Amy G: Young, Gay, and Sober

Announcer: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, “Episode 17: Young, Gay, and Sober.”

Casey Arrillaga: How has addiction affected your family?

Female Speaker: It robbed me of my father.

Female Speaker: Addiction's affected my family in absolutely every way.

Male Speaker: It has caused a lot of turmoil.

Female Speaker: It goes back to what I understand is at least three generations.

Female Speaker: It robbed my daughter of her mother. It robbed my mother of her daughter.

Female Speaker: Addiction has made our family quite challenging.

Male Speaker: Addiction has affected my family tremendously.

Male Speaker: It's affected my relationship with my sister where I wouldn't – I'd go for months without talking to her. It's a very difficult thing for everybody involved. It doesn't just affect the one individual. It's a disease that affects the whole family.

Male Speaker: Addiction is spread not only genetically through some of my relatives and I assume ancestors.

Female Speaker: It's generational.

Female Speaker: I think of him every day.

Casey Arrillaga: Welcome to Addiction and the Family, a podcast by and for family members of anyone with an addiction. My name is Casey Arrillaga, and I'm a social worker and addiction counselor at both Windmill Wellness Ranch and InMindOut Emotional Wellness Centers in Texas.

Kira Arrillaga: And I'm Kira Arrillaga, addiction counselor intern and recovery coach at Windmill. Casey and I were in our addictions together for over ten years and have now been in recovery together for twice that long.

Casey Arrillaga: I've led hundreds of family workshops, but just as important is that Kira and I have lived the experience of being family to addiction as both children and adults.

Kira Arrillaga: Join us as we offer experience, strength, and realistic hope about how you and your family can find recovery together.
In this episode, Casey speaks with Amy Jade Galloway about her journey from the first drink at age 21 to her first attempts at sobriety at 22 and to the life she has now as she celebrates her first year of sobriety at 26. Amy speaks openly about her experience of trying to drink socially and of finally getting truly sober while navigating young adulthood as a lesbian in a small town in Scotland. We'll hear that interview after a quick word from one of our sponsors.
[Commercial]

Kira Arrillaga: Welcome back. Now, let's hear that interview.

Casey Arrillaga: Thank you so much for being here, and welcome to Addiction and the Family.

Amy Galloway: Thank you so much for having me. I'm Amy. I'm 26. I live in little seaside town in Scotland, and I'm recovered alcoholic. I'm one year totally sober from alcohol.

Casey Arrillaga: Congratulations on that.

Amy Galloway: Thank you. Oh, I had an absolute celebration. I had a cake and a party hat that had one on it. Of course, they make them for one year olds, so it didn't fit my head, but I still had the celebration.

Casey Arrillaga: That's beautiful. So what has you on a program called Addiction and the Family?

Amy Galloway: Well, basically with me being one year sober, I'm now through the woods and I wanted to go on to help others who are in my position, especially young people who have issues with alcohol because I think a lot of the time, it's completely swept under the rug and masked. A lot of people, a lot of friends and family, just recently found out about it, and so with my one-year sober, I've been blogging and just being really active on social media about my recovery.

Casey Arrillaga: That's wonderful, and I really appreciate that you're doing that.

Amy Galloway: Thank you.

Casey Arrillaga: Would you mind giving us a little bit of your story, what brought you to this point?

Amy Galloway: Of course. So I guess like most people's story starts with alcohol by them underage drinking or being rebellious. I was actually a really, really good kid to the point of almost wanting to be a nun, which his laughable to think about now because not only am I recovered alcoholic but I'm also a lesbian, so all of that just does not fit at all. Basically, I saw all my friends drinking, and it never interested me but my toxic relationship with alcohol started [04:40] the wedding when I was 21. My dad basically took me outside and told me that he was leaving the family. That was a lot on my shoulders, and I'd previously struggled with bulimia in my late teens, so that was already an established coping mechanism.
That night after he told me, in order to forget, I went straight to the bar. I remember just feeling that comfort from the burden that the alcohol gave me sliding down my throat. I started to forget and that started the whole toxic relationship I had with alcohol after that.

Casey Arrillaga: We know that addiction is about 50% genetic, so there are some predispositions for some people that may lie dormant for years or decades or if they're really lucky, maybe their entire lifetime; it never comes up. There's many of us that we're walking into a trap, and we didn't even know it was there.

Amy Galloway: Oh, absolutely, yeah, without a doubt. If you could see into the future, you're not going to pick up that first drink, and I definitely wouldn't have if I realized the strength that alcohol had over me.

Casey Arrillaga: Are you the only person in your family that you know of to deal with addictive or compulsive behaviors?

Amy Galloway: I remember speaking to my mom about it and on my mom's side, there was nothing. On my dad's side, [06:11] and then my dad's side, there was nothing, but I mean, we could dive into that deeper and look at just because there wasn't alcohol as an addiction doesn't mean there wasn't other types of addiction. I mean, my dad was pretty into gambling. My granddad on my dad's side was quite big into gambling and it could've been anything, and it could've been anywhere within my family line.

Casey Arrillaga: That's a great recognition, and you may be aware that compulsive gambling is actually the first behavioral addiction that was really recognized. Now that's moving over where people say okay, there's compulsive sexual activity, compulsive shopping, things like that that are becoming more and more recognized and often framed in terms of an addiction. We know that a lot of times, eating issues, at least in the American healthcare system, have very much been carved out and treated like okay, that's an issue over here and then chemical addiction is a whole other thing. I'm seeing more people starting to move towards saying well, maybe some of these same tools that work for outside chemical addiction can be applied for eating issues, or gambling issues, or any kind of compulsive behavior.

Amy Galloway: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think things like that when it's a gambling addiction or a food addiction or something other than substance or alcohol, it's pushed to the side or hidden and not really seen as an addiction a lot of the time. In cases like me when it comes down to admitting I'm an alcoholic and in recovery, looking back on my family line, I've looked for those red flags of alcoholism and there's none really apart from the one uncle. If I look for signs of addiction, gambling, food, it lights up like crazy.

Casey Arrillaga: Yeah, it really does. It's a great recognition to be able to see that for a lot of people, especially young people. You're on a mission, which I love, to go and talk to young people and get that message out there. Let people know not only are they not alone but there is a solution that's available to them. If people can recognize that they're not necessarily the black sheep of the family, which we know especially around chemical addiction sometimes people will focus on one member and say oh, they're the problem. If they would clean it up, everybody else would be fine. To be able to move away from that is really powerful. What's been your family's reaction, if I may ask, to your addiction and then also to your recovery?

Amy Galloway: I feel like they were definitely shocked. One minute, I was a really, really good kid and doing really well. I wouldn't even say the word bottom. I was the perfect child; my mom would describe me as an angel, even in my teenage years. I was really good while all my friends were out drinking. It came as such a surprise to her, I'm sure, and we're quite open. We speak about it now, but I think that their reaction at first was more shock than anything. I'm lucky that there were very, very supportive within my recovery. Towards my addiction, I'd say they didn't realize how bad it was. Otherwise, they would've forcefully done something and put me in rehab or something.
Looking back on it, I hid it very, very well. My mom owned her own store. She owned a delicatessen at the time when my alcoholism was at its peak, and I worked in there. Of course, she was the owner of the store and just starting up. She didn't have very much money, and so I was like, “You know what? It's fine. I can just work a week here,” and she would just give me some cash now and then. It wasn't set wages, but every penny would go towards drink, and she didn't know that. I know for a fact she wouldn't have gave me that money if she knew where it was going. A lot of the time, I would come into work drunk and I would get the change wrong, somebody's order. I would get somebody's order wrong.
I remember one year, I was probably drinking for a solid year at that point and nobody really noticed too much. My brother and my mom were starting to pick up on little things, and my brother at the time came to me, said, “For my birthday, I would really like something but I don't know if it's too much to ask.” I was like, “Yeah, sure,” expecting him to say an iPhone or an iPod. He'd asked me if I would stay sober for my birthday and for his birthday. I think that was a point where I was like well, they know. They know that something's going on. Also, I was like wait a minute; something must be going on. I must have a problem if he's asking this of me.
I didn't really see it as a big deal. I thought yeah, I can stop at any time. It's completely fine. I stopped a few days before my birthday in preparation for being sober on his, and I went through horrific withdrawals, and I think that's when they noticed just how bad it was. I think they thought it was a once at night thing, but it was a waking up at 8 a.m. and taking a shot to wake me up and hiding what I've got in Sprite bottles and water bottles and stashing it at places at work. During my recovery, they've been really, really supportive. I have an amazingly supportive girlfriend who's stuck by me through every single aspect of my addiction, and so I'm really, really thankful for that.

Casey Arrillaga: I'm really glad to hear that you have that level of support, and hearing that sometimes that kind of support comes from family members asking the difficult questions or making the difficult requests.

Amy Galloway: Absolutely, yep.

Casey Arrillaga: Was that it? Were you sober from that point forward?

Amy Galloway: Oh, no, it took a good while. I had probably been drinking for about a year solid at that point. I was badly bulimic as well. I was barely keeping anything down. The only thing I would keep down was my vodka and laxatives at the point to obviously fuel my bulimia, fuel my alcoholism. I would be lucky if I was keeping down one meal a day. It was a dark place. I think at that point, I had realized I had a problem. I had actually went to an eating disorder clinic. I remember them refusing to treat me because I was under the influence of alcohol. I remember them giving me leaflets for rehab, for outpatient programs. I was so offended, so offended. I remember saying to them, “Do you think I'm an alcoholic?” They were like, “Oh, no. Yeah, kind of. There's some [13:20] there.” I remember walking out and getting so mad and scrunching up this paper and throwing it and being like, “I can't possibly be an alcoholic. I'm in my 20s.”
We have an organization here, Ad Action, which is now changed to We Are with You. They were absolutely amazing. I remember walking in and being so scared they were going to yell at me, but they were so good, and they didn't force me into recovery, which was a big thing because I had such a fear at that point I would be completely out of control. Little did I know I was completely out of control. I was in the depths of it.
They basically showed me the direction I wanted to go and metaphorically just held my hand through it. I refused to admit that I couldn't socially drink because I was in my early 20s. I didn't want to think I can never have a sip of alcohol again. I'm never going to have a night out with my friends again. I kept saying that to myself for three years up until last year. I had ended up going to college to study to go into the recovery field. I was casually drinking during that but soon realized that that was not a good idea. My girlfriend had approached me and had said, “I think that that might be a small issue again.” I was like, “No, I'll be fine, I'll be fine.” I soon realized that I was starting to hide drink from her again.
It was a jolt when I had to tell her. We have a very honest and open relationship that we can speak about these things, and I had to be honest with her. I said, “I'm drinking a bit too much again,” and she was like, “Okay, what do we do? How do we tackle this?” She was amazingly supportive with me, and we decided – well, I decided that I would enter recovery. I would be completely sober. Last year, I decided to just go for it. I put my head down and I metaphorically closed my eyes and ran through the forest. I opened my eyes, and I was one year sober. I was like whew, I've done it kind of thing. Through that one year, I had a lot of therapy; I had a lot of talking to different outpatient programs but just speaking to them if I was struggling, if I needed advice.

Casey Arrillaga: That's great that you were able to reach out for those resources, and that they were available. You mentioned being lesbian and how supportive your girlfriend has been, which is a lot more accepted today than even in the recent past but can nonetheless be quite difficult for people. Can you talk about how this may've impacted your journey, and addiction, and recovery?

Amy Galloway: I think the biggest thing for me, during that [16:08] about myself was again the stereotype around me being an alcoholic was that I didn't look like an alcoholic. I wasn't the age of an alcoholic I wasn't this thing that society has in their head. Growing up, I was an extremely feminine little girl. I would wear dresses; I had loads of dolls. My nails were always painted. I was obsessed with Disney princesses. When I entered my teen years and thought wait a minute, I'm having an attraction towards females here, it was completely out of my mind because I was like oh, no, because I'm not a tomboy. I don't fit that stereotype. I didn't act what society labels as somebody who acts gay. The only representation of lesbians that I could see were sexualized by the media. I felt wrong; I felt dirty for finding attraction towards women. I would get a lot of are you sure you're gay? You're very feminine. Have you tried being with a man?
When it came to me coming out, I wasn't – I felt like I wasn't ready to be sexualized. I wasn't ready to be judged by people. I felt a lot of shame. I knew that people would either sexualize my sexuality or disapprove of it. I think it was a lot of internal things that I felt. I felt a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. Even though I hadn't really spoken to my parents about it, I thought who wants to have a gay kid? I was so nervous, and I wasn't ready for any of it. I think it was all too easy for substances to ease the guilt and shame I felt over loving someone of the same sex and not being able to accept myself. I definitely feel like that played a big role in my addiction.

Casey Arrillaga: You sound comfortable with yourself now. How did that happen, and how has it affected your recovery journey?

Amy Galloway: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like now, I'm very comfortable. I feel like I can stand here and say that I'm a proud lesbian. I feel very comfortable, not only comfortable but very proud to say that. Same with my addiction; I think I'm very proud of the fact that I've overcome so much in short amount of time. I'm still very, very young. A lot of people would look at me and be like, are you sure you had a problem with drink? Are you sure you weren't just a party girl? I mean, I can only go off of how I feel when I'm around my partner, my girlfriend. I feel that love is something to be celebrated. It's so pure and so magical that I'm so proud to say that I'm her partner, and I'm so proud to say that I'm gay. I think it's taken a long journey to get here, and I still think I'm working towards feeling even more comfortable and even more proud of myself and proud of who I am and to feel comfortable with who I am. I mean, I could be in my 80s and still be working towards this goal of what I see my life like or what I see myself like. It's a journey.

Kira Arrillaga: Now we're going to take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors, and then we'll come back with more from Amy Jade.
[Commercial]

Kira Arrillaga: Welcome back. Now let's hear the rest of Casey's interview with Amy Jade.

Casey Arrillaga: So there you are. You don't fit the stereotype of a lesbian or an alcoholic, and you're in a small Scottish seaside town essentially coming out as both. How did that go?

Amy Galloway: Everybody around me was really accepting. I think it was a shock for them because they already had this preconceived idea of what a lesbian looks like according to society, and I didn't fit that at all. A lot of people were taking back, I would say, but overall very supportive towards my addiction. It's a very small town and so word travels very, very fast. When you're going over to different stores to get a half-bottle of vodka or a full bottle of vodka, word's going to spread and people are going to talk. They're going to be like, “Yeah, she was at my shop a couple of times last week. Oh, she was at your shop a couple of times? She was at my shop a couple of times.” I think everybody knew that I did have a problem.
More recently, though, when I've been a lot more open about my recovery, I think people were relieved to see it. I got a really good reaction of [21:28] on social medias. No, everybody's been great, and I'm really thankful for that because I know that it's not the case with a lot of people, and so I am very, very grateful for that.

Casey Arrillaga: Well, I'm grateful to hear that, too. Given that Scottish culture can revolve around drinking enough that you came out to your friends at the local pub. How do you socialize in your local community now that you're sober?

Amy Galloway: Right now, I feel like I have more of a social life than I did when I was drinking, which is really great. I've met so many people within the recovery community. I've met some, I would say, life-long friends through recovery communities, whether it was in person a couple years ago or whether it was through Zoom groups and things. I'm in a Zoom group right now that's LGBTQ recovery, which is amazing. I think surrounding myself in sober friends has been awesome. I don't really hang out as much with my friends from my town or my older drinking buddies because I still feel like even though I'm a year sober and I'm very comfortable within the recovery, I still don't feel like we're on the same page. That happens regardless of if somebody's in recovery or not. Just now though, I'm very heavily involved within the recovery community for my town and a couple of towns around it. there's been a great support network there and security that I feel within them.

Casey Arrillaga: I'm so glad to hear that you found that support. We know that many people out there can feel isolated, especially if they feel they're different than what is expected and they're struggling with addiction. What would you want to say to them, or even to a younger version of yourself?

Amy Galloway: I think my advice to someone feeling the same way that I felt is to not be ashamed, and that's easier than said than done because I was ashamed for so long. I think a big thing is to meet more people that are within the LGBTQ community. Surround yourself in sober friends, but I think above all else is to accept yourself and know that what you're feeling and how you're feeling is in no way wrong. It's beautiful and it's to be celebrated. I think that is something that I had to learn the hard way. I've said it before and I will keep saying it until my last breath: there is no shame within recovery. There's no shame in having a sexuality that differs from the norm.
A big thing I think if I was speaking to my younger self would be you don't have to put a label on it. You don't have to fit in a box. Just be yourself. Love who you want to love and work on accepting that. I think all the rest will follow from there.

Casey Arrillaga: Wise words. Now have you been involved in any kind of recovery fellowship?

Amy Galloway: More recently, yes, absolutely. I think that that was something that I regret not doing when I first started. I think when I finally had that one year of sobriety under my belt and I had gone through the worst of it, I think that is when I was like oh, hey, right, it's time to share my story, time to meet people, time to be open about it. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Only just recently after my one year sober, I started to do some Zoom meetings with people who are in recovery. I'm very active on Twitter and of course, there's my blog. I blog about everything, my experiences of drinking. I share what it's been like for me and what it's like living in a world where alcohol is so predominent in my age and especially in my culture. Therefore, it left me with another bunch of people who are also in the same boat, and maybe they're on day 365. They might be on day three. It doesn't matter; we all just connect. I've been lucky enough to lead a couple of Zoom groups, which has been amazing and such a great experience to be able to connect and have that thing in common which is so deep and so profound that we can connect on that level.

Casey Arrillaga: I hear you saying you wish you had started going to meetings earlier.

Amy Galloway: I think that it just could've benefited me a lot being able to speak to people who are also having the same triggers or had felt those same triggers. During my one year sobriety, my brother was having a party with some of his friends, and as young people do, they've got the beer out and everything. I've never been so scared for weeks beforehand. I was like, I don't even know if I can. I think having somebody who had been there and done that to speak to about it instead of just closing my eyes and getting on with it would've been a huge, huge help. The struggles that I went through were not facing my triggers; that was a big one. Being able to speak about it a bit more openly now and being able to be a bit more open about where I am currently – which is a great place right now, in my mind it's very metaphorical for running, I'm cleaning up the mess behind me. That's what I feel like I'm doing right now. I ran through the fire type thing and it's like ooh, I put all that out, so now I need to go back and clean all that up.

Casey Arrillaga: Thank you for that. Can you talk more about where young people and their family members may struggle to recognize where there's a problem and what is normal drinking for that age? What do you think can be done to address that?

Amy Galloway: Definitely young people go under the radar. I'm talking about alcoholism. People have this preconceived idea of what alcohol addiction, or alcoholism, or even problems with alcohol look like. Alcohol does not discriminate age, race, gender, career. It's not a drunk on a park bench drinking [27:39] in a paper bag. It can be a mother, a father. It can be somebody as young as me. It can be a teenager. It can be the CEO of a company. It can be someone's grandmother. It happened to be me, and I was in my 20s.
I think that a lot of the time, people just put it down to they're young; they're partying. It's just them; they like to drink. I definitely think culturally in Scotland and Ireland, we have this tradition. We have this let's go down to the pub for a couple of beers or oh, I've got the day off. It's a nice day, so let's go by the pub at 12 p.m. This is all normal and while it can be great for socialization, for people who are exposed to alcoholism and like you said, genetically runs in the family, this can be a real issue. It can be a life or death situation but it's always swept under the carpet with young people unless they're the ones that address the issue. It goes completely unnoticed until they're in their [28:47] and they finally accept the mold of what alcoholism looks like. Then they get help. I think I'm really passionate about speaking about it before it gets to that point.

Casey Arrillaga: That is fantastic. I know that some young people, even when they do accept help, go to recovery meetings or show up in a recovery program, whether it's for alcohol, other drugs, eating, gambling, shopping, whatever, and they may look around and be like oh, man, these people don't all look like me. They're old; they're going bald. Where do I fit in here? What would you say to them?

Amy Galloway: I've been there and done it. I have walked into a room filled with people not just in their 40s but in their 60s. People will double-take you. They will look at you funny. They'll be like, “Why is she here?” I got a lot of the, “Are you a binge drinker then?” I would respond with no, I was physically dependent. I detoxed and everything I think that the main thing to focus on when you walk into a room and you're the youngest person in there is to feel non-selfish pride and see you as an early version of where they are right now.
I often speak to people who are in their 50s and 60s, and they have had problems with alcohol since they were a teenager. Every single person I've spoke to has said, “Ah, I wish I had done that when I was your age. I wish I would have entered recovery at that age. I've lost so much of my life due to alcoholism or due to problems drinking.” That just fuels my recovery more to hear that and to hear that I could be there if I wasn’t in that meeting right now. I could be sitting at the other side of the table. I could be in my 50s in the next recovery meeting and see a young person come in and feel the exact same way.

Casey Arrillaga: Granted that people might be surprised to see you at the meeting, do you find that they were supportive?

Amy Galloway: Oh, yes, absolutely. Definitely, I think at first it was kind of different for them because if you’re used to going to these meetings and seeing people around your age and this newbie walks in and you’re like, oh, okay, fresh meat type thing, but I’ve had great support from everybody that I’ve met.

Casey Arrillaga: I’m really glad to hear that. Can you talk about the influence of society on your drinking?

Amy Galloway: Here it’s a big drinking culture. You guys probably have Irish pubs and everything over there and St. Patrick’s Day is an excuse to get wrecked. Over here in Scotland, it’s pretty much the same. When a girl turns 18, the mom’s like, oh, come on out with my friends, we’ll go to the pub. It becomes a tradition. It becomes engrained in our culture. A lot of the time, you walk into a pub at 11 a.m. in the morning and there’ll be at least a couple of older men sitting at the table just chugging back some beer. It’s so predominant here. It’s our means for socialization I feel. There’s so many young people that are like – we don’t go for coffee anymore. We don’t hang out anymore. It’s just let’s get drunk on the weekend. You can come up to [32:18] and we can just get drunk on wine or we can go out to the clubs and things. I think that that needs to be addressed and spoken about in a way because it can lead into things that happened to me.

Casey Arrillaga: What do you find happens socially if somebody such as yourself goes the other way and says, “I’m not doing that. I’m not drinking”?

Amy Galloway: I think there’s a few people that have been like that. When I was younger as a teenager, when I turned 18, I had no interest in drinking. I remember my cousins saying, “Oh, I can’t wait to take you out for your first drink.” I wasn’t interested at all. It’s very rare that it does happen but it does happen. It goes against a lot of things but I feel like that [33:05] segregates somebody if they’re not going on and getting drunk or even going out but not drinking very much. If you go out and you’re not a liability when you’re drunk, you’re not fun, you’re not cool.

Casey Arrillaga: Then what happens when a young person says, “I think maybe I have a problem”?

Amy Galloway: I don’t think that a lot of young people do. They don’t acknowledge that it’s a problem. They think that it’s a way of life. I have people that I know that go out drinking every single weekend, Saturdays and Sundays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and they get blackout drunk. Nobody really bats an eye because they’re young and they’re enjoying themselves but that becomes a problem sometimes when you’re exposed to addiction in the family or you’re using that as a coping mechanism.

Casey Arrillaga: You had that happen, of course, but now you’ve had a year sober. Where do you want to go from here?

Amy Galloway: I feel like this is my year. I feel like this is my year, man. I’m looking forward to starting an amazing sober life with my girlfriend and looking forward to going into the addiction field career wise. I’m looking forward to sharing my story every year and speaking to young people, inspiring them. I’m looking forward to so much. I’m doing really good and I’m quite proud of everything that I’ve experienced to get here. I realized that everything that I have experienced has been worth something as somebody even listening to this or reading my blog or whatever can read it and think, you know what? I’m going to try this whole sober thing. Let’s try it because I’m not happy with the way things are. I’m excited to get into recovery even more. I’m excited to meet more people. Yes, it’s going to be a good year.

Casey Arrillaga: That’s fantastic. As one of my mentors in recovery has told me many times, if someone had given me a pencil and paper at the beginning of my recovery and said, “Write down everything you want from recovery and you’ll get exactly that, no more, no less,” I would have cheated myself out of so much because I couldn’t imagine how good my life would get.

Amy Galloway: Absolutely.

Casey Arrillaga: I’m sure this year will hold amazing things for you and it’s wonderful that you’re sharing this journey with so many people. Now, we’ve covered a lot of ground, but I want to ask, what would you like to say to family members who are listening to this podcast?

Amy Galloway: To family members who have somebody in their life that they care about that has an addiction, I would just say support them, love them, love them through it, be patient is the main thing, which it can be so difficult, too. I know that my poor girlfriend and my poor mom and brother were probably pulling at their hair at times with me. I think a main thing would be to look after yourself and to speak to somebody for yourself, too, because addiction doesn’t just affect the person that’s going through it. It affects everybody involved and everybody who loves that person, whether that’s friends or family, partners, and so there’s no shame in seeking help and speaking to somebody. Maybe therapy would be better because it’s more confidential and they’re trained for this. Love and support them though it and don’t forget about you. Don’t forget about yourself. Look after yourself. Talk to somebody. It will get better.

Casey Arrillaga: Thank you for that. Is there anything else that you’d like to say to young people who might be listening to this program?

Amy Galloway: To all the young people who are listening, I want to say don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. If you feel that you may have problems with alcohol, there’s no labels going on. You’re not a binge drinker, an alcoholic. If you want to just speak to somebody about your problems with alcohol, then do so. There’s nothing wrong with you. I think that that was the main thing that I felt that there was something wrong with me, but because I didn’t fit the mold of an alcoholic, that I couldn’t be one and I couldn’t have a problem with drinking because a lot of other people were acting the same way that I was, but it’s coming to a realization, if you are unhappy with the way things are going, if you’re unhappy with your alcohol use, if you feel that you are relying on alcohol as a coping mechanism, then 100% speak out. Go to somebody, whether it’s a therapist, whether it’s an outpatient program, like I previously went to [38:03] someone or an organization or a friend who cannot push you into recovery or try to save you, but can hold your hand while you save yourself.

Casey Arrillaga: Beautifully put. Amy, it’s been such a pleasure having you on our program. I wish you wonderful blessings on your ongoing sobriety. Now, before we close, where can people find you to follow you on your journey and hear your message of recovery?

Amy Galloway: You can find me on amyjade.com, which is just amyjade.com. You can find me on Twitter, which is Amy Jade Galloway. Mostly all of my social medias are Amy Jade Galloway. I do some fun little TikToks that [38:54] the cool youngster that I am. I make funny relatable TikTok content about recovery. I’m just Amy Jade Galloway on that.

Casey Arrillaga: Amy, it has, once again, been wonderful to have you on our show. Hope we’ll have you on again. As people say in your part of the world, cheers, and we’ll talk to you later.

Amy Galloway: Cheers.

Kira Arrillaga: Thank you for listening to our interview of Amy Jade Galloway. I loved the themes of self-acceptance and connection, which are so vital to my life in sobriety. Amy has a website, amyjade.com, where you can find uplifting essays and some worksheets that can be helpful in early recovery. Her Twitter handle is @AmyJadeGalloway. That’s Galloway. She’s even on TikTok also using her full name.

Casey Arrillaga: Thanks for being with us through another episode of Addiction and the Family. As they say in many recovery meetings, take what you liked and leave the rest. Go out and explore the possibilities for recovery in your life and give your loved ones the space and dignity to make their own choices. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe. It means a lot to us. If you know anyone else who could use what we have to offer, please tell them about Addiction and the Family. If you have comments about this podcast, have a question you’d liked answered on the show, or want to contribute your voice, or just want to say hi, you can write to us at addictionandthefamily@gmail.com. We’re also happy to be your friend on Facebook, and we can be found tweeting on Twitter.