Beverly Johnson Reveals Extreme Diet and Drug Use in Early Modeling Career

First Black Vogue Cover Model Used Cocaine and Severely Restricted Diet to Maintain Thin Figure, Now Celebrates 50 Years of Sobriety

Beverly Johnson, the first Black woman to grace the cover of Vogue, reveals she used cocaine and severely restricted her diet to maintain a thin figure during her early modeling career in the 1970s and 1980s.
Johnson recalls being congratulated for her thinness and was led to believe that cocaine was not addictive, with the drug being used by models because it suppressed appetite.
She describes her diet at the time as consisting of two eggs and a bowl of brown rice a week, which often left her shaking and needing to eat something, like a bag of M&Ms, to stop the shakes.
Johnson's wake-up call came when her mother made her look at herself in a three-way mirror, allowing her to see the skeletal state of her body for the first time.
Johnson, now 71, has been sober for over 50 years and is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of her historic Vogue cover.