Gina Kirschenheiter Says It Was 'Really Good' For Her to Film 'RHOC' Sober: 'I Felt Way More Present'
"I was able to tackle and look at some things that I really didn't want to look at,” the "Real Housewives of Orange County" star said of filming the Bravo show sober for the first time
Gina Kirschenheiter is taking on reality TV completely sober for the first time.
On Tuesday, the Real Housewives of Orange County star, 39, appeared on E! News and opened up about her experience filming the Bravo show without drinking for the first time since she joined the cast in 2018.
"It's crazy, right? Who would do this sober?" she joked to co-hosts Justin Sylvester and Keltie Knight. "I just keep saying the whole season, 'I am way too sober for this.'"
"I think it was a really good thing for me," the mother of three said. "Obviously, personally I was able to tackle and look at some things that I really didn't want to look at. And also I just felt way more present the whole season and able to stay in it more and help work things out between some of my castmates and what not, rather than just being like, 'I can't take it anymore. I'm just gonna put myself down.'"
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In April, Kirschenheiter opened up to PEOPLE about living alcohol-free after making the decision to stop drinking nearly two years ago.
"I can't begin to describe how much it's changed me," she admitted. "Drinking was a big part of my life and to eliminate it was a huge shift for me personally. But it's had this trickle-down, ripple effect where I've just seen so many things shift for the better. And I couldn't be happier."
"I haven't talked about it with anyone really," she said at the time. "People keep saying to me on Instagram, 'You've lost weight, are you on Ozempic?' And I want to be like, 'No, I just stopped drinking!' So I'm excited to finally get my story out now."
Kirschenheiter was inspired to make the change after noticing she was starting to become dependent on alcohol in a way she hadn't been before.
"I was drinking way too much," she recalled to PEOPLE. "What used to be a drink when I was out at night with friends became, especially during COVID, me pouring a drink every night without even thinking about it. And I don't identify as an alcoholic, I don't believe I have that disease. But I felt the scales starting to tip, and I didn't like that feeling. I was numbing myself with it. I was self-medicating, and I couldn't stop. It was more in control of me than I was of it."
That revelation struck fear in Kirschenheiter. "I would say to myself, 'I think I'm drinking too much. Next week, I'm not going to drink at all.' But then next week would come and it'd be hard and I'd say, 'F--- it, I'm going to have a drink, I can't do this.' And that scared me," she recalled. "I wasn't even able to have a short spurt of success not drinking. And that really raised a red flag to me like, 'Oh, this is serious.' "
"It's really hard to look at yourself like that; to examine your behavior to see what isn't working," she continued. "But I knew, after I did, that I had a problem. I was using alcohol as a crutch to not deal with my problems. I could see that it wasn't the healthiest thing for me. I didn't like the way I felt after a night of drinking. I didn't like the way I looked. I wasn't living my best life. And it was getting in my way; it was preventing me from being the best parent I could be, the best partner — all of that. I needed to change."
Cold turkey turned out to be the best choice for Kirschenheiter. "I didn't know if I could do it or not, so I needed to eliminate it completely from my life as to really set myself up for success," she said at the time. "I got all the alcohol out of the house, avoided going out for social settings at night... anything I could do to make sure I wasn't tempting myself."
Instead, the reality star focused more on daytime activities and "really leaned into time with the kids" (she shares Nicholas, 10, Sienna, 8, and Luca, 6, with ex-husband Matt Kirschenheiter, while her boyfriend Travis Mullen — whom she's been dating since 2019 — has three kids of his own from a previous relationship).
"I distracted myself with healthy distractions," she said. "And it was good because it helped me take my mind off of it while also reminding me of the real priorities I had in life."
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