YouTube Star Jaclyn Hill She Used to Drink 'a Handle of Tito's, the Big One': 'It Was Numbing Me' (2024)

• YouTube beauty guru Jaclyn Hill shared how she ended up “drinking all day every day” in the wake of her 2019 makeup line controversy
• The makeup artist and her boyfriend Jordan Torrey told Taylor Lautner and his wife, also named Taylor Lautner, on their podcast The Squeeze that she was drinking “a handle of Tito’s” vodka every three days
• Hill said she’s been sober for a year: “I don’t desire” alcohol

YouTube star Jaclyn Hill shared that she started drinking “during my divorce in a fun way” — but soon began “drinking all day every day.”

The popular makeup artist and boyfriend, Next Level Chef alum Jordan Torrey, appeared on The Squeeze podcast with Taylor Lautner and his wife, also named Taylor Lautner, where they discussed Hill's sobriety journey —and the public criticism she faced after she gained weight due to alcohol.

Hill, 34, shared that when she was married to her ex-husband Jon Hill, who died in 2022, “I did not really drink.”

But Hill went on to say that “towards the end [of my marriage], I started drinking because I started being like, ‘I wanna have a good time. I wanna enjoy my life.’ And so when I was going through my divorce, I started partying.”

“There was nothing concerning," added Hill, who has nearly 6 million followers on YouTube. "No one was like, ‘This is weird.’ I'd take a girl's trip to Vegas. I'd party. I'd drink.”

When she began dating Torrey, she said he would “have a drink or two. I'd have a few drinks, and it was just a good, normal, jolly old time. It was nothing to be concerned about.”

“And then the lipsticks happened, and, I mean, it was overnight,” recalled Hill, referring to the 2019 controversy when customers claimed that her lipsticks were moldy or contained contaminants — forcing her to issue a full refund to everyone.

"I thought that [the drinking] was helping and numbing me,” she said, adding that, instead, it “made things so much worse.”

“You can see that period of my life — not to make it about physical — but let's get real,” Hill said. “I just bloated and got so inflamed and gained so much weight so quickly. During that time, the amount of alcohol that I was drinking, you know, like a handle of Tito's —the big one. I was going through one handle in, like, three days." (A handle contains approximately 40 shots of alcohol.)

Hill said “it was the hardest time in my life,” and added, “I did not wanna live at that point.”

"I remember telling my mom, 'Don't worry about me because I'm not gonna do it,' but I pray[ed] every single night that I don't wake up the next day.”

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“I've healed from it,” Hill said, “But I just saw my life being over at 30 years old.”

Torrey added that when Hill gained weight, “people [were] calling her out on that" —and videos suggesting that her appearance was the result of a cosmetic procedure gone wrong were popping up.

"All these videos are coming up being, like, 'Jaclyn Hill's face full of filler,' ” said Torrey.

“Botox gone wrong,” Hill added. “ 'That's why she looks like a chipmunk.' And it's like, here I am, like, on the verge of dying from how much alcohol I'm consuming.”

Torrey said that at the time “she was literally watching, like, the the death of herself unfold online, and it just sent her into this, like, spiraling depression.”

Hill said the turning point finally came when “I looked at myself in the mirror and I did not recognize myself physically and emotionally. I had become someone that I hated."

Initially, she said her goal was three months of sobriety, and now, “I'm a year into it.”

“I'm aware how many people struggle in a very real, very deep way with alcohol. And at the end of the day, we're all playing with fire," she said. "Alcohol is poison.”

“Now I'm genuinely like, I do not need it. I don't desire it,” Hill said. “I don't care about it. We're done.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.