Why do they call it the past/oh when nothing’s passed?

-Sarah Harmer

When I got out of rehab, I was still—technically—dating the guy I’d been dating on my way into rehab; the poor, unfortunate soul whom I loved very much but had gotten together with at a time when my singular focus was drinking whilst pretending it wasn’t. Every moment of every day, I was either engaged in the “crime” (drinking) or the cover-up (lying/hiding evidence of said drinking). My commitment to the cause was deep and unrelenting; the sheer brazenness of my lies would have made Henry Kissinger proud.

So, it made sense that this guy needed to talk about all the ways I’d screwed with his head. For weeks, we talked and talked and talked. Eventually, as I started to build a sober life—one in which I wasn’t lying to everyone—I couldn’t talk about all the shitty things I’d done to him anymore. Understandably, he still needed to make sense of the chaos, but continuing to go through it with him started to feel like I was back in the muck of guilt and shame. I felt like I couldn’t move on to my new life because I still hadn’t been punished appropriately for my old one. I had to stop rehashing the past, or it would suffocate me. I was devastated about ending the relationship with him, but it also made me feel like I could finally breathe.

Watching the pilot episode of Feel Good brought me right back to that very bad feeling. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mae (Mae Martin) is a stand-up comedian performing for tepid audiences in Manchester, England. In the opening scene, we see her do a set that only one person in the audience finds funny. We soon learn that the woman who found Mae so funny is a lovely brunette named George, and Mae is immediately taken with her. George has only dated men so far, but a short montage shows Mae changing that, and three months later, they’re moving in together.

The newly cohabiting couple is on a Skype call with Mae’s parents in Canada when Mae’s mom asks her if she’s found a new Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

(The “that’s why we’re not close/we’re not close??” exchange between Lisa Kudrow and Mae is when I knew I was fully sold on the show.)

It’s an interesting premise. When are you supposed to tell someone you’re dating that you’re sober because you have a history of addiction? I think it’s fair to say ‘before you move in with someone,’ but aside from that, it can be tricky.

In the olden times, when I was single and “internet dating” mostly meant going to a website and filling out a detailed profile, I used to put “I don’t drink, but I don’t care if you do,” as a very self-conscious, only partially accurate disclaimer. (The “I don’t care if you do” part was only true if the person in question drank moderately, but I digress...)

I was grateful to have a disclaimer, so I didn’t have to go through 7,000 explanations of “no, I don’t drink, yes it’s fine we’re at a bar,” but it also kind of sucked. I didn’t want to come with a disclaimer!

The difference between Mae and me, however, is that alcohol is ever-present in social settings. Most people aren’t openly-yet-casually doing cocaine on first dates (we learn later in the episode that Mae’s addiction was to cocaine). Mae’s “secret” is much easier to keep than a history of alcohol addiction.

I imagine for those in Mae’s position, it’s a blessing and a curse: you can withhold that information for as long as you want because circumstances are less likely to force your hand. But that also means you have to make an active, deliberate decision to do so, which can be even harder.

Mae’s hand may have been forced by her parents, but she’s still doing everything in her power to be as vague and slippery about the details of her addiction.

It’s a masterclass in conversational evasion. Answering “Yes” to “Six years? Six months? A week?” before immediately changing the subject is a hilariously dirtbag thing to do to someone you’re in a relationship with, but if you’ve ever been a dirtbag, you have to respect the skill involved.

To keep George happy(ish), Mae goes to an NA meeting (where the snacks are just eggs??), gets weirded out, and leaves early to drink 12 million cups of coffee with a woman she met there named Maggie.

This is when we know for sure Mae’s plan won’t end well. It’s no longer about when and how to tell George the details of her addiction, or if she’d benefit from attending NA meetings; it’s now clear that—completely independently of anything else—Mae can’t face her past.

But don’t worry, she’s making other great choices:

Mae, Mae, Mae, you sweet little nugget of pathological avoidance. From one weasel to another, “I used to have a problem, and now I have you!” isn’t how you convince someone you’re in a healthy place. Especially on the heels of “I don’t need meetings, but this weird lady is going to be my sponsor!”

Twelve-step programs aren’t for everyone, but a “sponsor” you meet up with to hang out instead of going to meetings is what most people call...a friend.

That’s right, Mae’s spin on Maggie’s sage wisdom of “take your past, shove it in a box, take that box and throw it in the bin, and flush that bin down the toilet,” is to light the box on fire. It’s understandable. It was a shitty period of your life, and you want it to be over. You need it to be over. You need to be a different person than you were when you did all those embarrassing, hurtful, sad, thoughtless things. It’s as natural as it is misguided.

Send questions and suggestions!

For all the stilted, archaic language in AA’s Big Book, I love how it describes the relationship a person can have with their past after getting sober: “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” It’s a good goal for anyone.

It was also a concept that was unfathomable to me when I first got sober. I didn’t just want to shut the door on my past; my past was a haunted house—I wanted to shut the door and firebomb the place. Once that feeling passed, I went to the opposite extreme: I spent hours mentally going over every square inch of the house, reliving all the chaos I’d created when I was drinking. It felt like an appropriate punishment for building a house of horrors. But one day, I couldn’t do it anymore. I came to see that wallowing was as unhelpful as...putting the past in a box and flushing it down the toilet. My past could simply be my past.

Back to Mae and George: Mae goes to the comedy club, and George does karaoke elsewhere, and they both manage to hang out with what seem like insufferable human beings. Mae walks back to George’s and...

Well, it’s a start. We celebrate baby steps here.

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.

If you missed my chat with the lovely , you can check that out here.

Content Note: This post discusses rape and sexual assault

I am not supposed to be writing about rape this week. I didn’t imagine I’d be writing about rape in this newsletter any week. I watched the episode I’m doing for the next Making a Scene, jotted down notes, and then took a break to eat lunch and scroll through my phone.

I knew about the “Cornell Seven” rape case. I’d read a few stories about it, been horrified if not surprised, and then tried to push it aside so I could finish working on something without collapsing into a cycle of anguish and defeat; I know how stories like that can make me spiral.

For those unfamiliar with the story, I’ll recap the incident quickly (again, trigger warning), but I won’t spend much time on the details. If you want to avoid that recap, skip the first paragraph below the break. Alternatively, if you want more detail than I’m getting into here, check out the stories I link to below.

Send questions and suggestions!

A 20-year-old woman and Cornell student went to a frat party, got drunk, was allegedly pressured into snorting ketamine, and then taken upstairs where seven frat brothers allegedly spent hours raping her. They sent texts to their buddies downstairs, alerting them to “free p---y” upstairs. According to The Washington Post, other texts in the fraternity’s group chat in response to the aforementioned “free p–--y” message include, “‘I f---ing love Chi Phi’; another either sought or provided clarification, ‘Like you can walk in and whip it out’” and, just when you think the stomach churning couldn’t get any worse, “shop still open?”

I didn’t know about the texts when I sat down to lunch, but I knew about the incident, which is horrifying enough to stop anyone with a conscience in their tracks. Then I read one line in particular that caught me like a sucker punch to the gut.

“The case has also put a spotlight on the intoxication loophole in New York state law, which says sexual assault victims can’t claim they were ‘mentally incapacitated’ during an assault and unable to consent if they voluntarily became intoxicated.” [Emphasis mine.]

What. The. Fuck.

Think about that. You go out with your friends in New York. It’s someone’s birthday. Or you’re a college student. Or for whatever substance-related reason, you end up impaired enough that you cannot consent to sex, and then you are raped. New York State law says you don’t have a case. Why? Because you’re a bad girl who shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place.

I know that people of any gender can be perpetrators of sexual assault, and the same goes for victims of it. But it’s also well established that the vast majority of rape victims are women who are raped by men.

In some ways, it’s astounding that the New York law exists; in others, it’s a perfect reflection of a too common attitude towards victims of sexual assault. People toss “what were you wearing?” around as a joke—a reference to the absurdity of the supposedly long-ago days when some claimed wearing a short skirt or tight clothes meant you were “asking for it.” “Were you drinking?” has yet to make the same transition; New York’s “intoxication loophole” just codifies the nauseating attitude into law.

Why does substance use absolve abusers of sexual assault and make their victims culpable for it?

It’s not just New York. I tried and failed to find a resource that lists every state with these loopholes. I went through RAINN’s database and tried to find them all myself. As far as I can tell as a non-lawyer, many states have the same requirement as New York for “mental incapacitation,” i.e., that the intoxicating substance has to be administered without the person’s consent.

Those states include Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and West Virginia.*

According to The New York Times’ reporting about New York State’s law, “Defense attorneys argue someone could still say they were ‘physically helpless,’ meaning they were either unconscious or physically unable to communicate consent at the time of the act. But that definition leaves out people who were semiconscious, slurring their words, or unable to stand or walk steadily before they were assaulted...A significant number of victims who were clearly intoxicated cannot meet the ‘very high burden’ of proving physical helplessness, said Joe Muroff, chief of the Special Victims Unit at the Bronx district attorney’s office.” [Emphasis mine.]

In my senior year of high school, I was at a party at my best friend’s house. Most of the people there were familiar to me; my friend and her brother each had their own group of friends over. I got very drunk (surprise!) and climbed into a spare bed to pass out. For some reason, one of my girlfriends was asleep on the floor beside the bed. As the world behind my eyes spun and I tried to let sleep swallow me, I felt someone climb into the bed next to me.

Suddenly, I was very awake. My motor skills were still offline, but the survival part of my brain was on high alert. The guy said my name, so I knew whose hands were suddenly all over me. At some point—and with considerable effort—I managed to slur the word noooo (something my half-conscious friend on the floor remembers me saying, though she didn’t understand what was happening).

That’s not what made the guy in bed with me stop, though. His hands prodded my unmoving body, like he was trying to find the right button to bring an immobilized doll to life. After a few minutes, disappointed by the lack of response (as though the nooo wasn’t enough), he mercifully left.

I’m sharing this story for two reasons:

1) To point out that if something much worse had happened—if he hadn’t left that room, my level of inebriation would have fallen in the “intoxication loophole.” I was semiconscious. Technically, I said no, but what if he claimed I was too slurry and he thought I said yes? The very fact that I was able to articulate something, combined with my voluntary ingestion of alcohol, would likely have made any case against him dead on arrival. Yet, is there any question that I was mentally incapacitated? If I could have moved, I would have—believe me, my knee would have moved up hard and fast—I’ll let you guess where.

2) On the grand scale of assaults women I know have experienced (usually, but not always, involving substances), what happened to me is among the least terrible. I was very lucky that something worse didn’t happen that night. I am exceedingly lucky that throughout the rest of my years of enthusiastic, voluntary intoxication, nothing worse happened. I am objectively lucky.

Is that what luck should look like? Is that the kind of luck you want for your kids, your siblings, or yourself?

College kids drink, often too much. Adults drink, often too much. People with alcohol (or other substance) use disorders frequently use too much. These realities have always been, and will always be, true. And yeah, being drunk means you lose some rights. For example, you can’t legally drive a car. Operate a forklift or pilot a plane. All logical restrictions. Bodily autonomy, however, should never be a right you lose.

Worse than knowing this “intoxication loophole” exists is knowing the legislature has failed to take the necessary action to repeal it twice: once in 2019, and again this year. The law isn’t a forgotten relic of the days when women couldn’t vote. It’s top of mind for some legislators and still hasn’t been repealed.

The New York Times concludes its piece about the law with the following story about a woman who went for drinks with a coworker in 2015 and woke up in a Brooklyn hospital:

There, she said, a nurse told her that she had been found inside a hotel, climbing on furniture. When emergency workers came to help her, she fought with them, kicking and screaming.

A rape kit found semen on her body, and she had bruises on her arms. But, in part because of errors the detectives made in the investigation, she was unable to prove she had been drugged.

And because of her conduct inside the hotel, Ms. Hunt said she did not appear “physically helpless.”

“It’s incredibly unjust,” said Ms. Hunt, now 42 and living in California. “Like I did something wrong because I chose to drink.”

This newsletter is about substance use and addiction recovery. It’s about being compassionate, non-judgmental, and seeing the pain and humanity in people who are struggling. It’s about understanding that substance use is complicated, as are brains and bodies, and understanding that we’re not always our best selves when we’re in the thick of addiction. I want to apply that ethos to everyone equally, which makes the following question one I have been trying and failing to parse for the last 72 hours:

Why does alcohol use absolve men of rape and make women culpable for being raped?

*I read through the consent laws in every state, but I may have missed some or misunderstood the legalese. If you’re interested, please double-check my work by looking up the laws on RAINN’s website.

* If you enjoyed this post, please like, comment, or share it; doing so helps others find the newsletter!

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.

She has published two novels – The Comedown (Henry Holt, 2018), Confidence (Simon and Schuster, 2023) – and a short story collection, Bugsy (Simon and Schuster, 2024). Confidence was named a New York Times Editor’s Pick and one of the Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Fiction. The Comedown was acquired for TV development by Freddie Highmore and Regina King, and then by SONY Trident.

I was flattered when Raf asked me to chat with her about recovery, and I couldn’t have picked a better title than “Getting Sober Weirdly!” We chat about the history of AA, writing about recovery, party girls, and Bill Wilson taking LSD (you can find my story about that here). As you’ll see, she had some connectivity issues but was a trooper, and hopefully the worst of it is just an occasionally pixelated Raf. If you tuned in, thank you; if not, now’s your chance (or your chance is whenever you want; this is an email).

Talk to you all on Thursday!

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Hi Katie,

I am so happy to have found you on Substack.

I have been sober for 18 months. My journey to AA was not typical; alcoholism runs in my family, and both my father and sister passed away from the disease.

While I think AA is a wonderful program, I am struggling with the steps themselves. I feel pressure from the fellowship to get a sponsor, but I am currently in intensive EMDR therapy for trauma. I do not feel comfortable opening up to someone who isn’t a qualified professional, especially when I’ve been told that my issues will disappear once I complete the steps. Additionally, because I haven’t done the steps, I often find it difficult to relate to the discussions in meetings.

I am more of an introvert and sometimes feel like I don’t fit in. I currently chair a meeting once a week, which I enjoy, but I feel it is time for someone else to take over with fresh ideas. However, I worry that if I back away from the meetings, I might relapse.

Is what I am experiencing common?

Thank you, and have a wonderful evening.

Sincerely,

Uncertain Introvert

Hi UI,

Congratulations on 18 months of sobriety! You are most definitely not alone. AA can be a wonderful program, but the twelve steps don’t resonate with everyone. I spent years involved in AA (sponsor, steps, the whole nine yards) and gradually drifted away because, over time, it became less of a fit for me. Recently, and much to my surprise, a friend and I have occasionally gone to a weekly meeting together. I don’t go every week, and I’m not doing it with the same gusto I would if I were newly sober, but it’s been nice having a tentacle back in that world (without totally immersing myself in it).

I share that background so you know where I’m coming from when I say this: Anyone who tells you that your “issues will disappear once you complete the steps” is wrong. Bill Wilson himself would have told you it’s wrong. Yes, the Big Book is full of grandiose statements about the benefits of completing the steps, but they’re more aspirational than literal—they’re also specifically about recovery from alcohol addiction, not PTSD or trauma.

You’re absolutely right to reject the premise that the steps will magically solve every “issue.” The steps were never designed to address other mental health conditions. It might help some people manage symptoms associated with other disorders, but that’s not why AA exists. There’s a reason the Big Book mentions “other disorders,” and states, “we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist.” The Program is designed to help people quit drinking and stay sober—not treat trauma or address mood disorders.

Sponsors aren’t qualified mental health professionals, and it’s not their job to provide that kind of treatment. In theory, they’re there to help you think through some of what was driving your alcohol use and support you as you navigate the world as a sober person. They’re a recovery mountain guide for climbing the twelve steps. That said, the line between the work you’d do with a sponsor and what you’d discuss with a mental health professional can be blurry; if you’re in a place where opening up to someone who isn’t a professional feels unsafe, don’t do it.

I have some experience with EMDR, and I know how exhausting and potentially destabilizing the process can be. It’s a little like shaking a snowglobe: All the trauma that had settled on the bottom lifts and spreads haphazardly through the water, closer to the surface than it’s been in years. It’s extremely important to have support while you’re doing that work. You don’t want someone who’s not a mental health professional stepping in and moving the snow around based only on their knowledge of the twelve steps.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and the best present you could give me is upgrading to a paid subscription; that lets me keep doing what I love: writing this newsletter.

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Your email expresses two gut instincts that I think are wise: This isn’t the time to open up to someone who isn’t a qualified mental health professional, and simply abandoning meetings might not be the best call.

Fortunately, other programs might be a better fit for you, at least for now. SMART Recovery is one option. SMART is rooted in Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which align well with the EMDR work you’re already doing. The people who run it aren’t mental health professionals, but it also focuses less on disclosing one’s history to another person and more on therapeutic tools you can use to aid your recovery. Dave, an AASL reader, talked a little about his preference for SMART Recovery over AA here. There are other free programs and groups as well, many of which you can find at this link.

I would check some of these alternatives out and try to find something you connect with before leaving AA. Think of it like leaving a job—ideally, you’d have another job lined up before leaving your current one. But there’s a big caveat to that statement: if you feel like AA is doing more harm than good, you may want to leave ASAP. From your email, though, it sounds more like a job that’s not the right fit—you need the paycheck, but the work kind of sucks, and you feel awkward around your colleagues. Not the environment you want long-term, but nothing critical is forcing you out the door.

Fortunately, unlike jobs, SMART Recovery and the other programs are always open. The only question is if one of them is the right fit for you.

Very few of the people I know in recovery have a static relationship with AA. Most people start in the Program; some drift away for years, then come back; others stay away for good; and everyone else is somewhere in between.

Around the time I got your email, Crystal C. commented on an AASL post, and it was almost as though she knew you’d written me with this question. I’ve pasted the relevant portion below; you can check out the full comment and the post here.

“I left AA after 2 years of sobriety when someone in a meeting (someone I trusted and respected) called me out for not identifying as an ‘alcoholic’ and not having a sponsor. I didn’t attend meetings for a year or so, although I kept in contact with a few wonderful women I met through AA, my sober tribe. I’m back to attending 2 women’s meetings a week, and nobody makes me feel ‘less than’ for not identifying as an alcoholic. I just don’t like the word! I certainly qualify as someone who can’t stop at just 1 drink and know I’ll never be able to drink ‘normally’ again, whatever that means. I was always a blackout drinker, so ‘normal drinking’ is not something I understand. Anyway, life is 100% better without alcohol, and I’m grateful for ALL the ways/programs available to help us get & stay sober.

Recovery is fluid. I would trust your gut about sponsorship and even stepping away from the Program, if that feels right, but I think it’s wise to try to find something that functions as a replacement first. Maybe sometime in the future, you’ll give AA a shot again; maybe not. If you do, you may end up working with a sponsor once you’ve completed your EMDR treatment, or you may not. You’re 18 months sober, and it sounds to me like you have a good instinct for what you need: a mental health professional you trust and peer support to help you stay sober. You get to decide what that looks like. If you don’t know yet, keep trying things until you do.

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.

A.J. Daulerio is a writer, editor, and founder of The Small Bow, an excellent publication about recovery. I reached out to A.J. in 2019 with an essay idea, and he pushed me to make it much better than my original concept. So much so that it earned a “Notable Essay” mention in 2020’s Best American Essay collection. He and I have spent a lot of time talking about recovery, but I hadn’t heard his whole story, so this was really fun for me, and I hope it is for you, too.

He’s also the former editor of Gawker and Deadspin, so his brief mention of the “Hogan trial” refers to Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker—you can read some of A.J.’s reflections on all that here.

Katie: Thanks for doing this, A.J. So, general question first: how did you find your way to recovery?

A.J. Daulerio: What are we defining as recovery?

KM: Ok, let’s back up. When did you start using substances, and how did your use spiral to a point where you needed to do something about it?

AJD: I went to outpatient treatment when I was 18 or 19 years old; it was my freshman year of college. Really, I was clinically depressed, but I didn’t have the language or capacity to explain that, so I kind of faked alcoholism because I thought that was sexier. I went to a couple of [12-step] meetings and realized that I may not need it now, but I’ll be back here at some point in the future.

KM: Really?

AJD: Yeah, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was on my path of destiny.

KM: I get that.

AJD: I was about 25 when I got to New York, and that’s when I started to do really heavy drugs. I started [using] coke and was really struggling, always running into trouble because of it. I decided to go to treatment, not follow through with treatment, and then switch to drinking or smoking pot or whatever.

By this time, I was in my 30s, and it was really apparent to anyone who knew me that I was a drug guy. I mean, that was definitely part of my personality, and a personality I enjoyed. I had the mindset that as long as I was open about my drug use, I couldn’t have a problem because I’m not hiding anything...and therefore I’m just a recreational user, party guy, and there are no issues.

KM: And how’d that work out?

AJD: Obviously, there were issues. All of my relationships, my hygiene, and my overall approach to the world—everything was altered by that point. I tried to get clean on my own a few times. I remember I got six whole days without going to a bar, which was great. But that’s also when I knew—like, man, this isn’t happening on my watch.

KM: Did you go to treatment then?

AJD: In August of 2015, I tried inpatient treatment in Jersey; I lasted nine days. I thought I was fixed and that my problem was just pills, and when I got back to New York, I immediately started to dabble again. By October, I was on my ass.

I went to [a rehab in] Florida for a couple of months to get super clean, and that stuck for the most part. I had a little bit of a relapse in April 2016, when I was mired in the Hogan trial thing. But I took my first day back chip on July 15th, 2016. It’s been over 10 years now.

KM: Did the rehab in Florida operate using a twelve-step model and, if so, did you struggle with that at all?

AJD: My treatment center booked itself as a holistic place—I still want to know what that means. I think we did a sound bath once and had acupuncture, but it was kind of janky. And yeah, they took us to 12-step meetings, and I didn’t take to it right away. It wasn’t even the God stuff; it was more my attitude. I acted like I was there on some sort of probationary period, like I’d go here for three months and then do something cooler.

KM: What changed?

AJD: As soon as I started finding people I liked in those rooms, it started to make a lot more sense to me, and I’ve been a 12-step person ever since. I mean, I find a lot more of what I’m looking for in terms of emotional sobriety in the adult child [of alcoholics] rooms, but I go to AA for other people. I go there to support other people, you know, and recertify and raise my hand, and say I’m an alcoholic. I think that’s important.

KM: How do you define recovery? Because for me, there’s a real distinction between sobriety and recovery.

AJD: Oh, for sure. I usually think of it as there’s abstinence, there’s sobriety, and there’s recovery. Abstinence is just people who no longer drink, right? People who don’t actually need some spiritual part of their life in order to maintain that abstinence. Sobriety is where I think of bringing in the spiritual element; for me, that comes with a 12-step program. And then recovery is everything that requires me to stay sober and sane. 12-step is just one part of that. I work through depression as part of recovery. I’m recovering from mental health issues and mood disorders, and sobriety helps me with those disorders.

KM: That’s similar to how I think about it. The sobriety part is not putting alcohol into my body, knowing why I can’t, and what I need to do to ensure that I don’t. Recovery is the ongoing process of untangling all of my mental health stuff, substance use stuff, trauma stuff so I can move forward without getting stuck in the muck.

AJD: There’s no growth with me without doing all that. Before, I was winging it. But it takes a lot of discipline and consistency on my part to stay upright. I know I need all that stuff. I feel it when it’s not there.

KM: How did The Small Bow come to be?

AJD: I was looking for stuff to read [about recovery] when I first got out of treatment. I’m kind of a magazine dork. And as someone who has worked in [media] for a long time, and always admired long features, I was searching for good writing. I would Google stuff, and [the results] would be websites for rehabs. And also a lot of listicles and that sort of shit. A friend directed me to Clancy Martin’s Harper’s story, and when I first read it, I was willing to give Harper’s all my money to put that story out in the world; I know that really helped me. I was like, oh, I want to create someplace where I can have more of this writing.

KM: No listicles, no cheesy hope.

AJD: I didn’t want hope at that point. I wanted comfort. That’s what I thought The Small Bow (TSB) should be. Comfort more than anything. I know I’m not cured, and I will never be cured. Like, remember when we first started working together? That essay you did? That essay was not necessarily a recovery essay. It was a “this is what I’m still dealing with” essay.

KM: Definitely.

AJD: That’s the stuff I think is more important; that’s worth putting out there. People should know they don’t have to feel bad if they are not completely changed by a Higher Power or whatever. So, yeah, that was the impetus for it. It’ll be nine years this month, which is crazy.

I mean, you’re a writer, and you write for a living, and you write about yourself. It’s natural to want to write about what’s going on in your life, and it would feel strange to not share that.

KM: I agree, though I’m not really making a living. But, how do you maintain your recovery now? Do you sponsor people? What does recovery maintenance look like for you?

AJD: I try to sponsor people. I raise my hand all the time. I get rejected constantly. My sponsor told me to sit in the front row and share about my insecurity about not being able to sponsor people. I did, and still nobody fucking wants me to be the sponsor.

But yeah, I go to three to four meetings a week. I do The Small Bow meetings. I meditate, pray, journal; I do a lot.

Send me questions or suggestions!

KM: Where do you see TSB going in the future? Do you see yourself doing this for a long time? Do you have other goals or aspirations that aren’t related to recovery?

AJD: Career-wise, you mean?

KM: Yeah.

AJD: No. I do the podcast; we’ve got this book coming out—I’d like to do more books. But recovery still feels like it’s such a huge part of my life; I don’t feel the need to go anywhere else right now. I do want The Small Bow to get to a point where I’m overseeing it more than I’m writing it. I’d like it to be probably 25% me as opposed to 60 to 70%, which it is now.

KM: Do you ever feel like you have to portray a certain image or experience of recovery?

AJD: There’s a part of me that does feel that pressure. So I try to be very, very open about my bad days. But it’s equally important to talk about getting through those bad days and coming out on the other side. That may sound fucking corny to everybody who’s reading it, but, you know, whatever. I try to put that out there too, even though it makes me more uncomfortable than all the dark shit. Explaining to people that I’m happy and grateful is tougher for me than saying ‘I want to drown myself in a toilet.’ But I know that’s part of the work of recovery too.

KM: It is.

AJD: I think my mood disorder is really the best way of pathologizing what my problem is. It’s something that I’ve struggled with since I was six. Dealing with that daily is hard. I know I’m still an asshole sometimes. I’ve had moments in sobriety where I think I’ve been gross in my interactions with people and how I’ve treated others. But I can also see, like, okay, this doesn’t happen as frequently as it did before.

KM: Also, being able to identify those moments as gross or fucked up or whatever is something I couldn’t do before. I was in my own little fucked up world all the time, and collateral damage was not my problem.

AJD: I always say it’s like being in a parking lot, bumping into all the cars and then driving away, and convincing yourself, ‘well, they all parked like assholes.’ Now I at least try to go back and put a note on people’s cars.

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As a sober, introverted woman in her 40s, it’s been a minute since I’ve been to a slumber party—and by ‘a minute,’ I mean at least two decades. In my late teens and early 20s, there were plenty of evenings that were slumber party-adjacent: my girlfriends and I put on glittery eyeliner and clothes our mothers would have called slutty, and went to parties, bars, or—very occasionally—clubs. We’d come back to someone’s house with blisters on our feet and mascara on our chin and pass out on couches in the living room, or squeeze together on futons that we were too young and drunk to know were uncomfortable.

The real slumber kind of slumber party happened years before the glittery eyeliner. Those were the ones where everyone wore pajama pants, big sweatshirts, and fuzzy socks. They often involved alcohol, but it was a cozy kind of inebriation—passing around a bottle of wine someone had stolen from their parents—giggling while Clueless played for the umpteenth time on a TV no one was watching.

The cozy sleepovers were my ideal kind of party—they suited my introversion and latent alcohol addiction well. From the earliest days of my drinking, the transition from I’m drunk and having fun to I’m drunk and need to go to sleep right. this. second. happened in the blink of a drooping eye. It was immensely convenient to already be in pajamas and near a pillow.

I was 23 when I got sober. As is often the case, my 20s were full of weddings. When my still-drinking friends had bachelorette parties, I politely ducked out before booze turned into the evening’s main event. If there was going to be a heavy-drinking occasion that wasn’t a major life thing (birthday, wedding, etc.), I didn’t go. If my non-sober girlfriends planned a weekend trip, they were kind enough to make it a “wellness” forward event—a tactful code for minimal, if any, alcohol.

By my mid-thirties, most of my girlfriends had kids; once I turned 40, it seemed obvious that our days of sleeping bags and playing of light as a feather, stiff as a board were over (none of us are light as feathers and we all have joints stiff as boards).

But last weekend I found myself at exactly this kind of slumber party. My friend, let’s call her Julia, was having a belated birthday party. Her husband and kids took off for the weekend, and she invited a bunch of lady friends over. I’ve known Julia since middle school, but we only reconnected a few years ago. I didn’t know most of the women she invited; the few I knew, I’d met only once or twice.

As a sober introvert, this scenario came with a bit of trepidation. In my drinking days, I would have handled it the way I did everything else—by letting copious amounts of alcohol burn off my discomfort until I was convinced I’d charmed my way into the hearts of all who were present. (I can’t emphasize the “I was convinced” part of that statement enough. The reality was often quite different.)

I packed an overnight bag, but imagined myself driving home a few hours later, ready to escape into the comfort of my partner, my dog, and—most crucially—my bathtub.

I did not go home that night. It wasn’t an awkwardness-free evening; I spent a little time doing my signature study-the-bookshelf-and-pet-the-cat shuffle, but overall, it was lovely. It helped that a handful of other non-drinkers were in attendance.

When I opened the fridge to grab one of the flavored seltzers I’d brought (always, always bring NA drinks to a party if you are unsure of the beverage situation!!), there was an array of pastel-colored cans containing pre-made cocktails, which (rudely) didn’t exist when I was still drinking.

They looked good. They looked cheerful, enticing, and like the kind of drink that would be deceptively strong. I wondered exactly how strong they were, and then I wondered it again, because that’s how my brain works. Despite coming in an equally colorful can, my limoncello La Croix looked like day-old bathwater by comparison.

Standing too long in front of the open fridge, I thought I could take one of these and no one would notice. I could pretend that I didn’t notice it was alcoholic.

I know scores of people don’t like Alcoholics Anonymous’ characterization of addiction as insanity—and I get why that doesn’t apply to everyone. But I can’t think of a more fitting word to describe my relationship to alcohol. From the first moment I used it, liquor cost me friends, relationships, trust, self-respect, and, eventually, very nearly my life. Yet after 18 years of abstinence—the length of time it takes a newborn to become a legal adult—I can still open a fridge and think, how do I secretly get my hands on this thing that will certainly ruin my life?

If you’ve got a better word for that, I’m all ears.

I used to keep these moments of delusional fantasy to myself. They tend to make well-meaning people in my life worry. In the early days, I thought they meant I was doing something wrong; that I should be blissfully ignorant of alcohol’s existence, or the thought of drinking it should horrify and repulse me as much as drinking a can of paint thinner would. Sometimes people in recovery meetings would tell me I simply needed to go to more meetings to properly banish them from my brain.

Send questions and suggestions!

But I actually prefer they stick around and pop up from time to time. I’ve come to appreciate these little spasms of insanity. What better evidence could I have of why I can’t drink than the fact that—after everything that’s happened—I still sometimes want to?

A few years ago, the video below went viral, and it’s one of my favorites. A little girl dances on a chair and jabbers incoherently. Her grandma sits beside her and demands she sit down. The girl starts laughing hysterically, pats her on the shoulder, and says, “Oh, Grammy,” sweetly but completely dismissively. No matter how stern her grandma sounds, you know with 100% certainty that little girl isn’t taking her seriously.

When I have objectively insane thoughts, like I just want to see what a cocktail in a can tastes like; surely I won’t drink more than one, I imagine laughing dismissively at my brain like that little girl at her grandma. Oh, Brain, I think. You are so full of shit sometimes.

For me, trying to push these thoughts away only makes them linger stealthily in the shadows. If I acknowledge them, ideally by laughing at whatever absurdity they’re trying to convince me of, they pass by without much fuss. And that’s what happened at Julia’s house.

I drank my seltzer and watched people drink their various cocktails. At some point, I realized that if I hadn’t been watching, I would’ve had no idea who had been drinking. Everyone was a little loose, a little giddy, and having a good time.

Suddenly, I could imagine exactly what that room would have looked like if I’d been drinking; my inebriation would have been the unwelcome main event. I’d be stumbling, bulldozing conversations, obsessively focused on drinking, and generally insufferable. It would have gone from a fun adult lady slumber party to an Everyone Has To Deal With Katie’s Bullshit Debacle.

When we went to bed that night, all I could think about was how happy I was that Drunk Katie was not at this party. That I’d unplugged the alcohol-fueled chaos machine.

I ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room, right next to the kitchen. Others claimed various bedrooms and downstairs couches, so I was alone in a room adjacent to the fridge with canned cocktails, steps away from a shelf displaying shiny bottles of liquor. If I’d wanted to drink in secret, the opportunity was offered on a silver bar cart.

Instead, I was just grateful I’d powered through a little awkwardness and put a toe outside my comfort zone. I fell asleep content in the knowledge that I wouldn’t wake up with a list of questions about my behavior and an even longer list of people I owed apologies. It was also a nice reminder that for every utterly absurd thought my brain conjures, I have some rational ones clunking around in there too.

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I didn’t watch Nurse Jackie when it first came out in 2009, but I watched the first season when it came to streaming in 2015. A friend was close with someone who worked on the show, and I remember texting her probably only 15 minutes into the pilot episode and asking, “Someone on this show is in recovery, right? This is too accurate not to be written by someone who knows what it’s like.” She told me that, yes, several people associated with the show were in recovery.

As it turns out, that was underselling it a bit. Executive producers and showrunners Linda Wallem and Liz Brixius are both in recovery, as is the show’s star, Edie Falco. Unfortunately for my purposes, Season 1’s realism made it hard to decide which episode to write about; Jackie’s need to use substances drives many of her actions, but she is equally committed to keeping it a secret from everyone in her life. A constant, thrumming tension pulses in the background of each episode, but her substance use isn’t where the action is. She uses quietly and alone before emerging into the acute drama of the hospital and her family life—both made more stressful because of her hidden addiction.

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I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. As you may have guessed, the show follows a nurse named Jackie (Edie Falco) who works in the Emergency Department at All Saints’ Hospital in New York City. In the first five minutes of the pilot episode, we learn three crucial facts about Jackie: 1) she misuses opioids, 2) she is an extremely capable nurse, 3) she is entirely comfortable breaking the rules in service of what she thinks is right (for example, we see her forge a donor ID card so one of her recently deceased patients can save some lives). Later in the episode, we learn she has a husband and two kids.

That’s all you need to know for our jump forward in time to episode eight (directed by my guy and Making a Scene alum, Steve Buscemi!). The episode opens with a nice little metaphor for what’s happening in Jackie’s life. Walking down the street with her kids and husband, Jackie grabs a tissue to wipe chocolate frosting off of her donut-hoovering daughter’s face.

Jackie is an expert compartmentalizer. She has work in one box, family in another, and her opioid use in a third. As viewers, we know that these aren’t really separate, but she’s doing her best to treat them as such. When she leans over to wipe her daughter’s mouth and pellets from a broken capsule spill onto her daughter’s donut like sprinkles, it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor for what’s happening in her life: her substance use is endangering her family—it’s contaminating the other boxes.

It’s a small but undeniably accurate representation of addiction. When you need a substance so badly that it always has to be within arm’s reach, it will inevitably spill into areas of your life you wanted to protect from its harms. When that happens, the immediate instinct is to go big (throw the donut to the ground) and lie about why.

Send questions and suggestions!

When she gets to All Saints’, Jackie learns that the hospital administrator (Anna Deavere Smith) has hired a temp nurse for one day to help with the 365-day short-staffing problem. She’s immediately unimpressed, and for good reason—no one’s first interaction with a coworker should be about how they can’t find F8 on a keyboard.

Then, Zoey (Merritt Wever), the effervescent newbie nurse, notices that Temp Nurse Sam (Arjun Gupta) seems a bit...off.

I love the line, “You never narc on a nurse unless you are absolutely sure.” It speaks precisely to Jackie’s mindset: As long as you can do your job and no one knows you’re using, it’s fine. She’s relentlessly committed to nursing and her patients; she’s convinced herself that her opioid use makes her better able to do that job. Sam’s crime is not that he’s misusing substances at work; it’s that he’s doing so in a way that makes him a functionally useless nurse.

The uncomfortable reality is that Jackie isn’t completely wrong. She does have back pain, and opioids alleviate that pain and allow her to do the job she loves. Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, everyone who becomes addicted to a substance does so because at one point in their use, the substance was helping them feel better than they did without it.

The line also speaks to the systemic issues within the healthcare industry. Healthcare workers—especially those working in Emergency Departments—are more likely to have substance use disorders than the general population and often don’t seek help for fear they’ll be fired. Raising a suspicion without proof could needlessly end someone’s career. (There are a bunch of really interesting stats on all facets of substance use disorders in healthcare workers here.)

The Sam storyline concludes with him saying five words that stun Jackie.

What makes this episode so compelling is how firmly it locates the viewers in the cognitive dissonance of addiction. We know Jackie is being a hypocrite. She is misusing opioids at work—she is fundamentally guilty of the same negligence as Sam. But there’s also a very real difference: Jackie, at least thus far, is functioning well at an incredibly demanding job. Sam, on the other hand, acts less like a hospital worker and more like a guy selling merch outside a Phish show. They are objectively not the same.

But in one way, Sam is more aware of what’s going on at the hospital than anyone else—at least when it comes to Jackie. He sees what the pharmacist supplying her habit doesn’t, or what Zoey fails to notice despite nearly walking in on Jackie in the bathroom scene. It doesn’t matter how convincingly she says, “We don’t do that here.” What should be a cliché becomes a bone-chilling truth: Takes one to know one.

She can’t fool him, and that terrifies her. It’s why her face changes the moment he turns away, shifting from the no-nonsense rule enforcer to a terrified-of-being-exposed rule breaker. Sam understands exactly how devastating that exposure would be for Jackie. He knows it the same way I knew that someone involved with the show had their own experience with addiction.

Because sometimes it really does take one to know one.

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Hi Sober Lady,

I was fascinated to read your article about life outside of AA. I am a self-identified alcoholic currently in AA. Despite that, I’m struggling to understand if I really am an alcoholic and what that even means. For years, alcohol was a big part of my life. I never drank during the day, took pills, or used any other substances. But my pattern involved drinking every night, usually with friends, but sometimes alone. AA is helping me understand some of the unhealthy perspectives and traits that contributed to my drinking, but I’m also hoping there will be a day when I can have a glass of wine or an occasional drink. I am wondering if that might be possible with a different program, like Recovery Dharma or another alternative. I feel that AA has been helpful for me, and I don’t want to stop the personal growth it’s helped me achieve. Should I stop going to AA? What other option might be better for me?

Sincerely,

Conflicted

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Hi Conflicted,

Thanks for the question, and congratulations on taking steps to change behavior you thought needed to change. I’m glad that you are getting something out of AA. I often say that the Program taught me how to be a person. I learned ways to reflect on my behavior (past and present) without self-flagellation or antagonism; I learned how to take accountability when I was wrong without letting other people’s opinions dictate how I felt about myself; I learned about the importance of quiet self-reflection. AA is decidedly not for everyone, but I believe there are core principles in the twelve steps that can be valuable to anyone.

I’m not sure which article you’re referring to, but it sounds like we had pretty different mindsets coming into AA, and I think it’s worth outlining those before I delve into any advice. By the time I attended my first post-rehab AA meeting, there was no doubt in my mind that I was an alcoholic (or had severe alcohol use disorder, or was addicted to alcohol, or was a drunk by any other name). I’ve never believed I could have just one drink or been able to moderate my drinking in any meaningful way. I’ve been reading through old journals recently, and it’s actually astounding how early I was aware that I used alcohol with a feverish obsession my peers never seemed to exhibit.

In other words, I was the exact type of drinker for which AA was created. While I eventually drifted away from the Program, it wasn’t because I was unsure if I “qualified” as an alcoholic or thought that I’d gained enough wisdom or willpower to, as they say in the Big Book, “drink like a normal person.”

Still, plenty of people start going to AA meetings unsure of whether they really “need” to be there and ultimately decide to stay. Plenty more know they’re addicted to alcohol and decide that AA isn’t the right place for them. Still more, like you, land somewhere in between—you wanted to change your relationship with alcohol but are not sure if that means you were actually addicted to alcohol and if AA’s lifelong abstinence approach is what you need. This is totally normal. It’s also totally normal to know you can’t drink again, but still sometimes miss it.

Send me questions or suggestions!

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you whether there will ever be a day when you can have one glass of wine and not want another, or indulge in the occasional cocktail. I can tell you that a lot of people in recovery, especially in early recovery, fantasize about that. It’s why AA talks endlessly about “one day at a time.” The idea of lifelong abstinence is daunting—even for people like me who know they can’t have just one drink. So the Program tells you to focus on just staying sober today. I’ll give you my non-AA version of that advice: Don’t worry about what you might want or need in the future; focus on what feels right for you today.

If you’re currently getting a lot out of AA meetings, I don’t see any reason why you should stop going. Fortunately, you’re not bound to any one program or approach. You can keep going to AA and also check out some Recovery Dharma meetings, hop online for virtual SMART Recovery meetings, or explore any other options. All of the resources listed here are free or low-cost. The best way to figure out what works for you is to try a bunch of different options.

Many of the options (SMART, Recovery Dharma, Lifering) encourage abstinence, but none of them are going to berate you or kick you out if you drink (this is also true of AA, but it can be a bit more intense about it). Moderation Management is another option; it focuses more on changing your relationship to alcohol as opposed to abstaining completely.

But in general, I am a fan of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy. If you’re getting something out of AA, and the only things giving you pause are whether you “qualify” as an alcoholic, and if you can drink a glass of wine at some undetermined point in the future, I’d stick with what you’re doing. You can try other programs (like Recovery Dharma) at the same time, but there’s no reason to abandon a group that’s helping you in the meantime.

Whether you’re looking for recovery from addiction, moderating your alcohol use, or working on personal growth, it’s all a process. There will be difficult patches, breakthroughs, regression, progress, and certain approaches that work better than others. Don’t worry about labels, and try not to worry about what things might look like in the future. Just keep trying things on until you find something that fits.

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As a news consumer, I’m not exactly a tough nut for the news feed algorithm to crack. Pretty much any story about sobriety or addiction recovery makes it to the top of my feed and—proving that Pavlov was really on to something—I click every time. Thus, the news that Brad Pitt told an Esquire reporter that he was “back off the wagon” after seven years of sobriety reached me with all the subtlety of a tsunami.

Initially, I didn’t want to write about it. In general, I don’t speculate about other people’s recovery. If I know one thing in this world, it’s that recovery is a non-linear process that looks different for everyone. I also think it’s gross when people talk about celebrities’ recovery (or lack thereof) like it’s a parasocial spectator sport. When the kind folks at ms.now asked me if I would be interested in writing something about it, my brain immediately jumped to all the reasons I shouldn’t.

Then, I told the editors I’d do it. I thought it was worth writing for a few reasons. As the published piece suggests, whether or not a person can safely go back to drinking after a period of sobriety is a question I am asked all the time (for more on that, read the ms.now piece or this AASL one). Still, I could answer that question without mentioning Pitt at all. Some in the recovery space have taken the position that writing such a piece is “piling on” the actor when his alcohol use is “none of our business.”

Ninety-nine percent of the time, that would be my take, too. But I think Pitt falls into the 1%. The whole issue also raises an interesting question—one I don’t necessarily have good answers to—about the reputation-laundering potential of recovery narratives. But to understand any of this, you need to know about allegations his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, made after a plane trip in 2016, and the crisis PR manager Pitt hired after those allegations became public.

According to court documents reviewed by Rolling Stone, Puck News, and other outlets, Jolie alleges that Pitt became violent towards her and their children on a private plane in 2016. He was reportedly very intoxicated at the time and, to put it mildly, scared the shit out of his family. So much so that Jolie filed divorce papers days after the flight. Perhaps still not our business, though a public figure (allegedly) being physically abusive towards his family is a different ballgame than merely speculating about his substance use—even if his substance use was the catalyst.

Pitt denies the allegations and no charges were ultimately filed, but he publicly acknowledges that he was drinking too much during his marriage and that doing so contributed to his divorce. “I was boozing too much,” he told GQ in 2017. “Truthfully, I could drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. I was a professional.* I was good.”

In 2023, after stories broke about the alleged details of what happened on the flight, Pitt hired the same PR manager Johnny Depp used during his court battles with Amber Heard, Matthew Hiltzik. In a story about the crisis manager to the stars, The Observer reported that Hiltzik crafted Pitt’s “divorce narrative” to emphasize “contrition and sobriety over scandal.”

Two things can be true

I don’t mean to suggest that Pitt wasn’t contrite and sober following his divorce—how would I know? He probably was. But two things can be true: Pitt could be genuinely contrite and sober after his divorce, and it could be really important for his reputation (and thus his career) for the whole world to know that he is contrite and sober.

Last year, Pitt went on famous sober guy Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert, which has an estimated 20 million monthly listeners—and talked about coming into recovery meetings “desperate,” “on his knees,” and needing to “wake the fuck up in some areas.”

I’m not doubting the veracity of his statements. But if—in the wake of an alleged alcohol-related abuse scandal—a celebrity hires a PR person to help get the word out about his sobriety, openly discusses that sobriety in The New York Times, award speeches, and on arguably the biggest recovery-related podcast on the planet before casually mentioning to a reporter on the record that he’s drinking again, is the takeaway really that we’re just nosy voyeurs who can’t mind our own business? Weren’t we supposed to have feelings about his sobriety? Isn’t that why he was talking about it so publicly in the first place?

Here’s where we get to the thorny question I don’t know how to answer: How do we give people the benefit of the doubt, respect how individual the recovery process can be, allow room for growth and redemption while also acknowledging that an actor’s reputation is directly connected to their livelihood and that addiction recovery narratives can help launder a celebrity’s reputation after allegations of abuse?

The thing is, I don’t actually care whether or not Brad Pitt drinks. I genuinely hope that he can do it in a way I never could. He also shouldn’t have to talk about anything he doesn’t want to. But he really seemed to want to talk about sobriety—the thing he said turned him from a “desperate” wreck to “happier every day.”

Quitting drinking isn’t always a big deal, but for Pitt it was. He’s the one who characterized himself and his relationship to alcohol thusly: “The terrible thing is I tend to run things into the ground. That’s why I’ve got to make something so calamitous. I’ve got to run it off a cliff.”

I hope that’s no longer true for him, but after seven years of a high-profile addiction-to-sobriety narrative, it’s certainly fair to wonder about it. Because the only reason I’m even thinking about cliffs is that Pitt told us how compelled he feels to run off of them.

*Pitt also used “professional” to describe his drinking in the new Esquire profile; this time referring not to drinking a Russian under the table, but drinking in moderation.

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When I conceived of Making a Scene, I thought I’d stick to film and television depictions of addiction. My good friend (who came up with the excellent MAS name) adamantly believes I should adhere to that plan. “Books are just different,” he insisted. “You can’t insert clips from books into the newsletter.”

Point taken. And I could have chosen the film adaptation of the book The Good House by Ann Leary—one exists—and it stars two talented and beloved actors, Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline. The charming duo from one of the great 90s classic films, Dave!

But I haven’t seen the film adaptation of The Good House, and I never will. The book means too much to me to engage with any other version of it. Specifically, Mary Beth Hurt’s narration of the audiobook brings protagonist Hildy Good to life with such droll specificity that I refuse to let even the great Sigourney Weaver tweak how I hear the character.

Usually when I recommend a book, I don’t mention if I read the print version or the audiobook. Occasionally, if I listened to the audio version, I’ll mention liking a narrator. When I recommend this book, I immediately ask the person if they have the Libby (library) app or an Audible account. I will then impress upon them the importance of listening to this book on audio. If they are unpersuaded, I’ll whip out my phone (the audiobook is perma-downloaded) and play them the first chapter.

By the time we part, I have either convinced the recommendee to listen to the audiobook or I’ve forever alienated someone who used to think I was normal.

In other words, The Good House audiobook was always going to find its way into Making a Scene, regardless of whether any other books (audio or otherwise) do.

The background:

Hildy Good is a real estate agent in the seaside town of Wendover, Massachusetts. She’s in her 60s, has two grown daughters, one grandson, and has lived in Wendover all her life—she knows everyone and everything that happens in the enclave.

Unfortunately for her, small towns work both ways: the townies also know everything about her—or so they believe. They know, for example, that Hildy likes—or ‘liked ’—to drink. They know that the previous year, Hildy’s daughters arranged an intervention for their mother and that she went to a 28-day treatment program at Hazelden.

They may know that Hildy never really considered herself an alcoholic, but they believe she returned from Hazelden sober and has ostensibly maintained her sobriety since. They don’t know that she still drinks (wine—just a little wine!) when she comes home at night.

Here’s a clip from chapter two to give you a sense of Hildy and how she thinks about these things:

He was “born three drinks short of comfortable,” the Hazelden speaker said. Hildy is certain that she’s not an alcoholic, whatever her daughters and the people at rehab might think. But those six words were so true for Hildy that even the steel walls of her defenses couldn’t stop them from breaking through. It’s a moment well known to anyone who has identified with another person’s addiction story. Hearing someone articulate a feeling you’ve lived with your whole life but never found the words or courage to express can take your breath away.

Of course, Hildy tells herself, identifying with that one thing alone is hardly proof that she has a problem. So what if she was born three drinks short of comfortable? She is a very successful real estate agent—the most successful real estate agent in the town of Wendover, Massachusetts! If she wants to have three glasses (or bottles) of wine on the terrace of her empty house, why should anyone else care?! She’s an adult, goddammit.

You don’t have to be the kind of drinker I was, or Hildy is here, to understand her logic. Whatever damage Hildy might be doing to herself with her solitary imbibing, she’s not harming anyone else.

That’s certainly the attitude Rebecca, a new arrival in Westover who quickly befriends Hildy, takes. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Rebecca begins having an affair with her psychiatrist, Peter, who works in the office above Hildy’s (it happens fairly early in the book).

The new friends become each other’s secret keepers: Rebecca knows that Hildy pretends to be sober in public but is very much not in private. Hildy knows that Rebecca and Peter are cheating on their respective spouses.

It’s in this context that the following exchange occurs:

I’ve vaguely and noncommittally mumbled my way through more of these types of conversations than I can count. Smiling and nodding while my stomach lurches down to my toes and a cold sweat breaks out across my body—yes, of course I remember saying that—smile smile smile, nod nod nod and hope the contents of my stomach can stay put until I escape this uncertain interrogation.

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Worse than what I might have said in a blackout, the real terror came when I did things I couldn’t remember. Someone would start to tell me what I’d done the night before and the terror would descend on me in a cold, brutal, urgent panic. It began with disbelief; rapid decay of what I thought I knew and then spiraled into an increasingly worse nightmare. I don’t think I can describe it any better than Leary does here:

Every note of this emotional progression feels painfully accurate to the experience of being a blackout drinker that—no matter how many times I listen to it—I have a visceral reaction. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion when you’ve totaled your vehicle in the exact same place. You know what’s coming, you’ve heard the squeal of tires and crunch of metal in your nightmares ever since it happened, but you’re powerless to stop it from happening to someone else, right before your eyes.

This exchange also helps us see why Hildy’s homebody wine-drinking might not be as harmless as she believes. When she’s blacked out, she can’t stay contained in her insulated bubble; she’s free to wander out of it at will and wake up none the wiser. Unless, of course, someone tells her what she’s done.

Hildy’s thin veil of denial is pierced when Hildy hears the sadness (or pity, as she says) in Rebecca’s voice.

This, too, feels damningly accurate. It’s easy to maintain your defenses when someone is angry—it’s what they were made for—warding off attacks. We instinctively match anger with anger—Yes, you did! No, I didn’t!

But sadness, or pity, is a different beast. It slithers past the standard defenses and hisses the uncomfortable truth—that your enemy might not be the person to whom all of your vitriol is directed—that it might be something far less tangible, and located much closer to home.

In that moment, when Hildy understands—however briefly—that the previous night she was doing exactly what Rebecca said and has no memory of it, we get the best description of what it feels like to be a blackout drinker (or, at least how I felt as a blackout drinker) that I’ve ever encountered.

“It’s like a suctioning of the soul, being told the things your body does when your mind is in that dead zone. It’s like having your very skin peeled off, like being publicly stripped down to some gruesome inner membrane that nobody should see, and revealing it to all.”

This moment of truth, the raw, humiliating exposure of it, coupled with the reality that Rebecca’s concern for her friend is not quite as intense as her concern that Hildy may have told someone about her affair with Peter, causes Hildy to snap. She lashes out even more venomously and with even more unhinged defenses of her drinking. That, too, feels painfully realistic.

Blacking out was the most traumatic, terrifying, and embarrassing part of my drinking. When I have nightmares about drinking, the drinking part is never actually in the dream. It’s always the morning after; waking up with no memory of what I’d done or said, knowing only that the potential for embarrassment and harm was limitless, left me permanently anxious, nauseated, and craving something I could use to escape those feelings.

Most often, a blackout drinker is depicted from the outside. We see the consequences of their blackout, the stupor of not knowing what they’ve done, and the horror of realization. We watch all of that on a talented actor’s face and feel their emotional response (especially if we have our own experience with it), but I’ve never heard the actual feeling described so vividly and accurately inside a fictional character’s brain.

So as much as I love The Good House, Kevin Kline, and Sigourney Weaver, I won’t watch the movie adaptation. I simply can’t imagine being inside any version of Hildy Good’s head that doesn’t include Hurt’s outstanding narration of Leary’s precise, brutally accurate words.

If you’ve read the book (or listened to the audiobook, or seen the movie), I’d love to know your thoughts. I’d also love your thoughts on Hurt’s narration and, as always, suggestions for what I should cover next for Making a Scene.

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I only skimmed the story because I was sure I knew how it ended. Stories with headlines that include the words “Woman, hiker, dead, remote, naked, suspicious, neck,” tend to end a certain grisly way. I assumed what you probably assumed—what anyone who pays attention to the news would assume—that somewhere out there was a boyfriend, a spurned hiking partner, a forest-dwelling madman, or some other creep responsible for the woman’s death. It felt like a tragic story I’d read too many times before.

This was in April. A pair of hikers in Big Sur had found her face down in a pool of water on Pine Ridge Trail, wearing only a sports bra. They told news outlets that they glimpsed a gash on her forehead as well as suspicious markings on her neck. She was quickly identified as Joanna Ruth Shields, a 37-year-old hiker and skateboarder.

News stories about Shields’ death spread rapidly across social media; the accompanying photos showed a quintessential outdoorsy California girl. She looked like someone I would have become friends with at summer camp. Someone who was on multiple sports teams in high school but also hung out in the park to slackline with hippies. Someone people would describe as vivacious.

I remember thinking that I hoped they’d catch the guy who did it. Then, I forgot about the story entirely.

But a few weeks ago, I started seeing new headlines about the “shocking cause of the Big Sur hiker’s death.” The tawdriest publications made sure to include that she was found naked and with “mysterious marks on her neck,” though by this time the outlets knew that neither her nudity nor the marks on her neck were relevant to her death.

According to the sheriff-coroner of Monterey County, Shields’ cause of death was “probable alcohol withdrawal seizures due to chronic alcohol use disorder.” In a press release posted on July 23rd, the sheriff’s office said that the marks on her neck were the result of “postmortem insect activity” and the gash on her forehead was superficial and didn’t contribute to her death.

I was surprised. So many of the details about how and where her body was found seemed to suggest an attack, though of course all of the “evidence” was circumstantial; it was always possible there were non-nefarious explanations. For example, her hiking buddy told authorities that the last time he saw Shields alive, she said she was going to the bathroom and to wash up, potentially explaining the nudity.

Her friend told the hikers who found her body the same story, though no one seemed particularly inclined to believe him. News reports described the hikers’ interaction with Shields’ friend as “a chilling encounter,” though neither the hikers nor the news outlets explained exactly what made it so. It seemed like everyone was primed for a Gabby Petito-esque tragedy.

Many of my assumptions about Shields (and her cause of death) were based on pictures of her that accompanied the news stories. In them, Shields looked young, healthy, happy, outdoorsy, so I assumed she was all of those things. Indeed, reports from her family and friends suggest she was many of those things. But we now know that she was also very ill.

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In its statement, the Sheriff’s office explained its conclusion about alcohol withdrawal was the result of “forensic examination, a reliable medical and health history, and information obtained from Ms. Shields’ family during the investigation.” Of course there was more going on with Shields than anyone could glean from a few photos; we’ve all lived in an Instagram world long enough to understand that. But that didn’t stop me from falling headfirst into the appearance trap. I fell into it despite knowing better than most how deceiving appearances can be.

For most of my life, I was chronically underweight. At first, there was no real reason for it—I was just a skinny kid. Later, I discovered I had an undiagnosed colon issue and needed surgeries, all of which led to dropping more weight and a significant change in diet. Until recently, the only time I had a “normal” Body Mass Index* was after I graduated college, when I started drinking roughly a fifth of vodka every day.

Drinking that much every day boosted my caloric intake faster than eating ever could. Food was not terribly important to me; drinking was the most important thing in my life. Though they didn’t know the reason for the change, people who had been worried about my perpetual stick-thinness suddenly rushed to tell me how good I looked. How I finally looked “healthy.”

Similarly, when I first started going to AA meetings, old-timers liked to joke that they “spilled more than I drank.” They, too, fell into the appearance trap. All they saw was a fresh-faced (courtesy of a month in rehab), 23-year-old woman starting her adult life.

They didn’t know I’d spent the nine months before rehab waking up with shaking hands and a jittering heart, or that I’d survived a .4 blood alcohol content, or that doctors had told me my liver enzymes were at levels they’d expect to see in a middle-aged alcoholic male. They never implied I wasn’t welcome at the meeting or didn’t belong, but there was an immediate assumption about my history based exclusively on my appearance.

Societally, we don’t think of women in their 20s and 30s as likely candidates for the kind of chronic alcohol use that can result in fatal withdrawal, but that’s a mistake. It happens, as do fatalities from other alcohol-associated conditions. (Despite the many headlines about younger generations forgoing booze, alcohol-associated liver disease is on the rise among young adults, especially young women).

Too often, we think we can identify someone with an addiction just by looking at them. We think we know what health looks like. And, especially when it comes to women’s appearances, people feel entitled to comment on them.

When I was actively addicted to alcohol, I looked for anything that might suggest the problem was not as bad as I knew in my (palpitating) heart that it was. I remember smugly leaving a friend’s house after her parents remarked on how “healthy” I looked, knowing there was a water bottle of vodka in my car just a few feet away.

I know her parents cared about me and were only trying to be supportive. I love them dearly. But I took that word and ran with it. It spun through my head on a self-satisfied loop the whole drive home. Healthy healthy healthy. I knew it wasn’t true. But their belief that it was—after so many years of concerned looks, whispers, and unrequested extra helpings of food—felt almost as good as if it was.

At the time, I knew that I was physically dependent on alcohol. I knew what the shakes were and I knew that alcohol made them go away. I knew they were a bad sign and I knew that they would probably get worse. I didn’t, however, know that alcohol withdrawal can actually kill you.

Maybe Shields didn’t know it either—a lot of people don’t. Maybe she thought she could power through and come out the other side. Maybe she went to Big Sur to do exactly that. Or maybe it all happened by accident. Whatever the circumstances, it’s a tragedy—deepened by the reality that it could have been avoided with proper medical care.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the idea that we’re more surprised by a 37-year-old woman dying from alcohol withdrawal on a backpacking trip than from a violent attack. On one hand, I get it. An entire (true crime) industry is based on stories that begin exactly like this one. I can’t fault anyone for making the same assumption I did.

Some people seem almost disappointed by the truth. Days after her cause of death was confirmed and months after the markings on her neck were identified as the work of insects, new posts like the one below popped up all over the internet.

There are people who want this story to be something it’s not. There’s something unsatisfying about mundane explanations for details that seem so dramatic—the kinds of details we’re used to following on true crime podcasts and Reddit message boards. Those stories animate and enrage us. They have a perpetrator—someone to hunt, someone to blame, and someone who might eventually be brought to “justice.” There’s a villain and a victim.

The true story of Shields’ death is villianless. There’s only the unsettling, heartbreaking reality that she died far too young, alone on a trail in Big Sur, from alcohol withdrawal.

There is no silver lining to her death. I wish she’d had more time. I wish she hadn’t died alone. I wish she’d been closer to medical care. That it happened at all can remind us of a few important realities: Appearances can be deceiving, and assumptions can be deadly. Not everyone knows about the dangers of abruptly stopping chronic alcohol use. No one is immune to pain, the desire to anesthetize, or how their brain responds to that anesthesia. Dying from alcohol withdrawal may be less dramatic than a fatal, violent attack, but it is no less tragic.

*The Body Mass Index was created in the 1830s by a mathematician (not a doctor) and is useless for gauging an individual’s health, but doctors insist on using it anyway. For more on that: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10693914/

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Dear Sober Lady,

My almost-16-year-old nephew, “Joe,” has substance addiction issues. He has been raised mostly by his grandmother and grandfather, but he has now chosen to live with his recovering addict father (his mother is also a recovering addict, but is estranged).

He wants to get clean and says he cannot while going to his current high school and living in the same area. It’s a combination of alcohol and drugs, partially facilitated by dealers who give out “freebies” to get kids hooked. He is on Medi-Cal through Kaiser, and we are all looking for a facility where he can stay for a while, as well as alternative high schools. His father is taking him to meetings every day, has gotten him a sponsor, and is taking him to therapy every week.

My question is: how do we help and make sure things are going “well” without derailing anything? Joe has been raised with love, but probably with too many conflicting (disguised as well-meaning) voices, ranging from feeling sorry for him to being angry with him. Some family members make things worse when trying to help.

His dad has been in rehab 7-8 times, and he has been sober for several years now, but he is also limited in what he understands and how to get help beyond his own needs. For instance, there’s a lot he doesn’t understand about how school systems work. I can’t see Joe living with his dad beyond a few months, but I’m hoping I’m wrong.

Thank you,

Complex Family

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Hi, CF,

Thank you for the question, and I understand how anxiety-inducing the situation must be for everyone involved.

There’s a lot to be hopeful about here:

1. Joe wants to be sober and has identified some of the potential challenges/triggers that might derail those efforts. I’m not blowing smoke when I say this is the most important ingredient of recovery and many adults never get there. It’s very promising that Joe has done so.

2. He wants to live with a sober person. Even if it took his dad several tries to get there, it sounds like he’s providing structure around recovery meetings and can identify with Joe’s experience. Having someone who “gets it” is incredibly valuable—especially if you feel like there are a lot of people who don’t get it telling you what to do.

3. He’s attending recovery meetings and working with a therapist. Both are important; 12-step meetings can be vital to recovery, but for most people, meetings are not an adequate replacement for therapy. This is especially true for teenagers.

4. Finally, Joe’s has a solid support network. Even if they come with some chaos and unhelpful attributes, having people who love you and are invested in your recovery is always going to be better than the alternative.

It sounds like there have been a lot of well-meaning cooks in the chaotic kitchen of Joe’s upbringing. That’s understandable. Raising a teenager with any combination of substance addiction or estranged parents is challenging for any family; toss in more issues with substance misuse, and those challenges multiply.

Even in the best situations, teenagers often feel like there are too many opinionated adult voices offering unsolicited and contradictory advice about how they should live their lives. If you feel like Joe’s had too many conflicting voices in his life, I’m certain he would agree.

All of which leads me to your main question: How do you help and make sure things are going well without adding to the chaos or derailing Joe’s recovery?

The answer lies in the fine art of the open-ended question. Having a lot of voices in one’s life is most annoying when they’re telling you what to do. Calling him to ask how he’s doing, if he needs anything, or even just to chat is a way of showing up for him without being yet another force that pulls him in one direction or another. The point is to make clear that you’re there for him not as a person with an addiction or troubled kid, but as a loved one.

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If you live near his dad, you can do this physically as well. See a movie or take him to dinner. Don’t use these calls or visits to grill him about his substance use or recovery. If he brings it up, you’re happy to talk about it. But having caused plenty of adult consternation in my youth, I know how frustrating it is to feel more like an “issue” than a person. Show him that you can be a port in a storm, not the gale-force winds blowing his little boat in a certain direction.

I’m not suggesting you ignore the addiction part of the equation, only that you not make it the focus of your conversations with Joe. It sounds like his dad could use help figuring out treatment options and alternative schools, and you may be able to provide more concrete assistance. A few resources may be able to help:

The first is findtreatment.gov. You can search by location and filter options by insurance, type of facility or program, etc. I’m a bit biased toward inpatient programs, because that’s what I needed, but I know people who have been through Kaiser’s outpatient chemical dependency program and speak very highly of it, if that’s an option. On the left side of that webpage, you’ll see where you can filter the results by Medicaid.

As far as schools go, you might check out the National Center for Education Statistics database, which is the U.S. Department of Education’s school locator. It lets you retrieve information on all public schools in the country. You can filter by state, county, and school type to pull up alternative schools by location. It’s a bit clunky, but comprehensive and free. There’s also Niche.com; it has a better user interface but may be less complete (at least for public schools) than NCES.

By helping Joe’s dad with some of the areas he’s less equipped to handle, you’re not only alleviating that burden for them, but you’re directing your energy (and concern) toward specific, achievable tasks. When there’s a complicated issue with several moving parts, it’s easy to feel either hopelessly overwhelmed or try to tackle them all at once. Neither is terribly effective, and both are exhausting.

If you find there is more than one logistically feasible option, you or his dad can present them to Joe and ask him what he thinks. Giving him a sense of agency over these decisions may also make him more invested in the work they’ll undoubtedly entail.

Think of yourself as half researcher, half safety net. You can come up with treatment and school options and pass them along, but hopefully those decisions will ultimately be up to Joe. The safety net part is achieved by staying present in his life. Unless he brings it up or the situation explicitly calls for it, treat him like you would any other almost-16-year-old loved one. Offer him a space to feel like an asset rather than a liability—where he can simply be your great-nephew and not your great-nephew with a substance use disorder.

Will he know on some level that your many calls and invitations stem from concern about his substance use? Sure. But with so many (well-meaning) people focusing exclusively on his “problem,” he might need a space where he feels like someone still sees the person he was before substances took over.

Good luck!

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Apologies for the newsletter arriving a day late. I had the opportunity to meet an AASL reader (and new friend), Dave, for coffee, and he kindly allowed me to interview him. It threw my routine off a bit, hence the Friday publication, but I think it’s worth it and I hope you do too.

One of the reasons I wanted to start doing these Q&As is because there are so many different experiences of addiction (and recovery). The more stories we hear, the more we realize that substance use disorders don’t present the same for everyone, nor is there only one path to recovery. I’m very grateful to Dave for letting me share his experience.

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KM: Thanks for letting me do this, Dave. Let’s start from the beginning.

D: I grew up in the shadow of the steel mills in South Chicago. Everyone drank. There was at least one bar on every corner. Alcohol was just a part of society. My father died when I was in high school. I can still recall at his funeral, people coming up to me, a junior in high school, and saying, “You’re the man of the family now.” I had an older brother, and I couldn’t figure out why no one was telling him that, but the whole thing was surreal.

I had always felt a little outside the family, for lack of a better term. Like, at big family gatherings, I would just drift off and go watch a movie in a different room. I didn’t feel the clannish warmth. Not because of bad things; I just...never felt it. So after my dad died, I was trying to take care of my now-widowed mother. My brother was living upstairs with his new wife, but he never really was the sort of hands-on caretaker guy. I was always that little kid. If someone in the family had an object that broke, I’d put it back together.

So, in a sense, I was sort of groomed for fixing things. That never really let up.

KM: Did you start drinking in high school?

D: What’s in high school? Booze, girls, loud music, and being crazy. But also feeling awkward and wanting that feeling of awkwardness to go away. I drank a bunch of cheap wine, and that feeling would go away—things got better. So the stage was kind of set—the environment was very conducive to drinking.

And it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with that. We all knew people who abused drugs and alcohol, and it was visible. You knew who was fucked up and not managing life—you could see it. So I just assumed everyone else was handling it well. If someone is not in jail and they have a roof over their head, you assume they’re fine.

K: Right, so if that’s not you, what’s the problem?

D: There were many crazy episodes in high school and college. There were times when I got shitfaced or blacked out, but I was also first or second [in my class] in academics.

KM: If you’re performing in a certain way, your drinking can’t be a problem, right?.

D: Yep, and that continued after graduation and throughout grad school. I met a woman, became a father, got a full-time job.

I should add: no one chooses this. No one says, ‘God damn, I want to get addicted to something.’ No, you handle things. In retrospect, of course, you realize you're handling things like social anxiety, depression, whatever. You're dealing with life.

I was handling things. And yes, there were those moments where, okay, I drank too much, my buddies drove me home or whatever, but that was by no means the norm. And I’d wake up the next day and be just fine. I was responsible; I fixed things, took care of what needed to be taken care of, and generally tried to be a good guy.

I don’t know what qualifies as a ‘functional alcoholic’ or what that even means, but at least I wasn’t fucking up my life in huge, obvious ways. But nothing happens in a vacuum. The marriage was far too early. A friend that I met in recovery says of her first husband that they were ‘playing house.’ I said yes, that’s exactly it. Except for us, there were kids involved, so it was more painful. That’s when things started to unravel. It was a really nasty, murky part of my life. I was not living at home.

KM: Where were you living?

D: My company had been sponsoring research at Iowa State University for about eight years, and they were about to shut that research down. Around the time I was getting divorced, my boss said, “Go to Iowa State University. Live there for a month, shut down research.”

Long story short, they were closing down a lot of what they were doing, and I was the first person out the door. I ended up working as a scientific consultant. I figured I’d live in Iowa temporarily. I assumed it was temporary because...well, Iowa’s not the edge of the planet, but you can kind of see it from there.

That was 34 years ago. It just started to grow on me. I loved the work I was doing, and I love living there.

K: So you left that job but stayed in a similar field?

D: I worked as a scientific consultant. Most people are busy making stuff. But if you’re making something, how do you know if things haven’t gone wrong with it, or if something goes wrong, why it happened? You may know how to make stuff, but you may not know how to do that fixing triage. I help businesses with that.

K: Sounds like everything was good...

D: So, how did I end up asking a sober lady? Okay, I was living on my own in a college town. That was tough. When you live there, it’s like there’s the towny part, there’s the college students, and then there’s me, older, unmarried, and out of place. Ames is a great place to either be a college student or to start a family, but if you’re not in those categories, it’s kind of like, ‘what the hell are you doing?’

It was fun, but there was a stagnancy to it. I’d go to work, work my ass off, walk home, pass a little hole-in-the-wall bar, and then drink my ass off with the locals.

K: Work hard, play hard?

D: Yeah, and I figured, ‘Who am I hurting?’

K: Sure.

D: I’m jumping over big gaps, but eventually I met the woman who would become my second wife. Our first date was at a wine bar. We talked until the place closed. She was special. Her father made his own beer and wine. So there was always plenty of that around. We both drank plenty.

At first, it wasn’t sloppy. There were none of those episodes. Somewhere along the way. And this is where I’m not the best. What’s the word I’m looking for...

K: Reliable narrator?

D: There we go. One night, her dad made a batch of wine that didn’t come out quite right. I can still recall very clearly that she took one sip and was like, “Whoa, that is terrible,” and never took another sip. I was like, ‘It’s not great, but I’ll definitely drink it.”

I come to find out that her first husband was a raging alcoholic. This guy was an asshole—destructive, violent, lost their house, all this stuff. I was like, I’m not that guy; you know that, right? But that night is when it started to creep in her mind that maybe I was.

One Saturday, I went out for two drinks. They were hefty drinks, but only two. Next thing I know, I wake up at three in the morning, sitting in my car, locked out of my house, and with no idea what happened. Turns out, I had phoned in to a book club, participated in the book club that my wife and I essentially ran. I don’t remember that. Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

But then I realized I had stuff from Home Depot in the back of my car. I’d gone to the hardware store, bought stuff, and then drove around with no memory of any of it. That was truly the watershed moment. It wasn’t like I just passed out; my brain shut off, but I could keep going and be oblivious to what was happening. That’s when I realized I’d crossed into something I couldn’t just say was harmless anymore.

K: Did you tell her that?

D: It took quite a while to convince her to let me back into the house. I think I slept downstairs. But it was a very dark night. I thought, why don’t I just go and run my car into an embankment? It felt like the end.

Then, I realized I don’t trust her to take care of the dogs. I am a dog person, and my dogs truly saved my life that night.

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I told her I’d go to AA, and she said she’d heard that before. Not from me, but from her two ex-husbands. I did start going to AA. But something changed after that; she was just reliving being married to an alcoholic. But it was done. She told me to get out of the house. So, she got the house I didn’t want, and I got the dogs she didn’t want.

K: Did you keep going to AA?

D: I did for a while, but a friend I was in the meeting with introduced me to SMART Recovery. SMART Recovery is based in cognitive behavioral therapy. That’s what really helped me get to the next phase of recovery; like ok, I’ve stopped, but now what? I don’t want to keep saying, “Don’t do it, don’t do it”-I want to know what’s next. How am I processing things? How do we get through life?

D: I’ve always had an affinity not for religion but philosophy, and especially Stoicism. I came across some addiction counselors blending Stoicism and CBT. One of them is this Scottish guy living in Canada, Donald Robertson; his writing really struck a chord with me. Also Buddhism—that’s helped me understand my addiction and recovery. No one has got it together. We’re all lost. But the question is how you get through it. I hate clichés, but some of them are true. And you have to get comfortable with discomfort.

K: And that helped you understand, as you say, what’s next for you?

D: It took stopping that constant, daily depressive substance to clear my system out. I don’t know when it happened, but suddenly I was thinking differently and acting differently. I retired. I kind of like where I’m at now. I started volunteering three mornings a week at the botanical gardens. I asked if there were chores that no one else wanted to do, and they had plenty. So I said I’d do that.

K: That’s amazing.

D: So it’s a great physical workout. I do nasty shit that the Hort people don’t want to do, and they’re so grateful. I get to watch a botanical garden every season. Working in a botanical garden all through the year…it reminds you that shit changes. Life is changing all the time.

So that’s where I find myself now. It’s so easy to say, if I only found the right woman or the right job or whatever. But then what? Life doesn’t stop when things are perfect. There will always be challenges; they’ll just change.

K: So what brought you out here?

D: At one point at the beginning of the year, I said, “I’ve got a car that’s new to me. I used to drive long distances. Can I still do it in my golden years? What if I drove to both oceans?” I drove to Maryland and saw a friend I know through recovery and then drove out here to see my niece and her family.

I’m four and a half years sober now. Last night I was having dinner with my niece and her husband. They were drinking wine with the pasta. I can appreciate that it would be nice, but I honestly don’t need it anymore. I don’t even really want a glass because I strongly suspect I’d immediately ask myself ‘why stop at just one?’ So I’m just not going to open that door.

But I’m also not afraid of it. This past winter, I had a nasty cold and took medicine with alcohol in it. I wasn’t drinking it for a rush. I didn’t feel a rush. The medicine did its job. I’m okay. I’m not like living under a bridge again. There are people who tell me they could never do that. I’m not going to argue with them. That’s their life. I know that I can’t control anything except myself.

K: Good old serenity prayer

D: When I was a kid, I remember seeing a needlepoint with the serenity prayer in an old aunt’s apartment and thinking it didn’t mean anything—it was just old lady stuff. All these years later, I’ve come to find out it’s a goddamn roadmap.

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Housekeeping: Next week’s newsletter will hit your inboxes on Friday instead of Thursday.

Last week, I met a college friend for dinner in Brooklyn. I hadn’t visited New York since a brief trip in 2019, a few years before my partner and I moved to rural Washington.

I mentioned the move and Sam told me he’d seen pictures I’d posted. “It looks amazing,” he said, “but I never ever would have guessed you’d end up living with goats in farm country.”

I laughed. No one saw it coming, least of all the people who knew me in college. Sam and I met during freshman orientation and became fast friends, in no small part because we delighted in each other’s debaucherous antics. It goes without saying that I was a heavy drinker in college (a world record understatement), but I was also extremely social.

So, as Sam was accurately implying, if you had asked anyone who knew me then what my adult life would be like, they probably would have guessed I’d land in a big city with a great bar scene and a gaggle of messy friends by my side. Which is exactly how I pictured my future life, too. The notion that my days would involve cleaning up goat shit in overalls and a trucker hat would have entered the picture only as either a punishment or a punchline.

In 2005, after my Sophomore year of college, I got a publishing internship in New York. I spent my days alternating between working for free at a publishing house and working for minimum wage at American Eagle Outfitters in SoHo. (If I never hear the phrase “Can I show you our denim wall?” it will be too soon.) Nights were spent with my college boyfriend, an NYC native who knew all the bars and liquor stores that would serve almost-but-not-quite 21-year-olds.

At the time, New York City felt like a playground upon which my friends and I could play-act adulthood without the responsibilities of adult life. It was exciting but also a hazy, inherently temporary adventure.

My first (and last) attempt at being a Real Adult in a Real City came a few years later, about six months after I graduated from college. I took a publishing-adjacent job in Chicago in late December of 2007. It didn’t last long. By the end of January, I was back in California and in treatment for alcohol addiction.

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I was already addicted to alcohol before I moved to Chicago. For months, my hands shook in the morning, which led to drinking immediately after waking up, which led to constant drinking throughout the day until whenever I passed out. That routine began in the quaint, protected suburbs where my parents lived and I secretly drank.

It was during this post-college period that I learned I wasn’t actually an extrovert. Being social had simply been a useful cover for drinking. In college, no one I knew sat around and drank by themselves. To drink was to be social; I was definitely going to drink, so I guess that meant being social. On my own, in post-graduation limbo? Drinking all by myself was fine with me.

So while I can’t blame the city of Chicago for my demise (though I initially tried), it was there that my downward spiral accelerated considerably. It’s a drinking-friendly city—I was warily pleased to discover that the 7-Elevens sold hard liquor, not just beer and wine as they did in California.

I passed three different 7-Elevens on my way to work and eventually reached the point where I felt genuine pride on days when I made it past the first two stores, only to cave and slip into the third. With a shaking hand, I’d hand my ID to the clerk at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning and not get so much as a side eye. Instead, I received a very bored “see you tomorrow.” And they would.

It was a relief to get sober in a small town in Marin County—a place once known for its hippie, artsy roots (and now known for very expensive houses), but never for an abundance of bars or liquor stores.

Eventually, I moved to an even more remote place, surrounding myself with nature, animals, and a healthy dose of solitude. It’s not what I—or anyone who knew me when I was drinking—would have expected, but it fits. It feels right.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d gotten used to the solitude, nature, and overall distance from the bright lights and big city until I visited friends in New York over the 4th of July (a very smart, calm, and normal time to visit the most populous city in the United States).

It sounds ridiculous, but it was jarring to see multiple liquor stores, bars, and other places to procure booze on almost every block. Restaurants featured drink specials more prominently than food—even the beverage options at the theater where I saw a show were limited to something-something vodka and something-something tequila. (I only remember important ingredients.)

It wasn’t that these were particularly tempting to me, but I found myself repeatedly muttering, ‘How does anyone get or stay sober here!?’ I wondered if my sobriety was less my own doing and more the result of sequestering myself to the life of a goat farmer. Was I really as secure in my sobriety as I felt? Or had I merely cocooned myself from temptation?

It took me a few days to realize that I had broken my first (and only) rule about recovery: Don’t assume what’s true for you will be true for someone else. I was superimposing my triggers and perspective onto an entire city and forgetting how individual and nuanced the process can be.

There may be many bars and liquor stores in New York, but there are also countless recovery meetings (both 12-step and not) and support groups, roughly a gazillion therapists with an expertise in addiction—far more than you’ll ever find in Goatlandia—and some of the best hospitals in the world.

In my rush to notice every liquor store on every block, I forgot that I actually know tons of people who got sober in New York and other major cities (even my old pal, Chicago).

Sobriety surprised me when it revealed that I’m not actually an extrovert thrilled by big city life. I wanted to be that person (she seemed cool), but it’s just not how I’m built. The noise and chaos of my drinking never allowed me to grasp that it was possible to let go of the person I thought I was supposed to be and instead figure out who I actually am.

Recovery doesn’t make you a certain kind of person; it shows you who you are once you’re no longer driven by destructive, insatiable desires. As it turns out, I’m someone who spends her free time pulling weeds and cleaning up after four goats who are mostly interested in trying to eat her hair and defecating in all the freshly cleaned spots in their stall. College me would be horrified, and she’d be wrong.

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At last, the time has come to discuss a seminal film in my recovery media canon—a movie I’ve obliquely referenced in this newsletter, but never given the full Making A Scene treatment: 28 Days.

The star-studded film hit theaters in 2000, and I have watched it countless times since. Sandra Bullock plays Gwen, a binge-drinking party girl who reluctantly finds herself in inpatient treatment for addiction. Along the way, we meet her long-suffering and (understandably) uptight sister, Lily (Elizabeth Perkins), Gwen’s boyfriend, Jasper (Dominic West), her rehab counselor, Cornell (my king, Steve Buscemi), as well as an assortment of substance-addicted misfits who we’ll come to know and—perhaps begrudgingly—love by the end of the movie.

I love 28 Days for many reasons—some personal, some narratively—but all because of how it handles certain aspects of recovery. The few people I’ve found who have seen the movie (even independently of an interest in recovery) love it. The critics and reviewers on the film rating website Rotten Tomatoes? Not so much: The movie has a meager 33% from critics and only a 50% audience (“popcornometer”) score.

If you haven’t seen the film (or it’s been a while), all you need to know is that Gwen, the aforementioned binge drinker, ruins her sister’s wedding by...doing all the things you might expect a prodigious drinker to do: She flails on the dance floor, loses her balance, and topples onto the wedding cake. In an attempt to rectify the situation, she steals the “Just Married” limo (after stripping off her bridesmaid gown) and drives it through an unassuming neighborhood looking for “a cake store,” before crashing the limo into a house. You know, classic blackout drunk wedding guest things.

Following her escapades, Gwen is given two options: jail or inpatient treatment; she wisely chooses the latter, and the bulk of the movie takes place in rehab.

Immediately, it’s clear that our gal is uninterested in sobriety. In one of my favorite scenes in the movie, Gwen walks down to the lake (of course there’s a lake) to find Cornell (Steve Buscemi) smoking a cigarette. Out of cigarettes and without other substances to take the edge off, she offers him “all the money in her bank account if she could just bum one of those smokes.”

So much happens in this short interaction, and it’s one example of what makes Sandra Bullock’s performance in this so great. Gwen’s jitters are palpable, but like any true Bad Kid, she sees the guy smoking away from the hubbub of everyone else and immediately assumes he’s a fellow misanthrope who doesn’t want to be in treatment and is possibly her best option to procure a substance with a “little more kick.”

As someone who’s made many friends by identifying a fellow misfit substance user hiding their addiction under the guise of being a too-cool-for-school outsider, every note of this scene rings true. If you ever became friends with the quiet kid smoking weed behind the gym at a pep rally, or skipped Freshman orientation to smoke cigarettes and loftily scoff at the childishness of capture the flag, you know what I mean. For his part, Buscemi’s deadpan silence somehow manages to scream “you’re fucked” better than the actual words ever could.

In this one-plus minute scene, Gwen’s attitude toward treatment and sobriety is made abundantly clear. She doesn’t have a problem. She doesn’t need to be here. Rehab is not for people like her. Cool people. Smart people. Writers. Someone with a job, a boyfriend, friends.

For proof, Gwen argues, look no further than the rest of her cohort—substance-addicted losers with whom she would never interact in real life. They need to be here, she explains to Cornell. They’ve got the wrong guy; her being here is all a big mistake.

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The perfectly cast Buscemi tries to remind his gum-snapping patient that her options were rehab or jail, and if she doesn’t want to take the first option, he’s more than happy to arrange a transfer to the second.

Gwen takes this warning about as seriously as she takes any warning, which is to say, she sneaks out of visiting day with Jasper and returns later that night looking like she’s on her way home from a bar crawl.

In Cornell’s office the next day, he explains to Gwen that sneaking out of rehab to get wasted is exactly the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of rehab, and she’ll be transferred to jail the following morning. After trying and (shockingly) failing to convince him that she can quit drinking anytime she wants, she scurries upstairs to her room, where the following scene unfolds.

I can’t remember exactly when I first saw this movie, certainly before I got sober. But for the next seven years, or however long it was until I got sober, one line from this movie—from Buscemi’s speech—was etched into my brain: “If anyone had a clue how wrong it felt for you to be sober, they wouldn’t even think of asking you to stay that way. They’d say shit, man, do it...do whatever you need to do to feel like a normal human being again.”

I remember thinking, exactly. Everyone who thinks I drink too much just doesn’t get it. The part that didn’t land so squarely in my teenage brain was that the words that were making me feel so seen and understood were coming from a character who, moments later, explains that he woke up one morning on an unknown street with no idea how he got there, covered in blood.

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As Cornell narrates the story of his “rock bottom,” we watch Gwen hit hers—launching herself out the window after the stash of Vicodin she tossed out the window to prove she didn’t need.

Her crash landing is the wake-up call one might have expected her to have after actually crashing a car into someone’s home, but, hey, it takes what it takes. She manages to convince Cornell to stop her transfer to jail and let her have a second chance at treatment. Predictably, her fellow patients aren’t as forgiving. The following scene feels so true to (at least my experience of) rehab that it still delights me every time I watch it. Also, Alan Tudyk as Gerhart (the blonde guy with glasses) is amazing (in this scene and throughout the movie).

Our Gwen has officially cracked (in a good way). She’s accepted that she doesn’t use substances like “normal” people and needs help to get sober. Her air of terminal uniqueness is getting pummeled by the other people in her group, and her wall of cool indifference and judgment has been replaced by raw emotion.

Perhaps most surprisingly, at least to Gwen, that raw emotion is celebrated by the very people who had just berated her. Finally, she is expressing how she truly feels. The tiny smile on her face as she settles back in her chair lets us know that their unexpected approval matters to her. She’s no longer looking down at them; these are her peers.

It’s worth pausing here and noting that the rehab industry has a long, terrible history of using humiliation and abuse to “break down” residents who they see as resisting the program, and it’s deeply wrong and ineffectual. I realize that there’s a hint of that in this scene. But if I think it crossed a line into humiliation or abuse, I wouldn’t have picked this movie for MAS.

To me, the scene reads like the airing of legitimate grievances by a group of people trying to do a very hard thing, and feeling as though one of the members of said group isn’t taking it seriously—is, in fact, getting away with breaking rules that exist for legitimate reasons.

The rest of the film follows Gwen as she navigates the remainder of her treatment, including reckoning with her past and potential future. I won’t reveal more than that, but if you’re interested and haven’t seen the movie, please watch and let me know your thoughts.

What I love most about this movie is how well it depicts the strangest thing that happens in recovery: The speed with which people you would never encounter in “real life”—people you might think are weird, annoying, or obnoxious—become your life preservers and comrades in arms.

When I went to treatment in January of 2008, one of the women in my cohort was among the most annoying people I’ve ever encountered. At no point during my 28 days did this woman become less annoying.

But if this lady ever called me at 2 am from the parking lot of a liquor store she was debating whether to enter, I would be in my car and on my way to her in two seconds flat. Her 100% sheer obnoxiousness would have no bearing on whether or not I showed up to drive her away from that liquor store and to an all-night diner. Rehab taught me that you don’t have to like someone to understand and empathize with their pain—or take an active role when asked for help.

And that’s the most annoying person I could think of. What happens more often is that your cohort of misfit drug users can become some of the closest friends you’ll ever make. You wouldn’t have ever been friends in “real life,” but how real was that life? The one where you lied to everyone, hid bottles, and no one ever understood why you couldn’t just stop.

That bizarre and beautiful alchemization is what makes 28 Days succeed. Sure, it has moments of cringy cheesiness endemic to all feel-good movies of that era (if anyone expected me to end a chant with NOOOOOO DRUGS, I would SIMPLYYYYY DIE! And no one can convince me equine therapy as depicted in the movie is a real thing), but what the film gets absolutely right is the emotional trajectory of a specific type of rehab experience.

So why did the critics hate it so much? Apparently, according to the Los Angeles Times, in a sentiment echoed by many other reviewers, “28 Days is too glib too often to make much of an impression any way you look at it.”

The gist of these reviews is that the film is too lighthearted for such a serious subject. I could point out the many serious and genuinely heartbreaking parts of the film, but I’d rather focus on the fact that recovery—especially the kind that comes through a motley crew of people with addiction—can be joyful, absurd, and hilarious. That the funniest, silliest things can make you laugh until you cry right before the life-and-death stakes of addiction reappear, as stark as ever.

Plus, it’s a helluva cast.

If you’ve seen the movie, let’s chat about it in the comments. If you haven’t, go watch it and join us!

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Housekeeping: No newsletter next week, but I hope you all have a safe and fun holiday weekend (if you’re in the US). If you’re not in the US, well, maybe that’s something to celebrate, too!

Hi Sober Lady,

I come from a long line of alcoholics; it’s been something I’ve kept an eye on my whole life, but luckily, I’ve never been attracted to drinking at all. The same can’t be said for my cousin, who recently graduated from high school and is starting college out of state in the fall. She hasn’t dealt with anything like arrests yet, but I’m becoming increasingly concerned. Over the past few months, I got several late-night drunk dials asking to pick her up from weeknight parties, and she definitely showed up noticeably drunk to last Thanksgiving. It generally seems like she has very little self-control around booze. I’m worried about what this will look like for her in college.

Her father has had stints of sobriety, but he remains what I consider to be a high-functioning alcoholic. I’ve seen a lot of people in recovery say something along the lines of an addict won’t quit until they truly want to, but my question is: As someone who got sober pretty young, do you think there’s anything someone could have said to reach you before your drinking truly became a problem? I’m already fighting an uphill battle being in my 30s and wanting to talk to a soon-to-be college kid about drinking, but she’s a pretty thoughtful and analytical girl, so I’m wondering if there’s any way to reach her before this becomes a real problem?

Best,

The “Cool” Relative

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Hi Cool Relative,

Thank you for the question; I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I would love to have a tidy, hopeful answer for you—a neat sentence or two that would allow your cousin to understand that she’s playing with fire and has a decent chance of getting burned. Unfortunately, I don’t. What I can tell you is that my familial history of alcoholism was made abundantly clear to me when I was her age, and it made exactly no difference in how I used or even thought about alcohol.

I don’t say this to discourage your involvement. You can play an important role here; it may just be a little more involved than a one-off conversation. While I can only speak from my own experience as someone whose teenage self sounds a lot like your cousin, it may help to understand why I was so resistant to discussions about my alcohol use and my family’s history.

In my mind, there was a huge distinction between being a young adult who was also, shall we say, an enthusiastic drinker and being a real adult with real adult responsibilities while also being an alcoholic. As a now middle-aged teetotaler, I can draw a straight line from one to the other, but whether it was my budding alcoholism or lack of a fully developed frontal lobe, I was simply not going to acknowledge any relationship between my being a normal teenager who’s just having fun, okay??!! and [parent/relative with addiction] who I’m probably still mad at for having that addiction!!

Again, it’s easy to see the relationship now, but teenage Katie makes a valid point. (It may not outweigh the validity of your points, but valid is valid.) Your cousin is likely not the only kid partying on weeknights during the second semester of their senior year of high school; it’s pretty common for kids her age to start drinking around this time. It is possible that her behavior is simply that of a 17 or 18-year-old who is newish to alcohol use and ecstatically on the brink of what feels like freedom/adulthood. Put another way: There’s probably a kid out there who is doing the same thing right now and won’t end up with alcohol use disorder or any kind of addiction.

Risk-wise, is that a false equivalency given her family history? Probably. She’s statistically at higher risk than a hypothetical kid without addiction in his family. Showing up to Thanksgiving obviously drunk isn’t a great look and can be a warning sign, but an increased risk isn’t the same thing as a predetermined outcome. More importantly, it’s extremely hard to sell a teenager on the idea that she should behave differently from all of her friends because Dad and Grandpa drank (or still drink) too much.

If her father has had “stints of sobriety,” she’s probably well aware that alcohol can be addictive. If you think she’s truly unaware that addiction runs in families, it’s fine to enlighten her, but I’d do so casually. If she comments on her Dad’s drinking or her own, you can say something like, “You know that runs in families, right? Keep an eye on that when you’re away at school,” or something along those lines. But I think she probably knows—as I did—and just thinks that information is a world away from being applicable to her.

The last reason I wouldn’t bring up her drinking right now, when she’s unlikely to fully appreciate the risk, is so you can leave the door open for that conversation in the future. When I was her age, and throughout college, I had a list of people in my head who had expressed any type of concern about my drinking, which I automatically interpreted as criticism. The people on that list, my young, moronic brain insisted, were not to be trusted. They were people who wanted me to either drink like they did (which was boring as hell, that same brain told me) or not drink at all, which was obviously not an option. Those people were not to be trusted. Those people could never be told the full truth.

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The people I did reach out to when I was in crisis, or when I was brave enough to raise the subject of my own alcohol use, were the people who picked up the phone when I called. They were the people who listened to me ramble frantically, asked if I was safe, followed up without disapproval or reproach, and always, always gave me the impression that what mattered most to them was my safety and happiness.

If drinking the way I was drinking made me happy (as I claimed, lying to both myself and others), then their primary concern was my safety. There was no telling me what to do; no warning me about my family history; there was simply the sense that I had a judgment-free port in any storm.

That’s the person I hope you can be for your cousin. The person who loves her unconditionally, who is there for her when things get messy, and who never acts like he knows what she needs better than she does. I hope you can be the person she trusts with the things she’s too scared to tell anyone else.

She’s going to need someone like that in her life—we all do. When I was your cousin’s age, I was incredibly fortunate to have a pair of adults in my life who were in that sweet spot of being at least a decade older than me but not so old that they seemed parental. They were the steady 30-something cousin to my wild, 18-year-old self, and I needed them more than I ever could have known at the time.

They couldn’t and didn’t prevent me from becoming an alcoholic because nothing could. I had to keep going until I crashed; it was the only way I would truly believe that I was addicted to alcohol. I hope that’s not true for your cousin, but it could be.

Knowing I wouldn’t listen if they tried to tell me what my “problem” was, those adult-friends gave me space to be the messiest version of myself without condemnation or sanctimony. They gently suggested that things didn’t have to be the way they were. They spent a lot of time “just checking in.” It helped more than I can say.

The fact that your cousin is already calling you to pick her up from drunken escapades suggests that she sees you as this kind of person. Be there for her. Express concern for her safety and well-being. Tell her that you’re always on her side. Then, if and when the time comes for her to take a hard look at her alcohol use, I’d bet good money that you’re someone she turns to for support.

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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.

’s first memoir, Drunk Mom, gave readers an unsparing look at a new mom’s alcoholism and eventual sobriety. Written as both a love letter and apology to her son, Bydlowska’s latest book, Unshaming, discusses the relapses that followed the success of her first memoir and the relationship between shame (or unshaming) and recovery.

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KM: Hi Jowita! Thanks for doing this. Congratulations on the publication of “Unshaming.”

JB: Thanks! I never thought I would make a career based on my substance use. Drunk Mom was initially supposed to be a novel. I write fiction. And I was very against self-help. Drunk Mom was not in any way intended to be a memoir, and certainly not self-help. But eventually it had to be a memoir because there just wasn’t enough fiction in it.

When it came out, my publicist was like, “It’s good to say you wrote this book because you wanted to help new parents,” so I would just repeat that phrase. And I did get letters from people the book helped, and that was really meaningful, but it wasn’t necessarily what I was trying to do when I wrote it.

[Unshaming] was completely different because I went in wanting to share my experience and connect with others, which is what we do in recovery—at least most of us.

KM: So, before we get into all of that, how did your substance use start, and how did you get into recovery in the first place?

JB: I was a blackout drinker from the first drink; my drinking was not of the ‘educational variety.’ I was one of these special people who blacked out, had a terrible time, came to in a cold bathtub at 13 or 14, and immediately thought, ‘I need to do this again.’

KM: Yes, exactly same—minus the cold bathtub.

JB: So that probably gives you a good idea of what my drinking was like and why I ended up in AA. Were you in AA?

KM: I was for a long time. I haven’t been in years, but if I really were worried about drinking, I’d go back in a heartbeat.

JB: I went to AA because—well, I didn’t know there was anything else. I don’t actually think there was anything else. I was 27 the first time I got sober, and I only knew about AA from movies, but it seemed like something I would maybe want to do.

This was around 2006. I went to AA, and I credit it with giving me sobriety and discipline and, frankly, brainwashing me enough to get my shit together. I was sober for about three and a half years. Everything was fine until we got to the Higher Power part. It wasn’t even the Higher Power, exactly; I just eventually ended up feeling like I could never please this Program. It’s funny because there’s this part in AA where they say progress, not perfection, but I think that’s bullshit.

KM: Ugh. That’s when the culture of the meeting really starts to matter.

JB: I live in Toronto, and it has a very specific vibe. They say Toronto is the only city in Canada that’s similar to the Bible Belt in the United States. We said the Lord’s Prayer at the end of every meeting, all the hand-holding, it was very much like church. And there was a time when I needed that discipline; I needed to see sober young people; these were people I would probably drink and do drugs with, only we’re in a church basement with the lights on, and everyone’s sober.

KM: And drinking shitty coffee.

JB: And smoking. Anyway, I relapsed just before I found out I was pregnant, and when I came back to meetings, people would say, ‘Well, did you not pray enough? Did you not go to enough meetings? What is your higher power? Who is your higher power? You have to decide whether there’s God or there isn’t.’

KM: Not super helpful.

JB: No. But then I got pregnant and...I mean, the baby was like that siren on the top of a car. Alarms were going off. Because I’d never felt love like this before—not for a man, not for writing, or anything else, and I’m still battling the urge to drink. How could alcohol be bigger than the love I had for this little creature? How could something be so powerful?

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I managed to stay sober through the pregnancy, but I relapsed right after—it was probably post-partum related, but it ultimately doesn’t matter. I had all these little stupid rituals set up. I fed him formula so that I wouldn’t breastfeed him. I would sneak bottles into the bottom of his stroller and sip them on walks. It’s a crazy way to live. Babies alone are hard enough work, right?

KM: And hiding drinking is a full-time job on top of that.

JB: So there were 11 months of drinking after he was born; all of which I talk about in Drunk Mom. I eventually agreed to go to rehab, but I did such an addict thing. I told myself that I was writing a novel about a young mother in a big city who is drinking in secret. She’s pushing a stroller and hiding bottles and doing all this weird shit too, so I’m really just doing research for the novel.

KM: Classic drinking-writer rationalization.

JB: Exactly. Even in rehab, I went with a notebook, and I was like, ‘I’m just here to research my novel. I’m gonna observe these sad people with addictions.’

Obviously, there was part of me that knew I was there because I needed it, and my addiction was out of control, but for the longest time, I just said everything was about the novel.

But I also decided to go to rehab because I was so baffled about why I couldn’t stop drinking. If [endangering my son] didn’t stop me, nothing would. I figured this would at least give me a break from my environment. I’ll be supervised somewhere for a month, and maybe when they release me, I’ll have a different frame of mind.

I remember sitting in rehab about two weeks in, and then you know we had one of those relapse prevention counseling sessions, and they were asking about what—be it drugs or anything else—might be triggering.

KM: And your primary substance was alcohol?

JB: Yes, but only because I encountered it first; it could have been anything. So they asked this, and immediately in my head I’m like, ‘well, MDMA is great and not addictive, and I like techno, and it’s going to be amazing.’ It was like my relapse was already in there—there was no removing it, no fucking spiritual surgery that could cut it out of me.

I know people have spiritual experiences, and I know they have come to Jesus moments, and all kinds of things, but that wasn’t the case for me. What was it like for you? I’m just curious.

KM: My drinking started very much the way you describe yours. From the jump, I was like ‘this is the thing that will fix me.’ It didn’t matter that I was blacking out or barfing in a trash can—I just wanted to do it again.

I didn’t have the spiritual experience in like a one big moment way, but I ended up in the ER, and the psych ward, and everything around that broke through my denial and made me realize that I either had to stop drinking completely or I would die.

But I am conflicted about rehab—even though it unequivocally saved me—because mostly what it did was keep me away from alcohol, for 30 days. And thinking about how expensive rehab is...even as a “success story,” it doesn’t feel like it should cost as much as it does.

JB: I’m a huge fan of the YouTube show Soft White Underbelly. It’s a guy doing a lot of interviews with people on Skid Row in LA, but he interviews addicts, sex workers, and people who we don’t usually get interviews from. The first question that comes to mind is always, ‘Who helps these people?’

I’m in Canada, we have free healthcare, but even for that, like, when I wanted to go to rehab the second time, you know, they said there’s no beds available for two months. I could be dead in two months! Especially if I were an opioid addict, with all the stuff that’s on the street—two months is a long time. Even as an alcoholic, I couldn’t wait two months. I had to take out a loan to pay for it. Recovery is a privilege on so many levels.

KM: Even though AA and rehab are very different, that’s one thing AA has going for it: It’s free, available to anyone, and accessible, at least something.

JB: That’s true, and eventually, I went to agnostic meetings—I guess it makes sense that with so much traditionally religiously minded AA here, it would also be the hub of the Agnostic AA movement.

I chaired a meeting once, and I invited a speaker who was using psychedelics, and my meeting was so liberal that no one cared. They were like ‘fuck yeah, this is our church.’ No one said she was doing the Program wrong. So I’ve gone to the most liberal meeting you could possibly come up with, but that doesn’t mean it’s totally free of judgment.

It’s funny, I’m listening to you, and it sounds like we both don’t want to totally disregard AA because we got something out of it.

KM: Definitely. I got sober in the Bay Area, which is very different from the Bible Belt. The meetings I went to were pretty laid back about the God stuff. But that doesn’t mean I never encountered judgment. I take anti-anxiety medication. I know people who would consider that a relapse, and that’s just noise I don’t need in my head.

My addiction was to alcohol, and as long as I am sober from alcohol, I consider myself sober. If someone convinces me that an anti-anxiety pill before the dentist means I’m no longer sober, I’ve lost the plot of what my problem was in the first place. Because if I’m not sober, what’s to stop me from going out and drinking?

JB: I love that. I’m gonna try to remember that: if I weren’t sober, I would be drinking. In the past, I was on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication as well, and I had a sponsor who was like, ‘By taking these, you’re not being sober.’ I had that exact thought of, like, OK, well, I’ll just quit [AA].

KM: That makes me furious. And annoyed, because AA is actually pretty clear about members not being doctors and how they shouldn’t give medical advice. You’re not really supposed to police other people’s recovery period.

JB: I think that’s part of why there’s so much shame around relapse. After Drunk Mom came out, there was a lot of attention—and a lot of bad attention. It was published at a time when people made fun of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Anna Nicole Smith. My book comes out during this timeline, and it’s like, “Look at what a horrible mom she was.”

But then, on the flip side, I became this poster child for sobriety. I’m on television and podcasts, and I’m doing CBC [Canada’s National Radio] commentary about the Toronto mayor who relapsed. They’re asking me to do all this stuff because I’m sober, but I’m actually not sober; I’ve been relapsing, so I’m just like cosplaying sobriety. I was living this crazy, hellish life where I was like social media sober. Meanwhile, people are still writing to me about Drunk Mom, saying it helped them get sober. And I was so happy for them, but I also had incredible shame over being a hypocrite.

KM: Is that where “Unshaming” came from?

JB: Yes. I felt perpetually ashamed because of how much shame is attached to relapse. It’s cute when you relapse once and come back and have this story of redemption, but when you do it 20 times, or you keep doing it for years, it’s no longer cute. It just became a part of me. And I wasn’t necessarily drinking more, but I was drinking in a way where I gave up on doing anything else. So Unshaming became, intentionally this time, a memoir, where I wanted to talk about my experience, I wanted to talk about my experience with shame and relapse, I don’t think that’s something we talk about enough in recovery. I wanted to connect with others.

KM: I think that’s true for lots of parts of recovery. I can’t speak directly to relapsing on alcohol, but there can be shame around not being “fixed” by sobriety. Like, ‘why aren’t you better if you’re sober? Why are you still depressed or anxious? Why are you still engaging in other unhealthy and destructive behaviors?’

JB: That’s totally true. What you’re describing—I call it relapse because I’m talking in the context of addiction—but [often in recovery spaces] there isn’t a lot of room for repeating a behavior that [people in the recovery space] don’t like. It’s like ‘we’re gonna let you get away with it once, we’re gonna clap, we’re gonna have a welcome party for you, you crawl out of depression or addiction, welcome back, but don’t do it again.”

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve relapsed. And I’ve had long periods of sobriety—I would have two years or six months, but, to me, anything past three months, I consider a period of sobriety. Even though my drinking wasn’t at all as bad as it used to be, it was still a crutch I was using and hiding.

I start Unshaming by talking about this horrible accident when I rode a bike into a cement wall and crushed my face and broke my cheekbones. I had to come up with a story the next day because I don’t want to tell people that I was drinking because I’m supposed to be sober. So I’m not telling the doctors, my coworkers, or my loved ones. , and and I have to come up with a story the next day, because I don’t want to tell people that I was drinking, so you know, I’m like, oh, I was on a bike ride, it was first thing in the morning, I’m not telling doctors what happened, I’m not telling my loved ones, and it was just getting harder and harder to cover up.

So I started to wonder, OK, what if I fucked up 20 times? That’s really bad. That means this is my pattern now, and I’m a chronic relapser. But then I also thought—and not in a toxic-positivity way, but genuinely—that it also meant I had hope 20 times. There are 20 times when I picked myself up and got back into recovery.

KM: That’s such a great way to think about it. And such an accomplishment! Because when you’re in [the throes of addiction], it seems so impossible to get out of it. Fighting for sobriety that many times is something to be proud of.

JB: It’s also just made me realize how individual recovery is for people, which is why AA doesn’t work for everybody. I use my relapse and recovery to explain the whole process of unshaming and what it means. I know it’s a made-up word; I’m not starting like an unshaming brand or anything—I don’t have a spiel. I know that the way you make shame smaller is by sharing your darkness and bringing more light to it. I probably picked that up from AA or even the Catholic Church, but I really believe it.

The key, though, is to share it with someone you trust. AA might be the safe place for some people, but it’s not for everyone. Maybe it’s a therapist or loved one. But sharing it with someone you trust definitely eliminates a lot of shame.

In the book, I talk about how, at the end of my last bout of drinking, everyone left: my son left, my partner was on a trip, and it was just this little Chihuahua puppy and me. I had no one to talk to, so I would whisper into his ear. Please get me out of this loneliness. Please help me out of this shame. And that was the first creature I shared my shame with. And, weirdly enough, that became enough of a connection, and I was able to get on Zoom and start going to recovery meetings again.

KM: When I first started writing about the messy and shameful parts of my drinking, there were definitely people who were like...“Why are you telling the internet this?” And there are still probably people thinking, “Why is she continuing to tell the internet this?” But I do it because it takes the charge out of the things I was ashamed of—especially if someone else can relate and feel less alone as a result.

In AA, they say you’ll eventually look at the past without regret. That’s not entirely true for me. I have plenty of regrets about the past, but I don’t feel shame about them the way I used to. And for me, that’s the difference between keeping something inside and saying it out loud.

JB: People need that. So many readers have written to me, but one of the most devastating is this one I got years ago from a woman who said, “I’m not looking for advice, I don’t want anything, I just want to tell you what I’m doing. I have four kids, I’m married to a doctor, small town in the Midwest, and I drink every day, and I drive my kids drunk. I just needed to tell someone that.”

I think there’s such a huge liberation in being open about all this darkness. Liberation in just being yourself and not lying to anyone.

KM: It’s important to have those spaces. I really believe there needs to be more space and support for people who take different paths. It’s not a straight upward trajectory, and it’s not universal; the more we allow each person to evolve on their own without berating them for how they should be doing things, the more people will start to examine their relationship with substances or addictive behaviors and look at what’s underneath that urge. But we have to give them room for that to happen.

JB: I absolutely agree, and this is why I also like your newsletter, because it’s clear you’re not trying to push your particular brand of recovery, which is what most people who publish memoirs or write newsletters do.

After Drunk Mom, that’s what people wanted me to do! I had so many people say, “Why didn’t you do anything with Drunk Mom [as a brand]? You could have blah blah.” I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t care, but I’m only qualified to talk about what did and didn’t work for me.

KM: Exactly. It always drives me crazy when someone has a bad experience with AA and then writes a book about how AA is bad for everyone. Like, that’s not actually different from saying, “I had a great experience in AA, so it will be great for everyone.”

So, now that “Unshaming” is out, what are you working on?

JB: I’m primarily a fiction writer, but I am working on a third book about addiction. This one is about the loved ones of addicts. There are so many, obviously, in my own life and also the people I hear from.

I have learned that loved ones of addicts have a really hard time talking about themselves. Everything that they tell you is about what the addict did, didn’t do, how they were in relation to the addict, and I think that’s quite heartbreaking. I want to hear from a bunch of people: parents, sisters, brothers, and kids. My son is letting me interview him for it, so I wanted to...I want to know what we’re doing to them.

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Among the many things I’m grateful for about my sobriety, high on the list is when I got sober. Alcohol took me down hard and fast—I was only 23 years old, and it was 2008. The 23-year-old part is nice because I’ve gotten to live through almost two decades without alcohol addiction pummeling me at every turn. The 2008 part is lucky because iPhones had existed for less than a year. Other “camera phones,” as we olds called them, were around, but the notion that we’d use them to document and share every moment of our lives was still pretty foreign.

Combined with the sad, self-imposed isolation of the end of my drinking, the visual documentation of my escapades is pretty tame. Are there a slew of pictures from high school and college where purple eyeliner is smudged across my barely open lids and a hazy where am I smile plays on my lips? Sure. Multiple snapshots of me drinking from a handle of vodka while dressed as Max from “Where the Wild Things Are?” Undeniable.

But I shudder to think of the pictures and videos that might exist if I were drinking now, when nearly everyone carries the ability to record high-definition video in their pockets. Is that hypothetical terror amplified when I think about the culture of sharing online anything the lens captures? Absolutely.

But I’m also just a random person. Other than our collective appetite for schadenfreude, there’s no reason for strangers on the internet to care about an embarrassing video of me. The same cannot be said for Hunter Biden.

The sole surviving son of former President Biden is known for myriad scandals—some fabricated or engineered by his father’s political opposition, others undeniably the younger Biden’s own doing.

If you’re worried this post will somehow relitigate those scandals, you underestimate how much I love and appreciate my readers. I would never do that to you, and I’d never do it to myself.

But, as Biden recently tweeted, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re almost certainly familiar with his substance use, addiction, and the interpersonal mess that comes with active addiction and the resources to feed its insatiable appetite. You’ve probably seen pictures of him in motel rooms with drugs, drug paraphernalia, and in various states of undress. What you have seen, in other words, is someone with an addiction to drugs in the throes of that addiction.

You’ve seen those images because they were incredibly valuable to his father’s political opposition and various media entities. You’ve seen them because of long-held societal stigma about crack cocaine and the people who use it. You’ve seen them because we delight in watching people who were born with privilege far above our own fall to depths we consider well beneath us.

Until very recently, Biden hadn’t been particularly vocal about his addiction and recovery. He wrote vividly about both in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things (which I read and enjoyed). He did some press around its publication, but in a world of extremely online people, he was comparatively silent.

Last month, Biden appeared on Twitter/X and Substack, quickly becoming one of the internet’s most-discussed social media accounts. Instead of scandal or snark—two reliable sources of trending topics—Biden’s account was making headlines for posts with much rarer qualities: earnestness, accountability, and self-deprecation.

In one of the most widely discussed interactions, a Trump supporter (or “MAGA influencer,” according to The Daily Beast) asks Biden what’s on his laptop (the source of all those pictures). Biden replies that the infamous hacked and stolen laptop has been available for anyone to peruse for years, asking if she’s been living under a rock. It’s all pretty normal Twitter fare until she replies that she’d “rather live under a rock than smoke it.”

His response was simple, straightforward, and indicative of how he’s been talking about his recovery: “Me too. It was awful.”

This is not a radical statement. Addiction is awful. Anyone who has lived through a serious addiction to substances can attest to the nightmare of living in its grip. There’s a reason it destroys families, ruins lives, and otherwise causes incalculable harm. The pictures on his laptop didn’t depict Biden as a rich party guy having the time of his life; they showed a person trapped by the all-consuming need to keep drugs in his system and his brain detached from reality.

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His response did, however, put the Trump supporter in an awkward position. What do you say when your snarky, pointed jab is simply an accepted part of your target’s everyday reality? He knows he was addicted to crack; his recovery requires a daily awareness of that fact.

If the Trump supporter’s response is any indication, there’s nothing else to do but similarly acknowledge the reality. She responds, “Well, damn, Hunter, that makes me sad. Glad you’re off that stuff. Hope you stay clean,” and wishes him good luck.

Biden has had similar interactions over the past few weeks with people who previously delighted in front-page stories about his substance use. The replies to his tweets about recovery are filled with people sharing how addiction shaped their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

I don’t mean to imply all is happiness and harmony over on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Biden’s mad about plenty and making his feelings known. There’s also some weird crypto stuff I don’t understand or care about. But when it comes to his previous substance use, Biden’s comments demonstrate several important ideas for recovery: honesty about one’s past use, accountability for harms caused, and a desire to use that honesty and accountability to emphasize the humanity of every person in the grip of addiction. He also makes fun of himself—which I think is an important part of recovery—but is probably all the more true for someone with as much media coverage as he’s gotten.

I don’t know Biden personally; I have no idea what his life is really like. But I know the most traumatic events of his life have been public political fodder since he was a child. I know the whole world has access to a laptop full of images of him in the darkest crevices of his addiction. I know that media pundits and politicians made names for themselves by mocking every detail of his addiction they could find. Given all that, it’s inspiring to see him come out with the message, Yep, that was me, and that’s what my addiction was like. If you’re in a similarly dark place, know that help is out there, and you’re not alone.

Facing this shit head-on negates anyone else’s ability to shame you for it.

When I first started writing about what it felt like to be physically and psychologically dependent on alcohol and the things I did in service of my addiction, people would say it was “brave.” The truth is, it had nothing to do with bravery.

Addiction thrives in silence and isolation; left to its own devices, it’s a weed that will choke the life out of everything around it. The more you keep hidden away because you’re ashamed to look at it, the faster that weed will grow. Sharing the things I was ashamed of removed the charge around them. Rather than being cause for concern, talking openly about how I sometimes miss alcohol or the challenges of being sober is crucial to my recovery because it’s all the same stuff I lied about when I was drinking.

Once you put words to the thing that haunts you, it’s no longer an unknown monster hiding under the bed. You may still be dealing with a monster, but now you can see it, identify it, and figure out what to do about it. If you ask, people who have lived with the same monster will help you deal with it. Eventually, you may get the chance to do the same for others.

One of the benefits of having someone as polarizing as Hunter Biden in these discussions is how thoroughly it underscores that you don’t have to like, agree, or have anything in common with someone to see their humanity. You don’t have to like their paintings, agree with their dad, or know anything about crypto. You just have to know that no one chooses addiction. Someone may choose to use drugs—plenty of people do for a variety of reasons—but no one willingly hands the reins to their life over to a bottle or pill or powder and says, “Yep, go ahead and fuck everything up. While you’re at it, make my loved ones collateral damage.”

Still, that’s what addiction does. No one makes it to the other side without a long list of things they aren’t particularly proud of. That’s true whether three or 3 million people witnessed your fall. What Biden is currently illustrating is how taking accountability for one’s past isn’t about self-flagellation, public apologies, or pity. It’s about accepting reality, finding compassion, and filling the space that used to hold so much shame with gratitude and a little bit of humor.

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Growing up in the late 80s and early 90s, I became well-versed in the “Very Special Episode” of TV. A strange mashup of regular TV and after-school special, these episodes featured a show’s regular cast of characters encountering an Issue (drinking, drugs, divorce, disordered eating, date rape—even things that don’t start with D) that didn’t typically arise in their otherwise charmed lives.

In these early days, there was a nice little lesson about either not doing these things (drinking, drugs) or finding a trusted adult to have a brief but meaningful conversation with before the episode concludes.

As I got older and TV shows became more complex, there were fewer obvious morality tales and more reliance on character archetypes. We had the protagonist’s fun-loving but will-get-you-suspended sidekick, the queer friend, the nerd with a crush, the very hot, brooding guy who’s secretly dyslexic—ok, that last one is just My So-Called Life—but similar characters appear consistently throughout this era of television.

These archetypes were often a vehicle for the narrative tropes with which we’re so familiar. If the character is using, all sorts of juicy crises might unfold. If they’re in recovery, the threat of relapse is an easy way to build tension and drama. If the character actually relapses, it can trigger a slew of heart-wrenching, messy plotlines.

Too often, this results in the character becoming more of a plot device than a person. It’s difficult to think of characters in recovery who aren’t largely identified by their past use or current sobriety. One relatively early exception to this familiar character arc is The West Wing’s Leo McGarry (played by the incomparable John Spencer).

As Chief of Staff to President Bartlet (Martin Sheen), McGarry’s previous substance use isn’t mentioned until the fourth episode of the first season. When it is addressed, it’s the least significant plot point—all we learn is that he attends AA meetings.

The specifics of McGarry’s history aren’t addressed until halfway through the season. The absence of discussion in the show’s early days isn’t because Leo’s a minor character—he’s central to the show. In a dash of realism in a show with an otherwise sketchy record in that department, the President’s inner circle has more pressing things to deal with than the fact that half a decade ago, the Chief of Staff misused substances.

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The only episode in the show’s seven-season run in which Leo’s past use becomes enough of a plot point to clear the (detailed and rigorous) criteria for inclusion in Making a Scene occurs in episode 3 of season 9.

In “Bartlet for America,” show creator and writer Aaron Sorkin (himself sober at the time) subverts the traditional relapse narrative without diminishing its stakes.

If you need spoiler alerts for a show that ended more than 20 years ago: Spoiler alert.

The setup: President Bartlet recently admitted to the public that he has a relapsing-remitting case of Multiple Sclerosis. He was aware of his diagnosis while campaigning, but never disclosed it, opting instead to have his physician wife (Stockard Channing) treat him for the incurable, progressive disease. Only the smallest handful of people knew before he became President, most of whom were in his immediate family.

Politicians in the opposition (Republican) party are deeply outraged and want to know who knew what, and when. They’re also eager to do as much damage to the administration as possible, regardless of the connection to Bartlet’s illness.

As Chief of Staff, Leo McGarry is high on the list for a congressional hearing, ostensibly about Bartlet’s diagnosis.

From the outset, it’s clear that McGarry is worried about something other than his knowledge of Bartlet’s MS. There’s a past incident—something that happened on the campaign trail—that a smug and weaselly congressman named Gibson was somehow privy to.

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The day of the hearing, McGarry’s lawyer, Jordan Kendall (Joanna Gleason), is begging Leo to tell her what Gibson has in his back pocket, as it increasingly looks like he’s planning on torpedoing the Chief of Staff with it. The scene alternates between McGarry recounting the story to Kendall and flashbacks of the incident.

I had a little trouble tracking down clips I could embed, so, uh, don’t mind the Korean subtitles on the first clip (unless you speak Korean, in which case, enjoy) and the questionable video quality on the second clip. The audio works well on both, and if you’d like a transcript of the full episode, you can find that here.

The scene:

If I hadn’t known that Sorkin was in recovery when he wrote these lines, I would have after this scene. He succinctly encapsulates the self-imposed isolation and visceral yearning that drives addiction. I can remember being drunk and thinking his exact words before I’d ever heard them on TV. How can you have enough of feeling like this? How can you not want to feel like this longer?

And while John Spencer was an incredible actor, the fact that he, too, was in recovery undoubtedly deepens his portrayal.

Every moment of Spencer’s performance is layered and understated. We see him grapple with his desire for the Johnnie Walker Blue. We feel the slight shame under his reasonable, if not accurate, excuse for declining to partake (the need to stay sharp for his candidate’s debate).

Even the casual urgency of Spencer’s “now gimme a sip of that” is simultaneously subtle and gutting. Unlike traditional relapse narratives, we know that McGarry physically makes it out of the relapse and back to recovery relatively unscathed. What we don’t know is if, years later, the incident will destroy him anyway.

Predictably, Mr. “I don’t get drunk in front of people. I get drunk alone,” keeps drinking after the big-money boys leave. Downstairs, candidate Bartlet is having an MS attack, and no one can find McGarry, who is passed out in his hotel room.

When one of the men he was drinking with earlier knocks on his door after forgetting his briefcase, it’s clear that McGarry has been indulging in a party of one.

Unfortunately, that man is none other than Congressman Gibson, who is now in the committee hearing armed with the knowledge that not only did Bartlet and McGarry hide the President’s MS, but McGarry hid his campaign trail relapse.

The next clip is short, but has to be (according to my anecdotal observations) one of the most-referenced exchanges about addiction recovery on TV.

I love and hate what Leo says here. He’s right that alcoholism doesn’t have anything to do with being smart or stupid. His analogy about anorexia is apt. Addiction most certainly can be ‘a family thing.’ But the MENSA line is obnoxious. If alcoholism doesn’t have anything to do with being smart or stupid, why does it matter how many alcoholics are in the Fraternal Order of Smarty Pants?

I digress. The last part of the scene is one I couldn’t find an embeddable clip for, but it’s short enough that it doesn’t matter.

Kendall asks McGarry who knows about his relapse, and he tells her that only Josh and Bartlet know. When she asks why, he replies, “I went to rehab. My friends embraced me when I got out. You relapse, it’s not like that. ‘Get away from me’— that’s what it’s like.”

I could write a whole post about that line, but for now, I’ll just say that this is an unfortunate and too common response to a relapse. It’s ridiculous to spout platitudes like “relapse is a part of recovery,” and then treat people who actually relapse like failures or pariahs. Nonetheless, it happens, and it’s another element of the scene that feels painfully accurate.

If you haven’t seen the episode or haven’t watched it in a while, I highly recommend it. It’s worth rewatching just for Spencer’s superb performance. And if you have other examples of characters in recovery who are depicted like actual people, please let me know in the comments or via email! I’m always looking for the next scene to make.

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I was in an airport bar somewhere between Montana and Chicago when I heard that Heath Ledger had died. It was January 22nd, 2008, and I was doing my best to act as if my entire world was not crumbling beneath my feet. I was coming home from a trip to visit my boyfriend, who had discovered that the only thing I was more compulsive about than drinking was lying about my drinking.

When I got on the airplane in Montana, an older man was seated next to me. After takeoff, we both promptly ordered drinks. I was 23 and, although I have no evidence to support this, I remember thinking he was a football coach. At least, he looked the part: He had a southern drawl and a maroon shirt bearing the name of a sports team.

Mostly, what I remember is his delight over how quickly I finished my first drink and ordered another. “Atta girl!” he said, slapping the knee of his blue jeans, and told the waitress he’d take another cocktail as well. By the time our plan landed, we’d both had several drinks.

“I hope you don’t mind if I say,” he began, leaning in too close as the plane taxied on the runway, “I appreciate a young lady who knows how to hold her liquor.” At the time, I was aware this was a weird thing to say for a stranger to say to a woman at least 30 years his junior, but I couldn’t help but flush with a sick pride.

I’d just spent the week trying and failing to hide my chronic alcohol use from the person I loved—a person who’d made it clear that he was disgusted and disappointed by my drinking. So if some random man wanted to compliment me for the same behavior I’d been so resoundingly criticized for, I’d take it.

I can’t remember if I stopped at an airport bar during a layover, or, in a decision that could only be made by someone with a true dependency on alcohol, decided to hit the airport bar in Chicago before taking the train home. I just remember being in a crowd of people staring at a TV behind the bar and a shot of vodka gliding down my throat when a news anchor announced that Heath Ledger—the critically acclaimed actor of Brokeback Mountain, but whom I associated with the (equally important) teenage classic 10 Things I Hate About You—had died. Initial reports suggested that sleeping pills and other prescription medications were present at the scene, but there was little reporting beyond that.

I registered news as though I were in a dream—muttering “sad” and “oh no” along with the other customers, but more focused on finishing another drink and (reluctantly) making my way back to my real, crumbling life.

I kept drinking once I got back to my sister’s apartment and started again when I woke up in the morning. Though I don’t remember this, it was the same day (January 23rd, 2008), The Sun published a video showing Amy Winehouse smoking crack—setting the tabloids, gossip columns, and even legacy media outlets into a frenzy. The default position of these culture critics was that Winehouse was an object lesson in depravity.

This was, after all, the era of widespread ridicule of Anna Nicole Smith (both before and after her death), mockery of Lindsey Lohan, and Britney Spears for their substance misuse, multiple stints in rehab, and grainy photos taken without their consent through the windows of their homes. It’s impossible to ignore the gendered aspects of the coverage—women were portrayed as irresponsible and insane; men were more likely to be tortured and tragic. After Ledger’s death, for example, the blogger Perez Hilton sold t-shirts with a heart around Ledger’s image and the words “Why Couldn’t It Be Britney?” underneath.

Bloggers spewed unvarnished cruelty, but legacy media gave the ghoulishness a sheen of legitimate discourse. When the Winehouse video surfaced, the New York Times ultimately chalked the incident up to the singer having either narcissistic or idiotic motivations—either way, deserving of blame.

NYT Culture correspondent Jon Pareles wrote:

“Why, for instance, was Ms. Winehouse letting someone shoot video, in a private setting, of her puffing that pipe in the first place? Maybe it’s some version of ‘keepin’ it real,’ the fallacy that insists art must be autobiographical to be worthwhile, as if art were documentation rather than storytelling. Maybe it’s obliviousness, although, since the camera followed her around, she was likely to know it was there. Maybe she mistakenly trusted that whoever made the video would resist another temptation: the potential profit to be made providing it to a tabloid.

Perhaps Ms. Winehouse misunderstood what should be clear in the age of the Internet: Everything recorded can be duplicated and distributed. And possibly the video was, in its own bleary way, a kind of performance. She is keeping her audience informed if not exactly entertained.”

In every hypothetical presented, the violation of Winehouse’s privacy is presented as either cynically orchestrated by the singer for publicity (because who doesn’t want their award-winning career overshadowed by headlines about their use of crack cocaine?) or the result of her own shallow carelessness.

At the time, I wasn’t aware of any of this; I was stumbling through what would be the last day of my drinking. While writers were churning out their Winehouse think pieces for the following day, I was in the Emergency Room with a .4 Blood Alcohol Content and a cop watching my every move.

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When I met with a psychiatrist in the ER—a formality that needed to occur before my inevitable admission to the Psych Ward hours later, he kept trying to convince me that I must have had some other motivation for bringing alcohol to work with me than...simply wanting to drink alcohol. In a prolonged exchange so strange I remember it vividly among the haze of that day, the doctor was intensely focused on why I would bring a bottle of vodka to work.

“That’s not what alcoholics do,” he said. “They might leave work to drink, but they don’t bring it into the office with them.” (Which is a wild thing to say, but also, have you heard of a little television show called Mad Men?) He proceeded to tell me that his theory was that I brought alcohol to work because I hated my job (true) and subconsciously wanted to get fired (false).

I found this whole statement confusing. I was happy to have someone tell me I wasn’t an alcoholic (though I was starting to believe otherwise), but I didn’t buy that I was engaging in subconscious trickery in hopes of getting fired. I thought, and still think, that I simply couldn’t be without alcohol for any meaningful length of time.

Roughly a week later, after I’d been through detox and the psych ward (and a different psychiatrist had made a convincing case for my alcoholism), I was getting settled in an inpatient rehab. Someone got a copy of US Weekly, which is how we all learned that Britney Spears had been put on a 5150 hold in an LA psych unit after barricading herself in the bathroom with her young son.

None of the patients in my rehab needed an explanation of what a 5150 hold was (California’s involuntary psychiatric hold for up to 72 hours if a designated professional deems the individual a risk to themselves or others); at least a third of us were personally familiar with the process. While we may not have had the solemn appreciation for what it must have been like to be hounded and publicly picked apart for years, we absolutely understood the 5150 of it all. She was one of us.

That incident was the catalyst for Spears’s much-discussed conservatorship. While watching that debate unfold a few years ago, I remember thinking how surreal it was that Spears’s independence (her finances, medical decisions, career choices) had been frozen during the same 13 years that I’d had the opportunity to build a sober adult life.

I was sad to learn that she was arrested for a DUI a few months ago, and I can’t do anything beyond hoping that she gets whatever help she needs. And while the media coverage I’ve seen of the incident hasn’t mirrored the downright cruel coverage of the aughts, I can’t help but notice how much attention it's received. There’s no excuse for driving under the influence, and she’s lucky no one was hurt before she was stopped.

But it’s notable that another Spears story got completely swallowed by her DUI coverage. Just hours before her arrest, news broke that the singer was granted a restraining order against a man who had been harassing her since 2013—a man who had previously been convicted of stalking her and trespassing at her home. I don’t know what living with those kinds of threats does to a person, but it’s a good reminder of all the parts of a person’s life (celebrity or otherwise) we don’t see.

Would the maybe-football-coach on the airplane have been so impressed with my alcohol tolerance if he’d known I’d earned it through around-the-clock alcohol intake? Would the ER psychiatrist have spent so long trying to convince me of his theory of my subconscious motivations if I’d been older than 23, or a man? I don’t know. But I do know that behind every addiction exists something more complex than what the casual observer sees, and that people with addiction deserve our compassion, even if we can’t always accept or tolerate the behavior that results from it.

The one media personality who spoke out about this in 2007, after a highly publicized incident in which Spears shaved her head and beat a paparazzi’s car with an umbrella, was someone who knew well what it was like to live in the dark morass of active addiction: Craig Ferguson.

His words were prescient then and just as relevant now. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch the segment below. I’ve done so countless times. Every time I watch, it strikes me how difficult it is for Ferguson to convey to his late-night audience that he’s not launching into jokes about Spears. They’re so primed to laugh at what they’ve seen of the superstar’s corroding mental health that he has to repeat that no, really, he’s being serious about this. I hope that, nearly two decades later, it wouldn’t take us so long to figure that out.

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Send questions and feedback to askasoberlady@gmail.com. By sending a question, you agree to let me reprint it in the newsletter with your name redacted or changed. Emails may be edited for length or clarity.

I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.