Trevi Moran became an internet star at 13. After a decade of fame, partying and rehab, she's starting a new chapter.

• Trevi Moran's career has straddled the line between internet stardom and mainstream fame.
• She battled demons during her teens and early 20s and turned to alcohol and partying.

A thought popped into Trevi Moran's head as she looked at herself in the mirror on the morning of August 13, 2021, after a night of heavy partying.

"It was so weird because I had this thought of, 'I'm too hot to be this hungover,'" she told Insider in a phone call, a week and a half after celebrating one year of sobriety. "I remember just being like, 'This is so not you, Trevi, this is exhausting.'"

Moran, who was about to turn 22, said she looked at her reflection that day and realized how tired she was and that she'd never achieve what she wanted in that condition.

"I could just see myself spiraling, and I was like, 'You're too good for this. You have too much more to show to have this be your life,'" she said.

Moran checked into rehab, and after 60 days, packed up her life in LA and booked a one-way ticket to New York — leaving behind old friends, old habits, and her partying lifestyle. It was "the best decision I've ever made in my fucking life," she said, realizing that if she stayed in the place where she grew up drinking, she was never going to heal.

Moran, now 23, has been signed to new management and has a new perspective on life. She just released her latest single, "Too Hot to Be Hungover" — which she called a "universal anthem" that reminds her of that morning last August — and is ready to be the pop star she's wanted to be since she began making YouTube videos as a child over a decade ago.

"I knew what I had to do to make my life better — I had the key, but for some reason I just couldn't get myself to put the key in the hole to unlock it," she said. "I guess I finally just jammed it in."

Moran stepped into the spotlight 13 years ago

Moran grew up in Temecula — a city in Southern California that she calls "cookie-cutter" — where "if your son isn't a baseball player and your daughter's not a ballerina and your husband's not working 9 to 5 and the mom's not at home, your family is fucking weird," she said. Moran didn't fit into that mold and was unapologetic about wanting to be famous from a young age.

"When I created my YouTube channel, I had full intentions of being a star," she said. "I know when people do these fucking interviews, they're like, 'When I created my TikTok, or when I created my YouTube, I had no idea, I was just doing it for fun.' I was like, no bitch. I made mine to be a star."

Moran fits that description, at least in the online world — she has 1.4 million Instagram followers and about the same number of YouTube subscribers. But she's been able to straddle the line between internet stardom and mainstream fame. She made her YouTube debut in 2008, at just 10 years old, scoring several viral-video hits for her Apple Store dance moves. In 2012, when Moran was 13, she auditioned for Fox's reality-TV competition "The X Factor" and made it through the first round with her rendition of LMFAO's "Sexy and I Know It."

Moran also became part of the YouTube group Our2ndLife with fellow creators Ricky Dillon, Connor Franta, Sam Pottorff, JC Caylen, and Kian Lawley. The group tapped into the culture of challenges and pranks that was mega-popular on the platform at the time. The channel grew a following of 3 million, but in 2014, after two years, its members splintered off to pursue their own projects. This period was "probably one of the more insanely stressful parts of my life," Moran said, calling YouTube fame "very up and down."

During Moran's rise to internet stardom, online creators started being taken seriously in the entertainment industry and making serious money — getting scooped up by massive talent agencies, making movies and music, and signing book deals. Industry attention also meant that Moran's group became increasingly outside of her control, she said, with people telling them how to dress, what to say, and how to act. It was "a really weird faking-it time" of her life, she said — a feeling intensified by the fact that she was part of an ostensibly all-male YouTube group while questioning her gender identity.

Moran remembers Googling "am I transgender" and filling out online quizzes when she was about 8 years old. She came out publicly on June 6, 2020, in a YouTube video called "Coming Out. I Am Female," where she shared her new name, Trevi. Moran said she received an outpouring of love and support from fellow celebrities and fans after she released the video.

Moran said that, looking back, hiding that part of herself for so long was "insane."

"I was for some reason able to keep it in the back part of my brain," she said. "Because I knew I was gonna have a day where I was gonna be brave enough to just pull it out and be like, 'This is me, motherfuckers.'"

Moran was battling demons during her teens and early 20s

In 2017, Moran signed with the veteran music-industry executive Angelica Cob-Baehler, who counts Katy Perry among her clients. Moran was thrilled and said the two developed a close bond — calling Cob-Baehler "an angel in my life" — while talking about the direction her career would take. But the partnership would come to a tragic end a year later, in November 2018, when Cob-Baehler died from cancer at the age of 47.

"We had so many plans and I miss her so much," Moran said. "So many plans were lost, but I lost my best friend at the same time."

Cob-Baehler's death set Moran adrift. For the next four years, Moran worked alone, managing herself and arranging all of her own bookings, graphics, and brand deals. She also began drinking heavily.

The addiction crept up on her slowly. Moran started drinking at 16 and said she never woke up with a hangover. She had been working since the age of 13, so by her mid-teens, she felt like she was "living like an adult." She would work all day, doing press conferences or interviews and performing in shows, then at night she'd "go get absolutely hammered."

By the time she turned 20, the hangovers had caught up with her, along with depression and anxiety. It was like a "boomerang effect," Moran said — she had been using alcohol as a crutch to cope with her problems, but alcohol had become the problem.

Her partying was playing out online

Moran's journey was complicated by the fact it was playing out online. She would regularly appear in vlogs with one of her closest friends, the storytime YouTuber turned internet megastar Tana Mongeau, between 2018 and 2020. One of their most watched videos was one they made while on vacation in 2019 called "BLACKOUT DRUNK GET READY WITH US IN MEXICO," in which Moran and Mongeau drink copious cocktails and get dressed up for a night out at their resort.

Moran also had a recurring role in Mongeau's MTV reality show "No Filter," which ran for two seasons as a web show. Moran would wear a microphone and film around the clock, capturing moments like going with Mongeau to the VMAs, where Moran said she was "blackout drunk on the red carpet."

"On the outside, that trip looked super glamorous, like, 'Look at me, I'm at the VMAs in this designer dress,'" she said. "But I couldn't honestly say that I remember much of that. And it makes me so upset and sad, because that is every artist's dream, to go to the VMAs."

Moran and Mongeau's friendship was tested by Moran's decision to get sober, but not for the reasons their fans assumed. In one episode of "No Filter," Moran, Mongeau, and a group of their friends go out for a "girls' night" shortly after Moran decided she wanted to stop drinking. In the episode, Mongeau says, "The first one to literally pass out wins," and gives out drinks in front of Moran. Later in the episode, Moran says she feels uncomfortable and ends up leaving.

That night was tough for Moran, but, as with everything influencers do, viewers came away with their own narratives of what happened. Moran said she was aware from the get-go there would be a fair amount of carousing in the bar. She knew her friends, and MTV had rented out the entire bar for them.

Moran said that the editing of the episode — complete with dramatic music and cuts to create a "viral moment" — led many fans to attack Mongeau in comments and on social media. In reality, Mongeau was one of the few people who warned Moran that the night might not be a good idea, Moran said.

"I felt bad for Tana," she said. "Obviously we know she's not a perfect fucking person and she knows that. And that's the whole point of being a human being — we do make mistakes, but we're gonna keep on going."

Moran stopped seeing several friends, including Mongeau, when she got sober in order to avoid her old habits. That created a distance between the pair, both physically and emotionally.

Now that she's been sober for a year, Moran feels like she's strong enough to visit LA again and start rebuilding those friendships. She and Mongeau — whom she calls "one of the bigger parts of my story as far as supporters go" — have recently reconnected after two years apart. One of Moran's biggest struggles with sobriety has been to face up to some of her past behavior and apologize to people, she said.

"We were gonna reconnect when I was ready," Moran said of Mongeau. "It was at this most recent trip that I made to LA, and it was surreal because I was just like, 'Wow, I'm really looking at my fucking homie again.'"

Moran said she gets "chills" thinking about the past year — she feels ready to repair her relationships and said she "wouldn't take it back for the world."

"It was just an incredible, incredible thing to do to come back, be healthy, and show up and just be like, 'Hey, I'm here, I'm alive. I'm clean. I miss you,'" she said. "They had to go through this disease with me as well, they had to take care of me, they experienced it. So to come back and show them that not only did I do this for me, I did this so I can come back and we can heal from this whole experience together, is worth it."

New York is a new, healthy chapter

Moving to New York wasn't an easy decision, but Moran said it changed everything. She moved into a townhouse in Chelsea with seven other women who were also in recovery for substance abuse, and the experience of connecting on a deep, vulnerable level was like nothing she'd ever done before. The constant hum of New York has become a "healthy, sober, connecting, motivational place that I love to be in," she said.

Despite everything she's been through, Moran has an unusually grounded perspective on life. She attributes this to her "humorous way" of viewing the world, stretching back to feeling like an oddball in her hometown.

"First of all, yeah, I'm born in the wrong body, we've established this at like 8 years old," she said. "Also, I'm not following your rules, because, reality check, y'all are just walking, talking monkeys on a spinning rock in outer space."

Moran has always been laser-focused on her goals, and she doesn't plan to be forgotten or written off as a child star who "grew up and then fucking spiraled." Her year of sobriety is a full-circle moment.

"Everyone has their own take, right? Like, 'Oh, so she was an addict, she's over,'" she said. "And I'm like, no, bitch — we're just getting started."