A.J. Daulerio
Appearances
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
You know, I mean, I was just wearing a coat of red flags, yet at the same time, I mean, people were absolutely into it, at least a certain segment of people. But there were obviously other people who knew that I was headed for disaster.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
You know, I knew something was coming for me, right? I knew it was either going to be kind of sobriety that was by my choice or it was going to come because there was this big reckoning that was about to happen in my life. And in prepping for this, I actually just started to go through my phone from 2015, which was... The time when things were really going bad for me.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I came upon this photo that's in my phone that I've saved and I've sent to other people as well. But it's of my workstation, so to speak. And it's like a coffee table in my apartment in Williamsburg at the time. And I remember working this day. And it wasn't really like a work day.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I had to do one post for the company that I was running at the time that was my own that I was failing at and flailing at. And I remember just being on Friday trying to figure out the right combination of either drugs or alcohol that I could put in my system so I could get done the one post. And on this table, there is a small bong, an empty bottle of Modelo, an empty bottle of Prosecco.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
two lighters, a full ashtray. It looks like, and I'm pretty sure this is like Xanax from Mexico. A bunch of other smashed up white pills of various sort of consistencies. There's pot and two empty bodega coffee cups. But the thing that I remember that's most disturbing about this is there is a Pringles can. And it's a Pringles can of Pringles Buffalo Extra Spicy Hot Wings flavored Pringles.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And the reason why this is the thing that gives me like the chills the most and just like it actually makes me shiver is because I remember going to the bodega that day, having not eaten in a pretty long time, and knowing that I had to eat, but also not having enough money to really buy anything substantial.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
So I opted for these Pringles because it said they had buffalo chicken on them, and I thought that that would be a sufficient amount of protein. And that was it. And those are the types of decisions that I was making about my life Pretty regularly, right? I was 41 years old at the time when these are the type of things that are going on.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I would say at this time in my life, especially when I was supposed to be very productive and had my own startup and everything like that, I probably only worked on Wednesdays. And I say Wednesdays because Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I was either getting after it or hungover. And then Thursday, Friday, and I start up again. So Wednesday was really my full day of clarity.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But I think on this Friday, I was really trying to push through and get one post done for the week. But I didn't think that I needed to stop at that point. I did think I needed to adjust the things that were going into my body to find the perfect combination that would make me productive. Never once considering that stopping all these things would be the best way to do that.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Soon after this photo was taken in August of 2015, I went to a detox center in North Jersey. I went there for nine days. I showed up there and it felt like right away that this is not the place for me, that I shouldn't be there. And they give you these options.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
depending on the type of insurance you had, and I had pretty good insurance at the time, to where you can either get a single room or stay with other people, kind of like a dorm sort of situation. I opted for the single room and kind of stayed in there all the time, got up, smoked cigarettes,
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Did some push-ups, read two pages of the book I'd bought or whatever, and then, you know, went downstairs and was trying to interact with, I'm going to call them kids, but most of them were, who were there for heroin, right? And, you know, I was there... For everything. I was what they call in rehab a classic garbage head.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
A garbage head is somebody who identifies as an alcoholic or an addict, but doesn't have a real preference for which one is going to get them... The ruination basically comes from all sources, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Exactly, yeah. And... Feeling very much as most people do when they get thrown into those situations, well, I don't belong here. I'm not that bad, right? Yeah. And feeling a little bit of a sense of relief on that, where it hadn't gotten to that point. And I'm being proactive by even coming here and doing this nine-day stint.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah. I remember there was a kid that came up to me and it was asking me, you know, where I was from and everything like that. And he had an abscess on his hand that was like the size of a cockroach.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I mean, he couldn't have been older than 20, but was so nonchalant about it and almost kind of like showing off as like this badge of honor, right? And, you know, I had nothing except like some crappy tattoos basically, but it was there that I was like, oh, I'm not this bad. Whatever I have that I'm struggling with, these are the real problems here, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But I also isolated the whole entire time I never ever took things seriously that I had a serious problem. I was there because I said I had a Xanax problem. I didn't really have a drinking problem. I wouldn't identify as an alcoholic or anything. I had to do the whole nine days in order to get the Xanax out of my system.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I remember checking out of that place and one of the technicians, as they're called, and they're basically the counselors, Asking me where I was off to next, right? Assuming that I was going to take to Florida or Arizona for 60 to 90-day rehab after that. And I looked at them like that that was the craziest idea. I was just like, I just did nine days, right? I mean...
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
acting like I was in solitary at kind of a terrible just prison someplace. But it was really hard for me to conceive of going someplace for that long, being kind of cut off from my old life and not drinking or doing anything for that long.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And then when I got home, when I got back to Williamsburg and I talked to the people that I was working with at my company at the time, I was just like, yeah, well, I'm going to just smoke pot, which I wasn't a big pot smoker at the time, and drink beers, do civilian stuff. But a funny thing happened was I got back and my drug dealer texted me And he said, can you meet me downstairs?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I thought that there was something really bad had happened. So I meet him downstairs, right? Instead, he's like, you know, I got this new combination of hash and molly. And... I wanted to give you a free sample of it. So he gives me this thing, and I didn't mention him where I'd been. Oh, he didn't know. Oh, he didn't know. No, he didn't know at all. You know.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But he remembered that I liked these sort of hybrid drugs that he was kind of experimenting with. And so he gave it to me, and he's just like, just tell me what you think of it.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
So... Now in the sober 12-step world, there's this thing called God shots, which are essentially just like when the spiritual realm kind of interacts with you and kind of pushes you towards the good path. This was the opposite of that, right? Wherein I thought that this was a spiritual intervention telling me just like, hey, you don't have to quit drugs yet. Here's some free ones for you, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Right, why would this show up in your path? Why would this show up? Right, exactly. And then probably about a month after that is when I was already relapsing pretty hard at that point and went to Florida for... It was 45, 46 days or something along those lines for inpatient rehab.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And when I was there is when I realized that, yeah, this is the only way that this was going to get me to stop is to be kind of locked up in this situation.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
No, not at all. And it was so sad for me to think that.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
You know, there were so many great days, right? There really were. In rehab.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Man, beach volleyball in rehab is probably one of the most fun activities I've ever been able to participate. Really? Are you being sarcastic? No, I loved it.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I think it's just because, you know, you have all these people who are there and their lives have been kind of decimated in some capacity, are just like, you know, shipwrecked at this place. And then all of a sudden, you're kind of forced to play this kid's game that most people haven't done since they were in elementary school gym class.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And just enjoying it in ways that, I mean, were completely unthinkable to me. And I think that was just it for me. It was just like, oh... you know, the beach in this shitty part of Florida is actually kind of nice. I mean, I'm having fun. I'm laughing genuinely. And this is just like filling me with a lot of good vibes that I had been absent in my life for such a long time.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But, you know, the minute I got back on the plane to Brooklyn, it was December when I finally got back into town. So it was like Christmas time. And I remember just feeling the weight of, God, what do I do now? Like, who are my friends that I can hang out with? Like, how am I supposed to interact with people? And it was like, you know, holiday party season at that point.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I was just like, can I even go to these? And the answer was, no, of course not. I can't. But it was just like, that's when the loneliness started to sink in. All of those good feelings of kind of being inside an institution were were gone. Now I was back out in the world, and the world has gone on without me.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
It was really sad when my phone was in like a plastic bag that when you check in at rehab, and I remember, this is how seriously I'm going to take this. I'm going to give the man my phone, right? And I remember coming out and being very excited at like day... 47 or whatever like that to finally check my phone and all of the emails, like nothing happened. Right. Like I missed nothing.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Nobody missed me. You know, everyone's kind of moving on with their lives. And I was just, I was just absent from it for two to three months. That was really it. Yeah. And then kind of just to come back and figure out how to build a social life and figure out who my friends are and who I want to have like kind of just, you know, meaningful relationships with. That's a lot to process.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
No more beach volleyball days anymore, you know? So things were just different for me and I didn't know where to start. And I think that that is just like the feeling that most people go into this with. Like if you're trying to get sober, right? And this difference between stopping drinking and trying to get sober.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
The difference is the changes that I needed to make about myself that I always wanted to make, I was absolutely incapable of doing while I was drunk or on drugs. But now I was absolutely forced to. into kind of actually confronting those things and given the choice of basically, okay, I have to change or I'm probably going to have to go back to living the way that I was living before.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And that wasn't, I wouldn't say I was going to die, but I would have been completely unhappy and nothing good would have ever happened. I would have just been sinking further and further down into a morass of self-pity and substances.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Well, I wrote about it in one essay where I describe a lot of those sort of attempts at reconnecting with people as a sober person. And some of the people I said, it was kind of just like, instead of a catching up period, it was like an exit interview. We're just kind of realizing that we weren't going to be part of each other's lives in any significant way anymore.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And those are the sort of things that, I mean, year after year, I tend to have those sort of relationships kind of fade away in some capacity. And a lot of it is just like absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I was drinking or sober or whatever. I mean, I think this is the important part of that I'm learning in...
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
in sobriety is that I have to remember that I'm a bad memory for a lot of people. Like that, like the interactions that I had had with them kind of left a mark that isn't great.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And, and I mean, that's, that's, that is part of, of this life. I think that there's this natural auditing that kind of happens that I have to kind of get used to.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
You know, when I was talking about that time when I came out of rehab in like early December and I remember sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn and, you know, I don't know if I was kind of just lonely or desperate or whatever, but I remember Googling, I'm 50-something days sober and I want to run into traffic. And I don't know what I was looking for, but I was hoping that something would come up.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But I mean, I was just like, I just got out of rehab and I feel really bad about myself still. And I don't know what to do exactly. I don't want to go to an AA meeting right now. You know, I don't want to, like, you know, I call a friend. Like, it was just, you know, kind of being adrift.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And, you know, the only things that came up, and I remember this specifically, were, you know, the suicide hotline number or advertisements for more rehabs, right? Right. And I guess that was the first sort of kernel that was there where it was just like, oh, if I can figure out a way to actually just get back into publishing again, maybe there's something there that I could actually get into.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
100%, yeah. So it was 2018 when I started The Small Bow.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
So I was about... two years sober, right? Yeah. And that is way too early to start a recovery site. I'm just letting people know that I'm 100% aware of that now, but that's like five years ago now. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of comical that I thought that was a great idea.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I think that one of the parts that I was so paranoid about was that what I was doing was kind of a form of penance that I was asking for and like trying to kind of pretend that I was being a better person than I actually was. trying to kind of pander to people. And that was something that I was so paranoid about.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I was always constantly, you know, would write an essay and be like, oh, I can't write this. I have to have someone else do it first. Or just like, I have to make people aware that I know that you think I'm a piece of shit. Yeah.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I'm right there with you sometimes.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah. I mean, there were all positive sort of feedback and a lot of people that were interested in participating and helping out and wanted to write for it. And I thought that was really great. And, you know, I mean, I was very, very much of the mindset that I have to like handpick every single person that writes for this in this first year in order for this to go right. Yeah. Why?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Because I was so concerned about having someone else's voice come in who, like there were a lot of, I'll put it this way, there were a lot of people who had 10 years of sobriety who were basically going to come in and speak from an AA perspective, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I try to just not publish those sort of essays where people are kind of parroting the big book and along those lines. Because it just felt like... That wasn't what I was looking for that night. I was looking for something that would actually just, I think, come from a place of really... I still needed things to be wounded.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I still needed everyone that wrote for it or published it, I still needed them to be wounded in some way. So anyone that was coming with the solution, so to speak, is what they call it, I didn't think that was appropriate.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
One of the really important conversations for me to hear was I interviewed Jason Blair. And I don't know if you remember Jason Blair and what the context was with him. And he was the New York Times reporter.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yes, exactly. So I think that was 2003-ish, four-ish, right? He wrote a memoir about that soon after everything had happened, but has gone on to basically be a life coach. And he and I started talking about, And I asked him, you know, would he have written a memoir knowing what he knew now? And he said, absolutely not.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
It was the worst decision they'd ever made because he was writing it like out of desperation and fear. And, you know, that was the only way he thought he could make money. But the other thing that he said was that while everything was really hit a lot of heat on him from the times scandal at that point, and he was going to recovery meetings and
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And he was afraid to kind of go into some of the Upper West Side sort of meetings because he thought he would be recognized. And he said he had this conversation with this one woman there where he was kind of sharing that like a little bit kind of sheepishly, a little bit ashamed of, and just like a little bit sort of like egocentrically too. And she said to him, there are murderers here.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I'm sure you're going to be okay. And it was just like this wonderful level setting sort of thing where it's just like, oh, yeah. I mean, just like, you know, there are people who kind of just like, you know, live these absolutely just, you know, had these horrific sort of situations in their lives and may have been murderers. And I am not one of those.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And, you know, just to kind of remember that, okay, well, they have a life that they can kind of be proud of now, too. Yeah. It was really important for me to hear that. And I always remember that when I go into any sort of meeting, we're just like, oh yeah, there are murderers here.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But it was so great because it was instant humility, right? And I think I got that. early on too, in like recovery, especially when, you know, I was in Florida and I'm in the thick of the Hogan trial and going to these meetings and thinking everyone in the room knew about this trial and all eyes are on me.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And just like, you know, here I was being brave and raising my hand at these meetings and boy, am I important. And Yeah, and it's hearing these people with real problems who had lost loved ones and lost jobs and houses and all those things, and just being like, yeah, I'm not really that interesting in this situation.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Sure. I mean, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about in those early days of me coming home from rehab. So this is 2015, December. And like I said, I was very much afraid. in a lot of ways about what I was supposed to be as a person now and what the holidays were going to look like, right? And Again, I remember feeling like so sad and desperate to be someplace else, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And wanting to kind of just like, you know, not be in my apartment, not be in my body, not be like, you know, in whatever sort of, you know, friend group I was in. I just didn't want to be there. But I also didn't want to be sober, right? But I also knew that I was staring down kind of this very important date, right, which is January 1st.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I remember being so sad that I was never going to potentially have another New Year's that was fun again, right? Yeah. I mean, that kind of just hit me square in the jaw in that moment. And I was just like, God, I don't want to drink soda right now. I don't want to just go home and watch a movie or watch The Godfather or whatever. I don't know.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I mean, there was just so much stuff that I felt like completely on the sidelines about. And I was just like, this is not... the life I want. And I was like, yeah, I'm not ready to be sober. And I didn't relapse the next day, but I couldn't 100% kind of commit to something that I really wasn't ready for at that point.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And that was just like this moment where I was just like, I think most people that have come upon January 1st and thinking that their lives need to change in this sort of fashion and feel like failures if it doesn't happen. And that's a tough conversation to have with people. This is my attempt to basically have that conversation with people and say, yeah, you're fine, right? That's it, you know?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
That's okay. It's 100% okay. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, you know, good job, good effort. I think the greatest thing about AA more than anything is that like you can be a part of it and you could have like two years of sobriety. And then like one night you can absolutely just like get completely blasted and just like, you know, have your car and run into a building.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And then the next day you can go there and everyone will clap. And that's an amazing thing. So, I mean, this is my way of at least extending that hand out to people to say to them just like, yeah, I'm going to kind of run this essay every single year.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And the off chance that someone is Googling like I was that very lonely night in early December when I thought that no one else can understand me or understand exactly what I needed at that point and not knowing myself what I needed, that like, okay, maybe this essay will connect to them.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think, I never grew up with that. My family was punishing me. But yeah, I mean, just learning how to have that. And I mean, I try to kind of provide that as much as I possibly can, both with... my children, with myself, and with my wife, and, you know, with anybody that's kind of part of this little community that has kind of built up due to this newsletter.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I'm in Los Angeles, California. I'm in a renovated carriage house at a place that we're renting in Hancock Park. Is that too much information? I think that's an okay amount of information.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Who's asking, right? I mean, that's the thing. It's just like, I mean, that's like, in your mind, who is asking this question?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
It's probably the right choice. Right.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah. And it's a lot more serious than basically a resolution. I mean, it's an absolute kind of just complete, just full-scale change. I mean, it's a teardown.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I feel that it's fine. I mean, I... I mean, it's honestly like, I was trying to kind of think of some way to compare it without sounding- Like a dick. Like a dick, right? Because I don't want to sound like a dick, because I think it's great that anyone wants to kind of better themselves in whatever capacity that is. But like asking, you know, an alcoholic-
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
For someone that's in active recovery, just like, you know, every single day of their life.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
About dry January, I think is like the equivalent of having someone who like runs a turkey trot every single year.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Not on the same level, man. You know, I mean, it's just like we have different goals here. Yeah. And that's okay. But yeah, I think that the dry January has very little to do with sobriety.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
So when I first got sober and coming out of rehab, and I think this is part of the struggle that most people have when they kind of just try to get sober, is you're dealing with a person who absolutely hates you more than anyone else. planet Earth, and you're kind of stuck with that person, right? And trying to kind of make friends with that person is very, very difficult.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
It was for me, and I had to kind of just do a lot of extra work on top of just showing up to 12-step meetings. I had to get a therapist, I had to get on medication, I had to do meditation, all that stuff, in order to start maybe getting... 1% more in the direction of basically liking myself more than I hate myself. I would say I'm about 50-50, no?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
When I was 19 is when I went to my first rehab. And I went there basically because I had clinical depression, but was too ashamed of saying to people that I was depressed. So I kind of told people that I had a drinking problem.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah. No, it is. And I think that there's just a lot of stuff that I work through in therapy is just actually just caring for that person, that worst version of yourself that was so broken, and then trying to kind of look at them with a little more kindness. And that's really kind of just like where I'm starting to look at that a lot more...
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I think saying that out loud is still hard for me to say that I'm trying to learn how to love myself.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But I am. And that is exactly just like where I have to start every single day. Because if I don't, then I'm kind of starting a little bit in the red.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Absolutely. I hope this was helpful.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I got put into this place in Northeast Philadelphia off of Roosevelt Boulevard on Harbison Avenue that I would go to, you know, between community college classes, I would go here for the day. It was kind of like detention, basically.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I would go there and, you know, we would have counseling sessions and we would watch, you know, movies like Clean and Sober with Michael Keaton, I remember was a big one. Yeah. And I was there basically pretending to be an alcoholic. But I do remember going to a couple meetings, and I obviously didn't stay sober at the time. I had no desire to.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But I remember being there thinking that, oh, I'll probably be back here in some capacity. I had no idea why, but I just had that – sinking feeling that as much as this stuff was, I thought, doing really well for me, that being drinking, partying, whatever, I knew I couldn't handle it in the ways that normal people can.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I think I was very normal, recreational, high school college drinker, right? I don't think there were any real red flags at that point. I mean, I could be wrong, but I didn't feel like I was in jeopardy of really having any sort of ism that was going to actually impact my day-to-day.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I just knew that I had a deep sense of unease that was always with me throughout most of my life that I was constantly in search of a solution for, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I mean, it's just, I guess, it's an overall sort of like swirling tornado of inadequacy and depression and anxiety. That feeling that I'm completely left out of every single good part of life. that I'm unable to really kind of participate in that being who I am, so I have to kind of turn into something else. I've had that my whole entire life.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I was at this meeting one time, and this man who was sharing his story about his alcoholism said something along the lines of just like, you know, I was an alcoholic the first day I went into kindergarten. And That hit me right in the chest because I was just like, God, I know exactly what he means by that.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
The first day that I stepped into a classroom around my peers, I was always looking for a way to be accepted in a way that I didn't think I could.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I mean, I think everyone that I've met on this side of recovery has definitely felt that at some point. And obviously, when I talk about this a lot on the newsletter, there's a lot of people who say that I feel that way too and struggle with that every day, whatever. And let me ask you this. I mean, it's just like when you started to have success podcasting,
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Did you think that that was actually supposed to kind of change all those sort of feelings for you and were supposed to kind of be at that inner peace? I mean, did you ever have that when you got some of the things that you were always after, professionally speaking?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
It's a horrible feeling that when that happens, because that happened for me too. I was at a place in circa 2010, 11, where I was like, oh, I'm getting all the attention that I thought I wanted. I'm getting paid the amount that I thought I wanted. People think I'm interesting in a way that I thought I always wanted. And I'm still out.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
drinking and carousing every single night because I'm still lonely at the end of the night. And whenever I would... it would inch up to like two, three o'clock in the morning. I would get so anxious because I was just like, God, I don't want to go to bed yet. I'm not drunk enough yet to fall asleep. I would never sleep in a bed. I always needed to fall asleep on the couch.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Always needed to fall asleep with like three or four cigarettes before I went to bed. And that's when things were going well for me, right? And that's the stuff that I look back upon where I'm just like, God, this was never going to work. no matter how much of my professional life I was having success in that, it wasn't going to be enough for me.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I was the classic case of failing upward. As much as... I was a fuck-up. I mean, that was kind of part of my brand at the time. I had become one of those people. And man, I got away with a lot of things. I was rewarded for it sometimes. And I was constantly bouncing out of a situation that was good. I was usually quitting my jobs, too, as a way to really chase that other place to fill that hole.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I remember I took this job at what used to be Spin Magazine, which was now Spin Media.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And it was, like, my dream job, too.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But it was one of those jobs where I was just like, oh, this can be the one where I can actually just like shed all the reputation that I kind of built up at Docker Media and Deadspin and go into something where I can be treated seriously and I don't have to be the guy that I'm being now, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And I remember I got called up for an interview and the man who had taken it over, it was kind of just one of these, dot-com guys who had just, you know, got too rich and just decided to start buying media properties because he was a bored sort of guy, right?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And, you know, I'm having the interview, and I remember showing up very hungover and just completely ganked on Adderall, and I was wearing visors a lot at the time. That was, like, my thing. Like golf visors? Golf visors, yeah. This is the darkest part of your story. So, like, 15 years passed when visors were actually just, like, cool, you know?
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
And, you know, wearing them crooked most of the time and just, like, just smelling like shit all the time. But being able to kind of be in this room with this person... And convince them, I will take the job. I will take the editorial director job at your place of business.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
Yeah. I mean, it's the craziest thing. But I mean, you know why? Because I had confidence. this artificial confidence that had come with all of the substances and, you know, the internet confidence, whatever sort of stuff. And look, I mean, and after that, I raised $1.1 million for my own company after that, after I lost that job, right? And again, sort of same situation.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
I mean, when I was raising money for this company, my co-founder, Julia, she would make these decks and he would go and we'd have these meetings and And the deck presentation would never go great.
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When do you know it’s time to stop drinking? (classic)
But if I showed up in my uniform with that visor on and smelling like last night and just dazzling these dudes with all the stories about Deadspin or Gawker or just like gossipy stuff and like all those sort of things. So crazy. Like people would buy in, right? Yeah. Yeah.