I Woke Up on a Plane to China With a Broken Elbow & No Memory — They’d Dragged Me to the Back for Refusing to Wear a Mask. I Was Blacked Out.

Episode 53 | Amy Devine — From Newbury Council Estates to Peru: 3 Years Sober, Ayahuasca & the Serbian Housemate Who Changed Everything

In this warm, wide-ranging and genuinely one-of-a-kind episode, Jimmy sits down with Amy Devine — sobriety mentor, breathwork facilitator, founder of Numb No More and the Sober Sisterhood Breathwork Circle — speaking from her home in Pisac, Peru, surrounded by mountains. Her story spans council estates in Berkshire, 11 years teaching in Beijing, a broken elbow on a COVID flight she can’t remember, and an ayahuasca ceremony that finally showed her why she’d been drinking in the first place.

Amy grew up in Newbury — Irish parents, violence, dysfunction, and alcohol as the central currency of family life. Her parents split when she was six. Summers in Ireland, school in England, a house fire that moved the family to a council estate a week before Christmas with nothing. She was 11 when she had her worst drunk — stolen South African port with a girl her mum had banned her from seeing, found lost on a roundabout by her little brother’s teacher. By 14, drinking four or five cans a night was simply what she did.

Through college and a sociology/criminology degree at Chester — chosen almost by accident when her insurance pick got in and her first choice didn’t — Amy somehow held it together academically while drinking daily. After graduating with a 2:1 she neither expected nor remembers quite earning, she moved to Beijing to teach English, intending to stay a year. She stayed eleven.

Beijing was electric, chaotic and — for foreigners — consequence-free. Drink for free in bars, ride your scooter drunk through traffic, no rules and always someone to go out with. Through Beijing, Vietnam and back to Beijing, Amy’s drinking escalated through her twenties and early thirties. She developed a pattern: hold it together just enough for work, drink the rest of the time.

The nadir came on a COVID-era flight back to China. She’d been on a 10-week binge in India, drinking to manage withdrawal in the mornings, bribing strangers to get alcohol through quarantine. She drank most of a box of wine in duty-free before boarding, mixed it with Valium, and woke up in Beijing with a sore elbow and no memory. Strangers told her she’d been dragged to the back of the plane for refusing to wear a mask. The bruise turned black all the way down her arm. She’d broken her elbow. She didn’t stop drinking.

Back in Beijing, a Serbian housemate sat her down: “You’ve got a drink problem and you need to sort it out.” It was the first time anyone had ever said it directly to her face. That led to AA in Beijing — a warm, safe expat meeting full of people who’d been sober 16, 20 years — and six months of genuine recovery. Then Christmas came, and she thought she’d learned enough to moderate. She relapsed for a year and a half.

The second attempt was different. A dry November led by a therapist friend inspired by This Naked Mind. Then January 1st, 2022 — online AA, a new sponsor, and at six months sober: ayahuasca. The plant medicine took her back through her childhood, showed her exactly why she’d been drinking, and removed any remaining desire for alcohol. She told her AA sponsor. She was

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My Instagram is:

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And you can find all my other links at:

https://linktr.ee/jimmythistle

Buy me a coffee…

https://buymeacoffee.com/afterhourswithjimmyt

Alcohol Explained - William Porter

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