Keeping What You Have By Giving It All Away
30-year-old Bethany Hallam sits on a Zoom call, laughing about her inner lip tattoo and her love of smuggling food and drinks into Pittsburgh Pirates Games. On the surface, she is a loud, funny, and strong lifelong Yinzer. However, this is not all there is to her. To put it frankly, as Hallam herself would, she is in long-term recovery for substance abuse disorder and is the Democratic Allegheny County Councilperson At Large. Not the typical combo, but nothing about Hallam or her story is typical.
Hallam's story begins with a torn ACL in high school, for which she was prescribed painkillers. The daughter of a pharmacist, Hallam was not one to abuse her prescription. However, after 18 months on painkillers, she was suddenly cut off. She complained to a friend at school that she felt ill, who informed her she was withdrawing and offered her an easy solution: another pill.
And so it began for Hallam. She graduated from North Hills High School in 2008, before attending Duquesne as a Public Relations and Spanish major with the dream of one day working for the Pittsburgh Pirates. But for Hallam, attending college was like living a double life. She was working to graduate, while also trying to keep funding her drug habit. In her junior year, she sent a friend to go retrieve some painkillers for her and they returned with heroin. And she took it, starting a more difficult chapter of her life. Somehow, she still managed to graduate, and instead of working for the Pirates, she found herself living in her car, shooting up multiple times a day.
30-year-old Bethany Hallam sits on a Zoom call, laughing about her inner lip tattoo and her love of smuggling food and drinks into Pittsburgh Pirates Games. On the surface, she is a loud, funny, and strong lifelong Yinzer. However, this is not all there is to her. To put it frankly, as Hallam herself would, she is in long-term recovery for substance abuse disorder and is the Democratic Allegheny County Councilperson At Large. Not the typical combo, but nothing about Hallam or her story is typical.
Hallam's story begins with a torn ACL in high school, for which she was prescribed painkillers. The daughter of a pharmacist, Hallam was not one to abuse her prescription. However, after 18 months on painkillers, she was suddenly cut off. She complained to a friend at school that she felt ill, who informed her she was withdrawing and offered her an easy solution: another pill.
And so it began for Hallam. She graduated from North Hills High School in 2008, before attending Duquesne as a Public Relations and Spanish major with the dream of one day working for the Pittsburgh Pirates. But for Hallam, attending college was like living a double life. She was working to graduate, while also trying to keep funding her drug habit. In her junior year, she sent a friend to go retrieve some painkillers for her and they returned with heroin. And she took it, starting a more difficult chapter of her life. Somehow, she still managed to graduate, and instead of working for the Pirates, she found herself living in her car, shooting up multiple times a day.
Despite getting a DUI, losing her license, and having repeated overnight stints in jail, Hallam did not get the wake-up call she needed. She went into many rehab facilities and was prescribed Suboxone, a medicine intended to help patients dependent on opioids get off of them safely. Hallam, instead of using this drug, sold it to others, and eventually, to an undercover cop. She managed to get off with just two years probation and a misdemeanor charge. She did weekly drug tests while on probation. Hallam was still using and would take a friend's three-year-old son's urine to her drug tests to pass. Eight months into her probation, her urine flagged for opioids and she was immediately taken to jail.
Hallam's first month in jail was uncomfortable, as she was finally getting clean from the drugs she had been taking for about half of her life. One day, a month into detoxing, she finally woke up from the version of herself she had been on drugs. She looked around at the prisoners she had been living with for a month and saw them truly for the first time. They were not criminals. They were all women being punished for committing crimes of survival.
After her release from prison in early 2017, Hallam felt hopeless. She had no job, no car, and a strained relationship with her family. The Women's March of January 2017 reignited Hallam's spark. She has a self-described addictive personality, starting in childhood.
¨If I ate mac and cheese for dinner one time, I was eating it for dinner for a month,¨ Hallam recalls. Her addictive personality led her to a new passion: politics. After helping campaign with Representatives Sara Innamorato and Summer Lee, Hallam herself finally took a leap of faith and ran for Democratic Councilperson at Large for Allegheny County. She was running against the 20-year incumbent, not an easy feat.
Hallam knew the only way to solve the issues she saw while in the prison system and the treatment of addicts was to reform them herself.
¨I have enough skeletons in my closet for every politician,¨ Hallam recounted with a laugh. She was not ashamed of her past. Rather, she saw it as the stepping stones to her political life. She unabashedly told her story while campaigning. Her honesty mattered. Despite the insults, such as ¨junkie¨ or Hallam's personal favorite, ¨socialist slut,¨ she kept her head held high.
¨I have been called way worse things by way better people,¨ Hallam said about her naysayers. Following up that statement, Hallam, quoting Rihanna said: ¨Haters are motivators.¨
And so she stayed motivated, running her campaign by her life mantra that she learned in rehab: You can only keep what you have by giving it away. For Hallam, what she gives away is her story, her truth, her passion for what she believes in, and her time. Following her election win, Hallam has continued to give it all away. Her life is not a story of redemption or a cautionary tale. Rather, Hallam is the perfect example of what she wants to see in the world: formerly incarcerated people and people with Substance Use Disorders getting to take back their lives with the support of their government.
¨I am not keeping this seat. I am just keeping it warm for the next person¨ Hallam said on her position. Her next step is taking her LSATs and attending law school at Duquesne, in hopes of being able to continue to give it all away to those who need it most.
Hallam's first month in jail was uncomfortable, as she was finally getting clean from the drugs she had been taking for about half of her life. One day, a month into detoxing, she finally woke up from the version of herself she had been on drugs. She looked around at the prisoners she had been living with for a month and saw them truly for the first time. They were not criminals. They were all women being punished for committing crimes of survival.
After her release from prison in early 2017, Hallam felt hopeless. She had no job, no car, and a strained relationship with her family. The Women's March of January 2017 reignited Hallam's spark. She has a self-described addictive personality, starting in childhood.
¨If I ate mac and cheese for dinner one time, I was eating it for dinner for a month,¨ Hallam recalls. Her addictive personality led her to a new passion: politics. After helping campaign with Representatives Sara Innamorato and Summer Lee, Hallam herself finally took a leap of faith and ran for Democratic Councilperson at Large for Allegheny County. She was running against the 20-year incumbent, not an easy feat.
Hallam knew the only way to solve the issues she saw while in the prison system and the treatment of addicts was to reform them herself.
¨I have enough skeletons in my closet for every politician,¨ Hallam recounted with a laugh. She was not ashamed of her past. Rather, she saw it as the stepping stones to her political life. She unabashedly told her story while campaigning. Her honesty mattered. Despite the insults, such as ¨junkie¨ or Hallam's personal favorite, ¨socialist slut,¨ she kept her head held high.
¨I have been called way worse things by way better people,¨ Hallam said about her naysayers. Following up that statement, Hallam, quoting Rihanna said: ¨Haters are motivators.¨
And so she stayed motivated, running her campaign by her life mantra that she learned in rehab: You can only keep what you have by giving it away. For Hallam, what she gives away is her story, her truth, her passion for what she believes in, and her time. Following her election win, Hallam has continued to give it all away. Her life is not a story of redemption or a cautionary tale. Rather, Hallam is the perfect example of what she wants to see in the world: formerly incarcerated people and people with Substance Use Disorders getting to take back their lives with the support of their government.
¨I am not keeping this seat. I am just keeping it warm for the next person¨ Hallam said on her position. Her next step is taking her LSATs and attending law school at Duquesne, in hopes of being able to continue to give it all away to those who need it most.