Building the Muscle: A Conversation with Kristi Coulter
Kristi Coulter discusses her debut essay collection, NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM THIS.
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Posts Tagged: alcoholic
Pulling the Thread Through: Talking with Tina Alexis Allen
Tina Alexis Allen discusses her memoir, HIDING OUT.
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ENOUGH: They Knew How to Take What They Wanted
A Rumpus series of work by women and non-binary people that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
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Coming Clean
Intellectually, I know Gracie’s mom loves her and needs help. In practice, I just want my daughter safe.
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Discomfort, Desire, and Drugs: Talking with Ben Gwin
Ben Gwin discusses his debut novel, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Regan Middleton, the book’s unique structure, and writing satire.
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Voices on Addiction: A Conversation with Andrea Jarrell
I didn’t want to be edited in that way. I needed to tell my story.
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Voices on Addiction: Dead Eyes and Bob Barker Crocs
Broken people are drawn to other broken people. Comparing scars. Laying belly to belly. Two similar pieces of different puzzles.
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Voices on Addiction: The Taste Inside My Mouth
It’s never the words I remember. It’s their taste: bitter, dense, like biting into a radish. It’s how my body feels: sore.
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Voices on Addiction: Self-Portrait
Mother should have told me that booze made a kind of heaven in my body, I thought the first time I felt it.
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Rumpus Original Fiction: Prescriptions
I wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
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Black Ops for Jesus
Ruby knew this story and what it said about Mom’s threshold for domestic abuse, perhaps better than anyone else since her driveway was practically adjoined to our own. She called anyway.
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Voices on Addiction: Zombie Nation
Sometimes life is so big and so loud and being a human being in the world is so much I feel overwhelmed and need a cocoon.
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Voices on Addiction: Keys
He wasn’t an alcoholic! He was just British. I was starting to think that this bullet was long past being dodged.
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Voices on Addiction: Shame Is a Treble Hook
Shame is a treble hook that tells me that 1) I not only fail but am a failure, that 2) I not only damage people but I am damaged, and that 3) I not only lie but I am a lie.
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Voices on Addiction: Twenty-Five
I know that there are those who would argue that alcoholism is a singularly extreme condition, and I get that, but I’ve always felt clear that there’s a lot of overlap between alcoholism and plain old ordinary humanity.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: My Souls Are Out A-Wandering
What is marriage but another form of colonization? A renaming? A power taken, a power taken away?
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Voices on Addiction: Dynamite
The world is a merry-go-round, a sawed-off shotgun, a ticker tape. There’s no struggle now. There’s only darkness, breathlessness, exit—
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #24: Must I Be an Angry April Fool?
When I attended professional acting school back in 1986 (the MFA program at UC Irvine, I proudly remark), I had a teacher ask me once, “Charles, are you able to feel any authentic emotion other than anger?” I paused for a bit and considered the question, before answering, truthfully, “No. I don’t suppose I can.” […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Mila Jaroniec
Mila Jaroniec talks about her debut novel Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover,” writing autofiction, the surprising similarity between selling sex toys and selling books, and the impact of having a baby on editing.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #14: Altered States?
In my last column, the Muse inspired me to write about dreams. And since then, I’ve been thinking about other types of altered consciousness. As a guy who often hangs out with Catholic monks, and who practices “Will Rogers spirituality”—that is, I’ve never met a religion I didn’t like—I take an interest in miracles and […]
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The Alienation of an Irish Abortion
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist.
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Voices on Addiction: 365 Days without You
The men in my family don’t live long, you foretold. Damn you. Drunks and rock stars don’t grow up.
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Voices on Addiction: The Ghost Inside
But was I an alcoholic? The idea had never crossed my mind. The more I reflected on it, the less I understood.
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Our Secret Family Legacy
When I was young, she would tell me we were part Navajo.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #1: Are We Amused Yet?
Here is something I’ve always believed: Just knowing I am an artist, asserting that identity, is more important than what I produce. It is a victory in itself.
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The Rumpus Interview with Jamie Brickhouse
Jamie Brickhouse discusses Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother, a memoir that chronicles his intimate, near-fatal journey through alcoholism, and living HIV positive.
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Not an Alcoholic
Maybe I wasn’t an alcoholic like my father. Maybe I was an alcoholic like… me.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Kill Shot
1964, a month prior to the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a different home movie shot. Infant toss. Up-down. Plummeting. I’m ten months of age—picking up speed.
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D & K’s Fried Fish
In the yard of the single-wide trailer that will haunt you for the rest of your life, watch as your father pulls fish from the cooler, one by one.
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Keeping Secrets from the Stupid
I was four years old when my mother taught me to lie. There were certain instances, she explained, when lying was acceptable, when it wasn’t even lying, really.
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