Disney Star Christy Carlson Romano’s Addiction Started When Binge Drinking Was Normalized at Home

Disney star Christy Carlson Romano from Kim Possible and Even Stevens said addiction and her relationship with alcohol started at home.

Romano, who has shared that she is an alcoholic, recalled a homelife where binge drinking was normal, but she didn’t start drinking until she hit the clubs when she was about 16 or 17 years old.

“So basically I was not working with Disney, which is kind of my big break moment until I was about 14, ” she said on Addiction Talk, a talk show hosted by American Addiction Centers.

“At that point, I think I had smoked a few cigarettes and whatnot, but I didn’t start drinking until I started clubbing,” Romano continued. “And I clubbed because my older sister who I don’t speak with anymore because of her addiction issues was bringing me into the fold of that lifestyle.”

Christy Carlson Romano said her addiction started at home

Romano looked up to her sister. But also, “My mom sort of had a drinking problem for a little bit,” she said. “And she’s been sober for a long time and she’s thriving. But my mom and dad sort of had this toxic relationship surrounding alcohol at times.”

That’s when Romano said her mom used to binge drink at home. “My mom was my stage parent,” she recounted. “So when she was drinking, it just felt very normal to me that she would drink a bottle of Dewars a night before she passed out to go to bed and stuff like that.”

“So to me, that was normal,” she added. “My sister who was sort of very social, very beautiful I looked to her. And I was like, wow my parents say that she’s gonna be all these amazing things. And yes, I am an actress. But I wanna do whatever she’s doing.”

Nightlife was normalized

Romano continued. “So I had sort of gone along with that and was given this toxic, life into nightlife,” Christy Carlson Romano said about her addiction. “And since I wasn’t really around like a normal high school experience, I was starting to have fantastical thinking about what it would be like to feel normal.”

“And nightlife was very accessible to me early on,” she added. “So I started binge drinking, I think when I was like 16, 17. I think that was sort of my introductory lesson to like my relationship with alcohol. It was like, well, you’re at a table with a bunch of guys. And there’s a bottle and here’s a never-ending screwdriver in your hand, like keep drinking, keep dancing. This is what joy is essentially.”

Al-Anon helped Christy Carlson Romano work through her addiction and childhood

And while it felt normal, it wasn’t what she needed. “What my brain really wanted was this sense of security and safety,” Romano said. “I think a lot of children of alcoholics and whatnot, we grow up with that fight or flight mentality. Which I started to really learn about once I started going to Al-Anon. And I’m sort of a double hitter.”

“What eventually Al-Anon really taught me was that I had qualifiers and that these were learned behaviors,” she asserted. “I did get joy from dancing. I think I definitely had anxiety when it came to being around people. And I still enjoy house music. But it’s taken me a long time to understand my relationship to certain kinds of music, certain kinds of socialization. So yeah, I do think that being a child actor kind of warps your relationship to socializing.”

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.