I was a high-flying news anchor with a secret double life. Then my boss found out… here’s how I lost everything
Veronica DeKett looked every inch the all-American TV news star.
Aged just 27, she was anchoring four hours of live television a day in Indiana, trusted to deliver the headlines into thousands of homes.
But behind the mascara, studio lights and autocue, DeKett was hiding a secret that would ultimately destroy her career: She was an alcoholic.
DeKett’s descent into alcoholism began in high school, when she would slurp from a beer keg at a friend’s house because it was ‘cool’. At college, she only accelerated her drinking and became strategic, buying two drinks at once in bars so she ‘never had to wait for my second’.
By the time she landed her hot-shot Evansville job in 2016 at WEVV-TV 44, alcohol had become a near-nightly ritual. She would spend four nights a week on the town and drink five to 10 alcoholic beverages an evening.
DeKett, now 34, headed to local bars, and said she would consume two extra-dirty martinis, two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and two double-vodka Red Bulls.
Even then, however, she refused to believe she had a problem.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘I was still like, no, I’m not an alcoholic, not an alcoholic. And everyone I know drinks like me. This is normal. It happens.’
Veronica DeKett, 34, was a news anchor at a station in Evansville, Indiana. But that all changed after she was arrested for driving under the influence
DeKett learned that she had alcohol use disorder (AUD), and has turned her life around. She still lives in Evansville
On screen, the illusion held. Studio lights and the adrenaline of live TV helped her to power through blistering hangovers, and, at times, mornings when she was still drunk.
But, off camera, it was much harder to hide.
DeKett recounted one time when she was picked up for an on-the-road shoot by a photographer who told her she ‘smelt of alcohol’.
One morning, she woke up on her bathroom floor surrounded by vomit barely two hours before she was due to go on screen.
Her morning anchor role meant she needed to be in the studio by 5am, waking up by 3am. But, for DeKett, the pull of alcohol was so strong that she would often be out for hours the night beforehand.
She said: ‘I don’t know how I did it. I was still drunk on air sometimes, or I was, like, so hungover that I don’t even know, I was just pushing through.
‘There’s something also about the adrenaline of live television… like, your body is pumped full of hormones.’
Alcohol use disorder, colloquially known as alcoholism, is defined as an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational or health consequences, and it’s what DeKett was later told that she had.
A total of 27million Americans over 18, or about one in 10 adults, have this condition, estimates suggest. But more than 70 percent, including DeKett, do not realize they have it.
DeKett said that, during her drinking days, one of her strategies was to buy two drinks at once so that she ‘did not have to wait for another one’
She started drinking in high school, with her alcohol consumption then exploding in college. She is shown above during her younger drinking days
DeKett’s alcoholism landed her in trouble with the law on multiple occasions.
In 2014, DeKett was arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) in New Jersey, but she had shrugged it off.
She had her license revoked for 90 days, was fined $687 and spent 12 hours in an intoxicated drivers program.
Five years later, DeKett was arrested again.
After drinking at a University of Evansville basketball game with a friend and then driving home on November 10, 2019, the Indiana police pulled her over.
A breathalyzer test found her alcohol level was twice the permitted limit for driving, while officers also said she smelled of alcohol, her eyes were glassy and her speech was slurred.
She was described as being argumentative and belligerent at times. She was taken to prison, where she spent the night.
Then, her mugshot was released, which quickly went viral across the town because she was so well-known. People dragged her all over social media.
Despite this, however, she kept drinking.
DeKett was told by a judge, as a condition of her bond, not to drink alcohol until her next hearing on November 21.
But DeKett told the Daily Mail she misunderstood and thought the judge only meant she should not drink just before she returned to court.
That weekend, she went to a wedding, where she got drunk again, and then went to a friend’s house after, where she had even more alcohol.
At the event, she caught the bouquet and got so drunk that, at one point, she was walking around wearing a fake moustache.
DeKett told the Daily Mail her probation officer arrived at her house three days later and performed a blood test, which showed she had alcohol in her system.
In November 2019, DeKett was arrested and charged with a DUI. The above is her mugshot released by the police
The officer recommended she should be jailed for three days if she consumed alcohol again.
She was ordered to use a breathalyzer to check for alcohol three times a day, at 7am, 1pm and 5pm.
Originally, her DUI in Indiana was charged as a misdemeanor but, after Indiana learned of her DUI in New Jersey, this was upgraded to a felony, a serious crime that can lead to up to 2.5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The news station fired her in December that year and DeKett said it was one of the worst moments of her life, and left her feeling like everything she had worked for had disappeared.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘When I got let go from the station, I was like, I want to die, truly, I want to die. My life is over. Everything I worked so hard for was gone.
‘My agent dropped me, she said I would never work again. People dragged me all over social media, I was publicly shamed.’
She added, however: ‘But, unfortunately for me, and fortunately for me, that was what was needed for me to learn that I was an alcoholic.
‘People would say, ‘How can she be an alcoholic? She had that job’. But, when you rip away the job, rip away everything, I could not hide behind anything else, there was no way to deny it at that point, it took a while to admit my disease.’
DeKett has now turned her life around, and posts on social media about alcohol abuse
DeKett is shown above celebrating her sixth year of being sober
It was reaching rock bottom with alcohol that helped DeKett to completely turn her life around.
In addition to breathalyzing herself three times a day, she started to attend Alcoholics Anonymous three times a week and went to therapy to help her understand her drinking problems.
She told the Daily Mail the breath tests and the threat of jail helped her to quit alcohol.
These days, she jokes that if she drinks again, she will ‘break out in handcuffs’. DeKett has now been sober for six years.
In February 2020, a judge reduced her charge from a felony to a misdemeanor, and said she would need to breathalyze herself three times a day for a year.
The judge warned that if she was found to be drinking alcohol again, she would be jailed.
DeKett pled guilty to the DUI in Indiana and her license was suspended for 90 days.
Judge Robert Pigman told her, reported by the Courier Press: ‘The efforts you’ve made to date have been sincere. If you screw this up, incarceration is our next step.’
In October 2020, she got a job again, working in sales. She also got back into a relationship with her boyfriend after the pair broke up amid the DUI case.
In 2023, she married him at Disney World, and the pair now have a son, Penn, who is two.
Recently, and amid spiraling childcare costs, she left her job to become a full-time mother.
Her old news station invited her to come back two years later too, but DeKett turned them down.
DeKett celebrated six years without alcohol last month, now only enjoying mocktails.
As well as boosting her social life, she said that not drinking has had a revolutionary effect on her health and that she has never felt more attractive.
DeKett is shown above after her DUI arrest in Indiana. She is holding a nonalcoholic glass of bubbly
She said: ‘I’ve never been hotter than I was when I first quit drinking. Like, I was, my skin was perfect. I was skinny, you know, I, like, lost a ton of weight.
‘I know that the stress of the felony charge may have had something to do with it, but alcohol contains a lot of calories, too. Now, I joke sometimes, I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re just one felony charge away from our goal weight!’. It was like I’d found the fountain of youth.’
She added: ‘Now, I have [also] learned that jobs will always be there. I’ve learned that, right even when you blow up your entire life and think you will never work again, jobs will always be there.’
DeKett says she is now keen to share her journey to hold up the mirror for others who may be going through the same thing she was, and to help them realize that they have a problem with alcohol.
She added: ‘If I had had someone holding up their mirror for me before all this happened, maybe I could have seen myself, and maybe realized that I am an alcoholic.
‘But, because everything around us is so normalized, alcoholic behavior is so normalized, and alcohol is the center of every celebration, people don’t always realize.
‘It’s been one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life to hold my mirror up for other ‘alcoholic princesses’ out there.’
