities will rise to the surface.

At one point, I ran out of pageants to win. And like any addiction, I craved a bigger and better high to get that original feeling. If winning Miss America and getting paid to walk around with a crown on your head isn’t enough validation, are we all just destined to feel like we will never be enough? Demi Moore couldn’t have said it better herself Sunday night with her Golden Globe acceptance speech.

My job was quite literally to entertain. To be everything to everyone. Because of this pressure to be perfect, I started to feel anxious and insecure when I would go to events. I know that I will never be everyone’s cup of tea. But in trying to be, I turned to alcohol for answers. I told myself that a little “personality cocktail” would do the trick. Just something to get me through the night.

I got through that year, but after giving up my title, I had to learn how to navigate something that was new to all of us: social media. From 2014 to 2017, during the rise of the influencer era as we now know it today, it almost didn’t matter if I was Miss America. My worth was suddenly defined by my number of followers — I was simply just a handle on an Excel spreadsheet. 

And that was a game I was not willing to play, so I opted out; but opting out of social media is almost worse than participating in it because it leads to a lot more self-doubt when you’re just a viewer. You’re seeing the beautiful highlight reels of everyone around you leading to more negative self-talk and feelings of FOMO.

Without realizing it, eight years after I’d won Miss America, my pageant addiction crossed over to another kind. Alcohol was the only thing that kept flowing when the rhinestones felt like a distant dream and I had lost my sparkle. 

In 2021, I moved into my first ever “grown-up” apartment in New York City. Over the course of my move-in day, I had finished a small pint of Absolut vodka — a couple of swigs in the morning before the movers came (because obvi, celebration!), a few during, and the rest after. Once they left, I was ready to build some furniture and jam out to Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York.” I was determined to be classy as fuck in this new apartment, so I ordered a bottle of wine and double-Dashed my order with Wendy’s Spicy Chicken Nuggets and a frosty (I’m a vegetarian, but when drunk all bets are off).

An hour later, I was in a good place — noshing on the nugs, singing Taylor Swift, and feeling invincible with my power drill as I put together my bookshelf from West Elm. As I reached for my bottle of wine, I noticed it was a cork and not a twist off, which was a rookie mistake since I didn’t have a wine opener yet. I tried to problem-solve like I’d seen frat party boys do, pushing the cork inside the bottle. So I desperately tried that, unsuccessfully. 

Then I realized: Wait! I have a power drill!  You might see where this is going… I spun the drill through the cork to get the wine. I thought I’d make a neat tiny hole for pouring, but instead, the cork ruptured into a million tiny pieces and completely disintegrated into the bottle. I brought it to eye level and looked at the pieces that were impossible to pick out. Fuck it. I took a deep breath and downed all of it. 

As I lay on my floor at 3 a.m., utterly ashamed and sedated with cork slushie in my belly, I thought, How did I end up here? I looked up in defeat and said, “God? Universe? Whoever is listening, help me. I cannot do this alone.” 

Help did come, but the next 90 days were the hardest months of my life. Getting sober is an absolute bitch. It is, by far, the most challenging work I’ve ever done. It is also absolutely, unequivocally, the best thing I’ve ever experienced.

I’m proud to say that I’m now almost four years sober, and I’m grateful, because it led me to self-discovery at a fairly young age. After freeing myself of the shackling notion women in my community all grew up with (“What will everyone else think?”), I’ve been able to find the truth of what makes me, me.

This isn’t a story about “pretty little princess living happily ever after.” That’s far from the truth, and the more people buy into this illusion — or the more I play into it — the more it does a disservice to all of us.

I know I’m not alone: Some of us build the illusion that everything’s perfect and we’re eager to be accepted — revered even — by others. So much so, that we start to actually believethat the illusion is real. But eventually, illusions fade, crowns tarnish and followers unfollow. It’s like we’re all on a hamster wheel, and because no one has the courage to say “enough,” we all just keep running forward while emotionally hyperventilating.

So, for the first time publicly, this is my jumping-off moment. I hope others will join me. 

We all have messy parts, so why can’t we openly talk about it? I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe it just takes one person jumping off the hamster wheel first. Because my life has been pretty messy, and so is everyone else’s. And being vocal about those messy parts out loud is better than any high I could have imagined.

Need help with substance use disorder or mental health issues? In the U.S., call 800-662-HELP (4357) for the SAMHSA National Helpline.