Shannon Beador looked back on her hardest night of filming and opened up about her “humiliating” DUI arrest during an interview on Friday.
As she also praised Vicki Gunvalson, 62, for being a good friend, detailed when John Janssen, 60, began dating Alexis Bellino, 47, and slammed Tamra Judge, 56, for pushing a false narrative about her on The Real Housewives of Orange County, Shannon, 60, discussed her use of alcohol and reflected on her time spent behind bars.
“[It was] really brutal,” Shannon admitted to Extra’s Melvin Robert on August 8 of the episode that chronicled her DUI arrest and showcased the bloody selfie she took after the hit-and-run incident. “It was the hardest night that I had in my 10 years of filming. I don’t want to sound like a victim, so it’s like I feel like I’m walking a fine line, but I mean, all it has shown me is that I am a survivor and I’m able to make positive change even in, you know, such a dark place.”
Adding to the heartache of her arrest was the fact that Shannon has three daughters, Sophie, 22, and twins Stella and Adeline, 20, who she is trying to set an example for.
“To get a DUI… I mean, I was physically injured and broke bones, and to do all of that when I’m 60 years old, I mean, it was just the most humiliating,” she shared. “And I mean, most importantly, I didn’t hurt anybody, and that is what I’m grateful for, because I don’t know how I would have handled that.”
“It [prompted] me to look inward and realize changes that I needed to make in my life,” she added.
Following her arrest, Shannon entered a behavior wellness program with an alcohol component, as she admits to using alcohol to cope with her problems.
“I was using alcohol to cope because I was miserable, and so I needed to figure out why I was making toxic choices in my life and drinking and consuming more alcohol during certain periods of my life was part of that. But I also wanted to dig deeper and I’m glad that I chose that program,” she explained. “I continue on with the psychiatrist and the therapist I was working with weekly, so it’s been really good for me.”
According to Shannon, she’s no longer using alcohol to cope.
“I have different coping mechanisms now. I go on walks. I do breathing exercises. I use cold packs. There are all these different processes that I go through to handle certain situations,” she revealed. “I had to look into myself. Everyone has things that have happened in their lifetime, and I just kind of shoved them down and just kept moving forward. And now I’m addressing certain things that have happened throughout my lifetime and how it might have molded me into the person I am now.”
Throughout the months that followed her arrest, as Shannon suffered a falling out with Tamra, Vicki was by her side.
“The person that was there for me is Vicki Gunvalson. She actually took me into her home, and I stayed and lived with her for a bit,” she said.
Shannon needed all the love and support she could get during the trying time, especially after learning that her ex-boyfriend, John, had struck up a romance with Alexis just weeks after they broke up for a second time.
“It was difficult… John and I had — as much as they want to say that we hadn’t — we had rekindled our relationship, and about six weeks after he ended it for the second time, he met Alexis,” she revealed. “And so I think they were about two months into their relationship when I met them, so it was very new. And so it’s just awkward and it’s hurtful too. I was still going through a lot of emotional things, I mean, and I still am now.”
While Shannon was not happy about John’s new relationship, it wasn’t because she wanted to reconcile. In fact, she admitted they are “not good together.”
“We had a very toxic relationship. But I just don’t think she’s been the kindest person and I just don’t want to have a relationship with her. Why would I? Why would anyone? I think anyone in my position would say the same thing,” she reasoned.
Moving on to her drama with Tamra, Shannon accused her former friend of using her for a storyline on RHOC.
“Tamra has this narrative that she just keeps repeating, saying, ‘Shannon has an issue with alcohol.’ And she is correct that I was using alcohol to cope, and I’ve openly admitted that multiple times. The problem is that there’s a new narrative now, and Tamra seems to be stuck in the past,” Shannon noted. “She knows absolutely nothing about what I’ve done and what I’m working on and what I continue to work on.”
“I think if Tamra wasn’t talking about me, I don’t know really what else she’d be talking about this season,” Shannon went on. “If the fans and the viewers believe what she has to say about me, then I’m sorry that they do, because she’s not telling truths about me at all. I know the person that I am and those close to me do, and that’s good enough for me.”
Although some have hoped for a reconciliation between them, Shannon doesn’t seem open to the idea.
“She can continue to be unkind and cruel, I’m just not interested anymore,” Shannon declared. “We’ve had this history, 10 years, of up-down, up-down, and I always go back. It’s not healthy for me to enter a toxic friendship, and that shows growth within me to say, ‘I’m going to create a boundary and we’re not going to be friends anymore.’”
In a separate interview with PEOPLE, Shannon opened up about her five hours in jail, which was a “fine,” though adding that it was particularly challenging since she tends to be “very claustrophobic.”
“I said to the policeman, ‘Oh no, I can’t go in there. That’s too small. I can’t go in there,’” she recalled of the moment in which an officer led her to her cell. “And there were no bars for air. It was a door. They go, ‘Well, this is the bigger one.’ So I walked in to see, and they shut the door. And then I’m like, ‘No, you gotta let me go. I can’t be here.’”
To lessen the claustrophobia she was experiencing, Shannon “laid down on the bed” and “faced the wall.”
“I was just pretending I was in a bedroom, like, ‘Oh no, you were just in a bedroom,’” she continued. “I was injured. I had blood all over me. And when they let me out, literally, it was like in the movies. They opened up this garage door. I didn’t even know where. I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ [and] they go, ‘You can go.’ I had no shoes on. It was surreal and it is something that I will never let happen again. I’m never going to make poor decisions like that again. I’m not going to.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo.