Brad Goreski: Cocaine Addiction Nearly Destroyed Me

USMagazine, Thursday, March 1, 2012, 3:00pm (PST)

Stylist Brad Goreski brings lighthearted humor to the sometimes stuffy world of fashion on Bravo's It's a Brad, Brad World -- a far cry from the 34-year-old's dark past.

At age 19, while studying musical theater at George Brown College in Toronto, Goreski was offered his first line of cocaine. "I thought, 'What the hell?'" he writes in his new memoir, Born to Be Brad, as excerpted in the new issue of Us Weekly (on stands Friday).

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Goreski, who experimented with booze, pot and Ecstasy in high school, succumbed to a harrowing cocaine habit for years. At age 23, he was both exhausted and shockingly thin.

"I needed to get help. It was early on a December morning. I was in our bathroom, staring in the mirror, and I didn't recognize myself. Finally I felt the weight of the situation," Goreski writes. "I told myself, 'You can carry on like this, and the drugs will be your life.' I wasn't doing anything with my life except wasting it."

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Goreski's then-boyfriend Nick told him, "You don't need to stop drinking. You just need to stop using cocaine." Goreski knew he couldn't get sober living with Nick and called his parents from a pay phone "in the dead of winter.

"I was crying in heaving sobs, saying that I needed to get sober, that Nick and I were breaking up," Goreski writes. "And I was fine for another few months, going to AA meetings. Until I saw Nick out at a club making out with someone else. I fell off the wagon [then] forced myself back to AA."

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"It was May 3, 2001. I was determined to stay sober," Goreski writes. "This was day one: the first day of the rest of my life."

For more on Goreski's past -- from high school bullying ("I didn't belong where I was") to why he really parted ways with Rachel Zoe -- pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands Friday. Born to Be Brad: My Life and Style, So Far is available March 6.

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