Kim Cross

Behind The Booze - The Impact on Loved Ones

No. of episodes

10

Latest episode

2026-04-07

Where can you listen?

Behind the Booze is for partners, spouses, former partners, parents, adult children, and friends who have been quietly and deeply affected by someone else’s alcohol addiction.

It’s for the ones who slowly lost parts of themselves while trying to hold everything together in the middle of someone else’s drinking.

If loving someone with alcohol problems left you anxious, hyper-vigilant, emotionally exhausted, constantly on edge, or questioning your own reality — this podcast was created for you.

Hosted by Kim Cross — published author, speaker, and advocate for families impacted by alcoholism — Behind the Booze does not center the alcoholic. It does not diagnose, debate recovery, or focus on fixing them.

It focuses on what happened to you.

Kim speaks from lived experience. Alcoholism has shaped her life in devastating and undeniable ways — beginning in childhood when her mother was murdered during a domestic violence incident involving alcohol, later losing her little brother in a drunken car accident, losing two of her best girlfriends because of decisions made under the influence, and spending two decades in a relationship marked by alcoholism’s instability, emotional chaos, and trauma.

She understands:

The sleepless nights.
The walking on eggshells.
The constant scanning of the room.
The fear when a tone shifts.
The grief of loving someone who isn’t fully present.
The anger you didn’t feel safe expressing.
The version of yourself you slowly lost while trying to keep everything from falling apart.

Whether you stayed, left, are still in it, your loved one got sober, relapsed, or passed away — these conversations center the emotional and psychological impact on the people who were left adapting, surviving, and questioning themselves.

Behind the Booze gives language to experiences that often go unnamed.

When no one talks about it, addiction grows. When we name it, families begin to heal.

This podcast is about clarity before healing.
Language before solutions.
Stability before transformation.

It is a space where your story is validated — not minimized.
Where your nervous system makes sense.
Where your grief is acknowledged.
Where your identity can begin to return.

Because alcoholism doesn’t just affect the person drinking.

It impacts everyone who loves them.