Tarek El Moussa is getting candid about his past personal challenges, revealing that at a low point, he slept 12 to 14 hours a day.
On Monday, the HGTV star shared a recent photo of himself smiling on Instagram and asked, “What do you see in this picture? Do you see a successful, hardworking family man that you’ve seen on tv for over a decade?”
“If so…it hasn’t always been like that,” he admitted. “You see, I became the person you see in this photo. My personal ‘before’ was a mess. Pretty similar to the ‘before’ houses on my HGTV shows. I was a complete disaster!”
Tarek, who currently hosts The Flipping El Moussas on the network with wife Heather Rae El Moussa, went on to remember what his life looked like then.
“At one point in my life, I used to sleep 12 to 14 hours a day,” he wrote. “I slept so much not only because I was drunk but because I hated being awake. I hated having to deal with the inner voice in my head haunting me telling me what a loser I was. I hated myself and I hated my life. Every day I wallowed away in self pity and misery!”
Tarek claims his upcoming book, FLIP YOUR LIFE: How to Find Opportunity in Distress-in Real Estate, Business, and Life, will explain how he went from being “so unmotivated” to finding success as a house flipper and television personality.
Before The Flipping El Moussas premiered earlier this year, he previously hosted HGTV’s Flip or Flop with his ex-wife Christina Hall from 2013 to 2022.
Tarek has been taking an emotional walk down memory lane leading up to the Feb. 6 release of his book, which will detail how he turned to alcohol when his potential baseball career was derailed by a shoulder injury.
In another Instagram post last week, he revealed he once drank “over 30 shots” of vodka when he was 20.
He said his “life went downhill” overnight when he was 19.
“I gained 50 pounds, lost my confidence, lost my hope, and became a raging alcoholic. All my drive was gone,” he wrote, adding that it is “crazy to think today I sometimes wake up at 3am to start work, when at 20, I would wake up at 3pm to start my day.”
Tarek, who’s now a dad of three — he shares 10-month-old son Tristan with Heather, as well as 13-year-old daughter Taylor and 8-year-old son Brayden with Hall — said he wrote the book “thinking about 20 year old Tarek and what could have helped him.”
“We all deserve a second chance,” he wrote.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1–800–662-HELP.
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