OPRAH WINFREY: It was the moment she dreamed of.
Tara Conner was crowned Miss USA.
[CHEERING]
But soon, like a lot of people thrust into the spotlight,
her behavior offstage began to make headlines.
Reports of underage drinking, drug abuse,
and shocking photos of America's beauty queen running wild,
left many people shaking their heads.
Eight months after winning, Tara tested positive for cocaine.
When Donald Trump, co-owner of the Miss USA organization,
called a press conference, everybody, including Tara,
expected to hear you're fired.
Tara is going to be given a second chance.
She's agreed to go into rehab.
I want to apologize to my family
if I've put any disgrace upon you.
So were you drugging when you were in the pageants?
Most of the time, yeah I would be on something.
Yeah.
OPRAH WINFREY: When you were in the Miss USA pageant,
were you on something?
Yeah, while I was competing, I had pain pills the entire time.
OPRAH WINFREY: You'd bring pain pills the entire time?
TARA CONNER: Yeah.
Yeah.
It literally just became a way of life.
We Skyped in with the former beauty queen six years later
to see how her life is today.
As of today, I have been sober for a little
over nine and a half years, and my life is really beautiful.
When I won Miss USA in 2006, for me, that was the ticket out.
I feel like what happened with me was my head got
a little big, I thought, oh, it's always going to be easy,
and then life would happen, and then, all of a sudden,
I'm struggling financially, I don't know when my next job is.
I'd waitress, I had to sell cars for a while,
just to be able to sustain myself and make money.
And it taught me a really great lesson that I couldn't save
my face and my butt at the same, because again, my comfort
level, for the longest time, was dependent on what
other people thought of me.
When I did the Oprah show in 2010,
I was really excited for the opportunity.
I wish that we could have talked about the disease actually
being a disease in nature that has to be treated long-term.
We need to open our hearts to those who have been affected
and impacted by addiction.
These are not bad people.
They're good people to whom bad things have happened.
I'll say this about my experience with Donald Trump.
When he sent me to treatment, it was
a huge step forward for the recovery movement, absolutely.
The biggest thing that I focus on is my recovery advocacy.
I like to do a lot of work in prevention
and focusing on adolescents, because that's
where addictions start.
I think a lot of people search for a purpose their entire life
and never find one, and I had one fall in my lap,
and it's so cool.
I'm a reckless truth teller.
I just tell what's going on in my life, and the things
that I went through in hopes that it takes the shame out
of it for other people, because I've seen the stigma,
I've experienced it, I've felt the judgment and the shame.
But I don't have to live like that.
And I've also experience joy and compassion and empathy and love
and I get to give that back to people.
So today my main focus is helping
those that don't have a voice.