Longtime HGTV star Alison Victoria is happy to report she’s still the life of the party — even without a sip of alcohol.
“I don’t need alcohol to be fun, I am still the one dancing on the tables, I’m still the same,” she announced on a new episode of her “Pap Smear Podcast” on June 10, 2025, discussing her new sober life. But she admitted that had she not quit drinking, “I may have lost the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The “Windy City Rehab” star revealed in April 2025 that she’d been sober for eight months, but in a new podcast episode featuring her beau, movie director Brandt Andersen, Victoria vulnerably discussed in-depth her last night of drinking in 2024 — and how she realized she had to choose between alcohol and the love of her life.
Alison Victoria Opens Up About Night She Got Drunk During Beau Brandt Andersen’s Movie Screening
Victoria went Instagram official with Andersen in June 2024, sharing multiple photos of them together at the Daytime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles. The couple traveled the world together to promote his feature film directorial debut, “The Stranger’s Case,” attending international film festival screenings where the movie earned many accolades and awards.
During the June 10 episode of Victoria’s podcast, Andersen revealed how Victoria dropped everything to accompany him on his travels, promoting the movie on social media and hosting events for special guests after various screenings.
On the night of Brandt’s final film screening in Amman, Jordan — at the Amman International Film Festival on July 4 — Victoria planned an elegant dinner for special guests, including members of the royal family there, she said on the podcast.
To relax before the screening, she had a couple of margaritas while she was getting her makeup done and Brandt went ahead of her to the theater to prepare. When she arrived at the theater, Victoria said she offered to go grab them some waters before the movie started. As she did, she said, she received a text about a show she’d be filming “in a couple of months” and needed to take a quick call about it.
As Victoria took the call, she looked across the street and said, “I remember there was, like, this shiny liquor store with this big refrigerator with tons of Corona and I’m like, ‘I’m just going to get a Corona. Like, let me just chug a beer.’ I’m doing my call, I’m having a beer.”
One beer turned into two, and a few minutes turned into two hours hanging out with the liquor store owner, she said. Andersen frantically texted Victoria, unsure where she was. He said he sent out a friend to search for her — only to have Victoria show up at the end of the movie screening, obviously drunk.
Alison Victoria Says She Realized Choosing Alcohol Over Her Love Would Be ‘Disgusting’
Recalling what happened next, Victoria shared on her podcast, talking directly to Brandt, “I show up at the end of the film, everyone’s walking out, you are walking out. You’re like, ‘Where were you, are you okay?’ I’m like “Yeah I made a new friend.’ Noticeably, I’m drunk. Obviously, I’m drunk and we have this dinner that I’ve planned and that I’ve worked on for a while.”
Victoria noted that Brandt said almost nothing to her that night and that his friend gave her a “lecture,” but they went ahead with the elegant dinner for 20. She reflected, “In retrospect, it was just not good behavior, I wasn’t being respectful of my environment.”
The following morning she and Brandt were scheduled to fly back together to Chicago, but he informed her that he needed space to process what had happened and to figure out how they could move forward in their relationship — a move that Victoria said she found incredibly loving and mature.
Getting home to Chicago alone, Victoria realized her drinking was becoming a “really ugly, spiraling process if it kept going” and said she suddenly decided, “I’m just going to do something about it. I don’t want to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to me over alcohol. What a disgusting thing to choose over you.”
In solidarity, Andersen has since also given up drinking and the couple celebrated how much closer and healthier they’ve become as a result.
“I have all this clarity and we’ve never been stronger,” Victoria said. “It’s never been better, like, I’ve always felt so close to you, but there was definitely this, like, elephant in the room that’s called tequila.”
After that trip, Victoria headed to Utah — where Andersen said he’s been living to be near his 17-year-old — to film season six of “Rock the Block,” which she won with Michel Smith Boyd. She’s also been filming a spinoff of her series in Las Vegas, called “Sin City Rehab,” due to premiere in 2025.
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HGTV’s Alison Victoria Vulnerably Shares Her Last Night of Drinking