Today, I have the privilege of introducing you to Casey Arrillaga, a man in long-term recovery and author of numerous books, including ‘Mommy’s Getting Sober’ and ‘Realistic Hope: The Family Survival Guide for Facing Alcoholism and Other Addictions.’ Casey is a social worker and addiction counselor with Windmill Wellness and co-host of the podcast Addiction and the Family: Finding Recovery Together. As we begin, you will hear Casey’s story documents an inner resilience that is astounding from adoption, trauma, family addiction, an early emotional bottom, and a craving for a connection from infancy. I am excited for you to hear his story. Please meet Casey Arrillaga.
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See full transcript below.
Margaret 00:01
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction. Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back! I am really excited to introduce you to Casey Arrillaga, author of numerous books including his most recent which caught my eye, Mommy’s Getting Sober’ for the youngest members of the family. Casey’s journey documents an inner resilience that is astounding from adoption, trauma, family addiction, and an early emotional bottom, and craving connection from infancy. Please meet Casey.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: Casey, I am so glad you’re with. I am excited to have you on the podcast, I had the chance to see you on a different podcast and you piqued my interest because you were talking about this book you’ve recently written for children. And so that’s how we met, and I reached out to you, and you were gracious enough to say you would be willing to be on the podcast. So, I thank you for that.
Casey Arrillaga 01:49
Absolutely.
Margaret 01:50
The podcast that has mainly reached people who love someone with the disease of addiction. And I think that there are definitely people who are double winners, for those out there who don’t know that people who have the disease, and also love someone with the disease. But I think that you’re a neat mixture of everything from our chat we had before. So, if you were to introduce yourself to the audience, as who your qualifier is, who in your life has been impacted by the disease of addiction, that impacted your knowing about it, being a part of the community that helps people with it? Who would that be Casey?
Casey Arrillaga 02:32
Oh, boy. I mean, it’s funny, it’s a funny term qualifier. And I know that comes out of I familiar with it through Al Anon and the idea of like, who qualifies you to be in the program kind of thing. But I always say, ultimately, I am my qualifier. I’m the reason I’m here, I’m the one who’s thinking patterns, and all that kind of stuff went in the certain directions, partly genetics, partly environment, but in terms of who in my life has been impacted by addiction that then impacted me, that’s a long list of people, I would say it started with my birth mother and birth father, and then my adopted father. And, as is often the case, it’s really rare to find a family where only one person struggles with addiction. So there’s probably a lot of influence there that I wasn’t as aware of. But as I grew up, you know, I myself got running down an addictive path. I married somebody who was also in active of addiction, neither one of us really realized that at the time, we he just thought we were cooler than everybody else. And then all the rules didn’t apply to us. But about 10 years into our marriage, I realized I was bulldozing my life off a cliff. And I’m like, okay, I need to do something. My spouse, went another two years, I think after I was in recovery, and then she got into recovery. And we’ve both been in recovery now for over 20 years together.
Margaret 03:51
Amazing.
Casey Arrillaga 03:52
So, it’s it’s been quite a journey. And then my daughter has had some profound struggles with mental health. And addiction is increasingly and I think correctly being recognized as a mental health condition, rather than saying, you know, there’s mental health and addiction are kind of the model of co-occurring to really recognize that it’s all one big thing. And everything is influencing everything. So I would say there’s a ton of influence out there. But if you want to say a starting point, let’s say my birth parents followed closely by my adopted father.
Margaret 04:23
When you were that young man, that boy who was exposed to those early people with the illness. Were you given any help? Were you educated as to what you were being exposed to? Oh, heck, no. Okay,
Casey Arrillaga 04:39
Nobody talked about this stuff. Well, with my birth parents. I was with them until I was a little over two years old. So, I mean, they didn’t even talk to me about the fact that I was being put up for adoption. Like there was no real way to have that conversation. So my life just took these really radical shifts without much warning. So oh, I would say my first awareness of addiction, or at least if chemical use would have been around three or four years old. And I have a fairly distinct memory of talking with my brother. So this would have, he would have been a worldly young man of about five, maybe six years old. And my dad, as would happen on holidays was very unpredictable. And so on this particular Christmas, he went stumbling off to bed. And like a lot of kids, I was looking to kind of make excuses for him, or just say, like, oh, well, you know, Daddy’s tired. And my brother looked at me and said something along the lines of no stupid, he’s drunk. So my brother was obviously here he is five, six years old, he’s aware of what’s going on. I become aware of that moment of like, oh, okay, we’re gonna say that one out loud. But within the household, I mean, that was probably the clearest conversation anybody had about addiction at any point in my childhood that I can think of. All the other conversations were along the lines of don’t talk about this, don’t you dare tell me what was going on inside our house, things like that. There was no real conversation about addiction per se. For instance, my dad, at one point stopped drinking for about six months. I’m gonna say it was probably at you know, early adolescence will be my guess. I’m not really sure exactly what age. But I remember going out to a restaurant that we often went to. And, you know, when the waiter came up to take the order, I could have ordered for my dad, I could have said, you know, we’ll have vodka on the rocks with a twist. And instead, my dad said, I’ll have soda water. And my brother, and my mom, and I just held really still,
Margaret 06:41
Right.
Casey Arrillaga 06:43
Nobody said anything. And this went on for about six months, he just stopped. Now, maybe he and my mom had a conversation about it. I have no idea. We were not a family where that would have been shared with the kids. And then one day, we were out I don’t know if it was the same restaurant, or a different one. And it was vodka on the rocks with twist. It’s like, okay, he’s back at it. I don’t think we even looked at each other.
Margaret 07:07
Right?
Casey Arrillaga 07:08
So everybody’s struggle was alone. Yeah.
Margaret 07:09
Isn’t it amazing to reflect on that truth of everybody, as you just said, struggles with alone, that you’re in a family system. This is the other member of the family, as I use it, the disease of addiction was a member of the family. And you have this mantra of don’t trust? Don’t tell. Don’t feel. That I think everybody relates to on some level when they’re growing up in a home where there is the disease of addiction. And your most blunt conversation was with your five or six year old brother? Like, isn’t that something like? How do you frame that up? When you look at the fact that you are passionate about the family recovery and family impact of this disease? Do you think that this was a part of why you started down that path, Casey? I mean, were you interested in that before you even got into your own recovery? Or was it just something that came along over time in your own journey clinically, professionally, in recovery?
Casey Arrillaga 08:11
Kind of in stages as well. I knew the impact it had on my family. I mean, there’s lots I could tell you today from a clinical perspective that I wouldn’t have had words for them. But I knew we were all impacted by it. I was angry about the fact that no one would talk about it. I was yes, me in adolescence now I was angry about the fact that I had been told you can’t tell anyone outside the family because I had told people outside the family. And then I got lectured for it because of course, are concerned next door neighbor who is looking back a psychiatrist, kind of probably had to have a very gentle conversation with my mom. And that just ended up in the lecture for me.
Margaret 08:11
Right?
Casey Arrillaga 08:11
And I’m sure denial on my mom’s part, because she would have said like, No, you know, that’s not true. And yeah, David would never etc. But when I was 18 or so, yeah, went off to college, did that deal and I got a job babysitting three kids, because a live in nanny kind of thing. And so the parents who were young professionals would, you know, they’d go out, that’s part of the reason you hired a nanny. So they’d be out kids would be asleep. And I just be, yeah, don’t see the channels, but I wasn’t a big TV person. So I started going through the bookshelf, and there was a book on how people are impacted by growing up around alcohol use. So I picked up the book and I started reading it. And I remember just going like, whoa. Not only are we not the only family, which you might know intellectually, but it’s another thing to see it but somebody wrote a book. I have no idea what the book was.
Margaret 09:38
Wow,
Casey Arrillaga 09:38
I couldn’t tell you now I just it was a book I lit literally opened up once ever read it and just went like whoa, I’m not alone in this. So, it reinforced the idea that like, okay, I’ve been impacted, the family has been impacted. And at that point in my life, I was pretty thoroughly on a growth path of a type. When I was about 10 years or so I got kind of on a growth mindset. Because I, I’ve physically showed up for the fifth grade. But that was the only way in which I showed up for the fifth grade, I did no work, I did nothing, just tuned the world out as hard as I could. And then, of course, you know, parent teacher conferences came and that didn’t go well. My dad asked me like, what do you think about like, what’s going on? I had no words, no language, no framework to have that conversation. And you’re right, the way I had grown up. You know, even before my adoption, I didn’t trust. After my adoption, I sure as heck didn’t trust, I wasn’t going to open up to anyone about what was really going on for me for the most part, or I might in a fit of rage and tears, and then it would all shut back down again. But I didn’t know how to have any kind of healthy communication. But I do remember coming out of the end of fifth grade and just saying, it’s me like, the problem isn’t out there somewhere, this is me and my behavior, I need to do something different. Now what I did not do because all those other things. It didn’t cross my mind to ask for help. I just knew I needed to change so I set on a growth path, but it wasn’t based on let me read some books, talk to some people say hey, I could you some therapy, nothing like that. It was just me saying sheer willpower. Next year, I’m gonna do better and kinda like I’m gonna fake better. My life plan was already based on kind of present an image fake my way through things. So, it’s just like I need to learn to fake better. And then maybe my attitude and underlying being will catch up someday. And I was doing that all the way through college. And then, yeah,
Margaret 11:38
at 10.
Casey Arrillaga 11:39
Yeah,
Margaret 11:40
at 10.
Casey Arrillaga 11:42
That was when I decided I really needed to change and that my behavior was the problem. Yeah.
Margaret 11:46
So was it, I could see myself struggling and I wanted things to go better. Because there’s always the brain. When we look back on our childhood and trauma and the things we go through that warps and changes what it was at the time. I think. It’s very hard to go back as an adult and remember it as a child. But when you think about you at 10, was it? I don’t want to have horrible teacher conferences anymore. So, I’m gonna lean in differently. You know what I mean? What do you think it was?
Casey Arrillaga 12:16
Well, I think in a way, in sort of recovery terms, I hit bottom in a way, I didn’t hit one of my last bottoms by any stretch, but I hit a kind of a bottom of just saying, I can’t keep going like this. And that’s usually what hitting bottom feels like on some emotional level, just I can’t keep going like this, I need to do something different. And because I was so certain that I couldn’t trust other people and ask for help, that just left it up to me, okay, well, then I need to change, I need to do something about this. So, I told myself, next year, I’m going to do homework, I will try and pay attention in class, I’m gonna learn how to be social with other kids. And all this lasted for like three or four hours into sixth grade. But everyone else was still treating me the same. And I still felt overwhelmed in school. And I still didn’t want to be me, I didn’t want to be in my own skin. I didn’t want to live my life, I want to, I haven’t be of a particular age where the first Star Wars movie came out. And so, I just want to crawl on the screen and go live there instead. Like, I want to be anywhere. But in my life, I was miserable in a lot of ways. I don’t think that was super evident from the outside, my mom would say, Oh, you you’re a happy kid. And you always had friends and the girls would follow you home from school. And I have like these vague memories where I’m like, I can see where you got that impression.
Margaret 13:29
But it’s also just, gosh, as a mother, as a person who has a child who struggled to be in their own skin just that. When you said it sounded like what I can imagine as a child, you would have thought and felt which was, gosh, can I just go in that screen and be with them like just that? hurts to hear but yet, I totally get it like that felt better than the reality I was with, then living, experiencing. And so, you tried to put on this mask, you work to lean in or do differently. And on some level, you did because you got into college, so you didn’t fail because you never did any homework or schoolwork, I assume something came together.
Casey Arrillaga 14:12
Each year got a little bit better than I’d say, by maybe sophomore junior year of high school. So, over the course of five or six years, I was learning how to do it. I got on the running team in high school. And that became sort of my social end because I turned out to be good at running. And eventually I was like the fastest kid on the team for cross country. And so, I had people on that team. And the nice thing is the cross-country team, at least at my school, was not like the really athletic people. We were the skinny fast kids who were usually good at school and geeky about other things. Not universally but a lot of us. So, I kind of found a little bit of a tribe. And I never felt completely like I was all the way in but I kind of was and one of the other guys on the team was really good being social. I don’t know if I’d say he was one of the popular kids or not, but he was well known and liked. He was a good musician, and I was a musician. And so, I wanted some of that. And so, I literally asked him for lessons. So that was the first time that I did ask for help. His name was Richard Polanco. And I don’t know if he’s out there, wherever he is, I hope he’s doing well. I owe him a lot. I kind of puppy dog after him for at least a year or two. I don’t think I was his best friend. But he was definitely the person that I connected with the most. And I remember just saying, Richard, how do you do this? Like, give me some tips? And he would say things like, notice how friends when they make eye contact, they smile. Why don’t you try smiling sometimes, because I was a pretty angry kid. I kept a pretty blank face. So, I would just try and learn things just like try to like take notes on the human race, like how do you do this thing. And I will say, looking back then on some level, I always knew I was a good person. Like I knew somewhere in there, like, I think I’m a good person, I think I’m a likable person. But keep in mind that through all of this around that same age, like 9/10 years old, I also made a fairly conscious decision to start sliding into addiction. And I didn’t think it was addiction. It was just heading into addictive behavior. And at that time, mostly around sex and love stuff. And it was just this idea that I desperately needed a romantic partner. I mean, I was trying to get a girlfriend in kindergarten. And I say everyone thinks like, it was cute, but it was serious business for me, like I need to connect with other people. And I can look back and say this also, I now know comes out of early childhood sexual trauma and all the trauma bonding stuff, and the disordered attachment styles that come out of these things and all these fun jargony technical terms, but as a kid, it was just this desperate need to connect in a desperate fear of connection. And that’s a great recipe for disaster. And so, I headed into disaster.
16:53
This podcast is made possible by listeners like you.
16:57
Bumper: A question my clients ask me often is, how will I be able to trust my partner again, my child again, my parent again? Trust in oneself and each other is really challenging with this family disease of addiction.
I believe dishonesty is a symptom of the disease of addiction. When I was in my active addiction, I hid my use from those around me, especially those who loved me the most. As they would be the ones who’d have been first to intervene. It wasn’t conscious but it felt like a desperate need. I was consumed by a pathological relationship with my drug of no choice that superseded every other human need I had. So, I was complicit, went along with everything it required of me.
The equation I used to describe how trust is rebuilt is when words and actions match over time.
Are you struggling in a relationship where trust has been damaged? Click the link attached to my show notes or head to the embracefamilyrecovery.com website and on the Work with Margaret page you can fill out a form and have an opportunity to chat with me and see if I could be a co-creator in a path. Trust can be rebuilt! You don’t have to take this journey alone. There is support and help out there, check out my website embracefamilyrecovery.com
17:53
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. Can you relate to what you’re hearing? Never missed a show by hitting the subscribe button. Now back to the show.
Margaret 18:04
So can we rewind a little because you threw a lot at us that was very informative for people listening because there are people listening who may not have heard some of these terms, and also may relate to some of what you’re saying. So, in your creeping into addiction or heading in that direction. For you the entree or the way in was through a sex and love. Not chemical.
Casey Arrillaga 18:29
I theoretically could have dipped in my dad’s bottles, but I abhoard his drinking. I swore I was never going to touch alcohol that didn’t last but that was my conviction at the time.
Margaret 18:37
But you felt like then?
Casey Arrillaga 18:39
Yeah, absolutely attend years old. I had no interest in using any kind of chemical. I had a great interest in using other people. Unfortunately.
Margaret 18:46
It’s not conscious, though, right? I mean, when we look back on it, we have an awareness now but at the time it’s survival.
Casey Arrillaga 18:52
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It was just, I need this to be okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Margaret 18:59
Was dad’s drinking changing. Worse, same as you were progressing through your young teenage years, while
Casey Arrillaga 19:08
through my teenage years, I don’t know for sure if his drinking change, but his attitude change. And again, looking back at through a more adult lens, I can look back and say he had helped to build a really successful insurance company. And before some of the big insurance company collapse and scandals that would come to mind for a lot of listeners, this was one of the first this would have been in the early to mid 1980s. His company that he had helped built was falling apart through no fault of his. And he was a guy who has a lot of loyalty to other people who are running that company. So he just went down with the ship. And he was really, really angry about it. And so a lot of anger started coming out and of course, I was hitting adolescence or in adolescence where my anger was coming out too. Right. So we were at pretty bad odds with each other even though I He loved me a lot. He supported me a lot. He was instrumental in the fact that I was even in the family. It was a little bit of a project for him. But he loved that project, he loved that idea that he was going to save me. But he couldn’t. So we both had ideas that we were going to save each other in various ways I was going to get him out of drinking, he was going to get me out of whatever it is, he couldn’t figure out what’s going on in my head, right. And neither one of us was terribly successful at it. But we did love each other. And we did want each other to be doing better. But yes, his anger was definitely ramping up. If I had to guess I’d say drinking probably got worse. But it was never the spot where I thought it was good. So it didn’t go from like, okay, to really bad, was just bad to even more bad.
Margaret 20:40
So, you know, one of the things that is interesting to me, I’ve never gone through adoption, I know that there’s so many different aspects of that influencing who we are, how we think of ourselves, in the case of your father, and the way you’re describing is wanting to save you or help you. He adopted you, he wanted you. And then when he saw you struggling and maybe felt powerless, and you feeling angry, for all the different reasons you thought angry, that must have been quite a caustic relationship.
Casey Arrillaga 21:16
It could get bad. It could, he would throw things we would yell at each other sometimes. Yeah, I had one of those moments that a lot of people remember, like, you know, when he took a swing at me, and I just caught his arm. And I held it. And he pushed and I pushed back. And we’re gonna kind of look at each other because he was the absolute ruler of the household. Like his word went, and that was it. And nobody else’s were held any weight against it. So that moment of like, you no longer have physical dominance over me, was a big moment for the two of us. And I would venture to say that that probably contributed to his sense of powerlessness and struggle, and he was somebody else can happen in that kind of dynamic in general in the house where His word was absolute within the house, but I think he felt pretty powerless outside of the house.
Margaret 22:06
Which would jack it up in the house? Right? Yeah.
Casey Arrillaga 22:09
I imagine there was a lot of shame and pain on his part, unfortunately, and I don’t think he ever found his way out.
Margaret 22:16
I’m sorry to hear that. Yeah. So while that’s getting worse at home, his anger is getting more aware, you’re getting bigger, you’re getting stronger, you’re kind of finding your way and becoming more social. Your love and sex addiction. When did you know that was a problem?
Casey Arrillaga 22:37
When I was 30? Yeah, so that’s 20 years straight? I can’t even tell you. And it’s an odd thing. Memory, I have a small handful of very, very early memories that have been confirmed by the adults around because otherwise I just say like, yeah, maybe it’s true, I don’t know. But my very earliest memory at somewhere between zero and three months old, because that’s when my mom stopped breastfeeding. So had to be before three months old. I remember nursing with her and thinking, I need to keep her attention for as long as possible. And I need to get as much as I can as fast as I can. You for that. I have a flash of that, that came up through through therapy through doing EMDR. And now I’m an EMDR practitioner, but the time I was the client and the things and I call my birth mother, because we’re in contact now. And I said, so I have this thing. Just don’t it out there. She’s very straightforward person. And she said, Yeah, that sounds about right. She said, You know, I was 19 when I got pregnant 20 When you were born, and I couldn’t emotionally connect with you. Except when we were in nursing. That was the only time I felt like I could connect with you. I wanted to. But that was the only time I really felt connected to you. And I thought, knowing what I know about human beings and all that kind of stuff. Now it says an infant, we absolutely no whether or not, we’re connected. So that would tell me that there’s this limited window. And I need to hold that attention and get as much as I can as fast as I can. And I think about that and just go like wow, that, again, a bit of a template for huge chunks of my life. It’s probably part of the reason you know, if you want to spin it and say like, Hey, it even feeds into some of my behavior. today. I’m still a musician, I get up on stage. On a regular basis. I do public things. I’m happily on videos, I write books, I do a lot of things on my own podcast, you do a lot of things that are kind of in the public sphere. And I like to say my higher power can take any character defect I have and put it to good use. So I like to think that this is one of those where it’s like okay, I have this drive to YES to have people’s attention. But it doesn’t feel like a scramble for survival anymore. I’m just very comfortable with it. Well,
Margaret 24:49
Could it also be that it’s not holding hostages, but actually just showing up differently? Like, I think when we’re little and we’re seeking it and we’re wanting it so bad. I mean, I have kind of the opposite side of the story, but similar parts of my story that I was damaged goods, I went through sexual trauma, I felt loved and lovable. So I was seeking it like heat seeking missile wherever I could find it. And what recovery has given me as a sense of, I’m not using people, I’m not taking hostages, I’m not misleading. I’m not desperate for that feeling, thanks to having some homeless within me now that I’ve been in recovery. So it is a different dynamic when you get on stage and when you teach, and when you perform, than it might have been that desperate sense of wanting belonging or wanting to be liked, or whatever it was for you.
Casey Arrillaga 25:37
Yeah, absolutely. And I’d say, again, what I’d say it’s probably the fallout at this point is I’m just very comfortable being on stage and very comfortable talking in front of people. I’m very comfortable being social. But there is not a desperate sense of like, I need this to be okay. It’s just more like, Okay, I have this to offer. This is just one of the things I have to offer the world. And if it’s abuse, then fantastic. And if not, we’re all going to be okay. And that second part is dramatic shift over the course of my life. Because I didn’t used to ever think I was going to be okay, under any circumstances, there was no amount of attention, or love or sex or validation or money or anything that was ever going to be enough. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read Judith Grisel’s book, ‘Never Enough‘, but what is it just a great title. It’s a fantastic book. She’s a neuroscientist with 30 plus years sober. And she’s neuroscience researcher. And so she really goes into the neurobiology of addiction. And while an interviewer should be like, well, maybe sex addiction does exist not really sure about love addiction, like I would love to have a conversation about that if you want but nonetheless, okay, I’m cool, you do think, but just the title, never enough comes out of her own personal experience of, again, sort of hitting bottom recognizing one day, there will never be enough like whatever it is I’m chasing, it’s never going to be enough. I’m not going to find any outside source. That is going to make me okay. And that becomes sort of the full circle thing from the 10-year-old thing of like, I can’t count on anyone. It’s circled around to I can count on so many people. And yet at the end, this is my work to do.
Outro: The quote that stands out is Casey “abhorred his dad’s drinking and found himself addicted,” it’s a clear example of powerlessness in the disease of addiction. Resiliency and courageous sharing doesn’t stop here, join me again next week as I continue my conversation with Casey Arrillaga and we discussed the misunderstood dynamics of sex and love addiction, and Casey openly and honestly recounts his own struggles with these issues.
Margaret 28:00
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability and sharing parts of their story.
Please find resources on my website embracefamilyrecovery.com
This is Margaret Swift Thompson.
Until next time, please take care of you!
