Theo Wargo/WireImageJet-setting getaways. Swoon-worthy boat rides. Steamy candlelit snogging.
The Bachelorette isn't short on peddling breathtaking romantic fantasies, but for onetime star Meredith Phillips, life after all those rose ceremonies offered a hard dose of reality.
The 39-year-old reveals to People magazine that she has struggled with alcoholism, as she recounts the harrowing depths of her addiction and the battles she's waged to overcome it.
"For years I'd wake up every day feeling like I was hit by a truck," the erstwhile reality star says.
Phillips claims that when she hit rock bottom, she was pounding back about 20 bottles of wine a week and blacking out almost every day.
She says it was a downward spiral that could only lead one inevitable, tragic outcome.
"I realized I was going to kill myself," she says. "There wasn't another path for me other than to stop."
Now that she's six months sober, the brunette beauty is thankful that she is "finally starting to live my life again."
Fans will remember Phillips as the third runner-up during Bob Guiney's season of The Bachelor. Although, she didn't walk away with a ring, she got another shot at love when she was tapped for The Bachelorette, where she ended the season engaged to Ian McKee.
That proved to be short-lived—the duo split right after the show wrapped up—but Phillips eventually got a second pass at fame with a budding career as a culinary guru: She later released a cookbook aptly titled The Date Night Cookbook.