Voices on Addiction: A Conversation with Andrea Jarrell
I didn’t want to be edited in that way. I needed to tell my story.
...moreI didn’t want to be edited in that way. I needed to tell my story.
...moreBroken people are drawn to other broken people. Comparing scars. Laying belly to belly. Two similar pieces of different puzzles.
...moreIt’s never the words I remember. It’s their taste: bitter, dense, like biting into a radish. It’s how my body feels: sore.
...moreMother should have told me that booze made a kind of heaven in my body, I thought the first time I felt it.
...moreI wore sobriety like a shirt that was too tight in the shoulders, and everyone around me knew it.
...moreRuby 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.
...moreSometimes 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.
...moreHe wasn’t an alcoholic! He was just British. I was starting to think that this bullet was long past being dodged.
...moreShame 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.
...moreI 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.
...moreWhat is marriage but another form of colonization? A renaming? A power taken, a power taken away?
...moreThe world is a merry-go-round, a sawed-off shotgun, a ticker tape. There’s no struggle now. There’s only darkness, breathlessness, exit—
...moreWhen 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.” […]
...moreMila 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.
...moreIn 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 […]
...moreWas 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.
...moreThe men in my family don’t live long, you foretold. Damn you. Drunks and rock stars don’t grow up.
...moreBut was I an alcoholic? The idea had never crossed my mind. The more I reflected on it, the less I understood.
...moreWhen I was young, she would tell me we were part Navajo.
...moreHere 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.
...moreJamie 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.
...moreMaybe I wasn’t an alcoholic like my father. Maybe I was an alcoholic like… me.
...more1964, 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.
...moreIn 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.
...moreI 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.
...morePerspective is a fickle beast, and memory is an unreliable traveling companion through the years.
...morePlankton either grows into something other than plankton—a strong swimming non-planktonic adult, like a crab or a fish, or it stays the same—forever drifting with the shifting tides.
...moreDean Koontz talks about his newest novel, Ashley Bell, overcoming self-doubt, and “what this incredibly beautiful language of ours allows you to do.”
...moreGraham Oliver reviews Blackout by Sarah Hepola today in Rumpus Books.
...more