Supermodel Carre Otis finds the greatest gift of all - Cover Story - heroin recovery - Brief Article

Better Nutrition, May, 2002 by John Monahan

Carre Otis was living in Paris when she got the break that would make her a supermodel. Just 18, she appeared on the cover of the influential fashion magazine Elle. Soon after that, Otis posed in her size-2 Calvin Klein jeans for a famous series of "biker babe" ads. Next came a sexy page in the Pirelli calendar, and eventually spreads in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition. The young girl born in San Francisco had realized her dream--yet she was addicted to heroin and alcohol by age 23. Though beautiful, she hadn't found her true beauty.

Her troubles with drugs actually had begun a few years earlier. That's why, when Otis was 15, her parents sent her to the John Woolman School in Nevada City, Calif. She instantly liked the outdoor-oriented school--her parents had always taken the family backpacking and hiking--and for the first time she became interested in a healthy lifestyle. "We were really living off the land," she says. "It was a community of earthbound people making herbal tinctures, growing our own organic gardens, chopping wood. Students made most of the decisions. It was a huge influence on me."

But, as Otis says, "I've always really gone along with the flow of the environment I'm in. The fashion world isn't an environment where health is necessarily encouraged. When I got into modeling and had success right away, the addictions I'd had when I was younger returned." Her life as a model and actress was tumultuous. To keep thin, she stayed on the drugs and booze--"drinking my calories," she calls it. Then there was an abusive two-year marriage to actor Mickey Rourke, whom she'd met while making Wild Orchid.

Her low point came when she finally admitted that "heroin had knocked me on my ass." Otis was 28 by then. "The life I'd been living had wreaked havoc on my body. I decided to really start taking care of myself." She drew strength from her time at the Woolman School, which "gave me this amazing connection to health and nutrition and a way to work my way back to them." She also completed her first Buddhist retreat at this time. "That planted another seed. No matter what the detour was on my path, Buddhism gave me a place to come home to." There were 12-step-type programs she turned to as well.

Her labor of learning self-love required her to reject old ideas about herself. "I used to measure how I felt based on what size jean I wore, how skinny I was. Now I see myself in terms of health. Can I get through my run in the morning? Can I make it through my yoga class? Can I beat my brothers when we race up a hill?"

For the past three years, Otis has been "essentially vegetarian," getting her protein from tofu, eggs, nuts, seeds and the occasional protein powder. She also eats plenty of raw and cooked vegetables and avoids wheat, sugar and caffeine. "I have a very healthy, very active life."

But recovery is like swimming across the ocean: If you stop, you drown. Otis' spiritual practices--which include meditation and twice-yearly meetings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama--have led her to service work. She regularly brings medical supplies to orphanages in Nepal--and is planning similar deliveries in Tibet, India and Africa--and shares her recovery story on college campuses. Among her topics, along with spousal abuse and addiction, is body image.

"The moment we're 17 and a size 2 is but five minutes of our lifespan," she says. "The media has chosen images to represent us as women that are totally unrealistic. The media highlights the skinniest models, but even these images are photographically altered. It's very confusing for girls trying to develop self-esteem. Picking up a fashion magazine is a trigger for me, so I stay away from them. We need to make our body type the best it can be and get away from comparing--that's a killer."

She continues: "An eating disorder is like alcoholism. You finally realize you can't get away with it. Then you have to ask yourself, Are you going to live or die? In recovery, you can turn around these deep-rooted patterns. But you have to bring them to the forefront, and you've got to work with a support system of other women so you're not operating out of sickness and secrets. One day we can look in a mirror, and instead of finding 100 things wrong with us, we'll find 100 that are right. We must be compassionate to ourselves, the way we'd be with friends."

In addition to making the rounds on the lecture circuit, Otis works as a correspondent for Channel 4 News in San Francisco. She's also writing an autobiography and, she says, a production company is planning a movie about her life. "People ask me, `Don't you have regrets?' I tell them I couldn't imagine being any other place than where I am now. Everything I've been through has made me the woman I always aspired to be. I finally realized that by being of service to other people, you're giving yourself the greatest gift of all."