Voices on Addiction: If You Give
“He’s going to want a cookie to go with it.”She seemed to exhale on the mouse’s behalf. Thank God, another cookie.
Voices on Addiction
113 posts
Voices on Addiction is a column devoted to true personal narratives of addiction, curated by Kelly Thompson, and authored by the spectrum of individuals affected by this illness. Through these essays, we hope—in the words of Rebecca Solnit—to break the story by breaking the status quo of addiction: the shame, stigma, and hopelessness, and the lies and myths that surround it. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, adult children, extended family members, spouses, friends, employers or employees, boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbors, victims of crimes, and those who’ve committed crimes as addicts, and the personnel who often serve them, nurses, doctors, social workers, therapists, prison guards, police officers, policy makers and, of course, addicts themselves: Voices on Addiction features your stories. Because the story of addiction impacts us all. Submit to our column editor, Kelly Thompson here.
Voices on Addiction: Last Drunk
In the past, getting the ball rolling has proven to be a Sisyphean task. Max admits he has a problem and is pretty sure he can solve it. Alone.
Voices on Addiction: Mayflies
Mayfly larvae only exist in water that is very clean. And for seventy years, Lake Erie had been anything but clean.
Voices on Addiction: Learning to Steal
My clothes hung, though, I called it draping. I called it fashion.
Voices on Addiction: Triggers and Warnings
This is the longest time my brother spends on the ground. I rarely see him, but he’s with me like an invisible second skin. I wear him everywhere.
Voices on Addiction: Make Me A Channel of Your Peace
In the library at the Farm, I wondered how William’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions ended up at a vacation house purchased five years after his death.
Voices on Addiction: I’m Not Eating
I want to tell her that starving softens the edges of everything. When I’m not eating, only the moment at the end makes me feel present.
Voices on Addiction: This is Not A Story About Sobriety
I didn’t realize until I wrote this: my first interaction with alcohol was shrouded in secrecy.
Voices on Addiction: Searching for My Mother’s Ocean
We left when the boats were shutting down and the stores closed. In the darkness of downtown Miami, fear crept into the cracks of my boldness. Downtown was not a safe place at night.
Voices on Addiction: Whole Pools of It
This time, Mandy calls me. Her words are much quicker. There is the force of meaning behind them, but the slur is still perceivable at the edges.
Voices on Addiction: Where the Heart Is
I read in the kitchen after dinner, after the dishes were washed and put away and everyone crowded into the living room to watch the Twilight Zone or Bonanza. There was a light over the table, and I’d dissolve into the stories.
Voices on Addiction: Inheritance
We simply have not treated climate change as the intergenerational curse that it is. We have left it, again and again, for the next generation. We have chosen comfort and familiarity and numbness over a reckoning that might have spared our children.