Voices on Addiction: The Five Cs
The truth is different. The truth is always different.
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Posts Tagged: sobriety
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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Blood from a Door Nail: Talking with Susan Shapiro
Susan Shapiro discusses her forthcoming book THE BYLINE BIBLE.
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Holding Herself Up: Amy Dresner’s My Fair Junkie
It’s hard to build a life, no matter who you are, Dresner suggests.
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Pulling the Thread Through: Talking with Tina Alexis Allen
Tina Alexis Allen discusses her memoir, HIDING OUT.
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Voices on Addiction: A Review of The Recovering
As recovering addicts, we must love ourselves back to the source, love our shameful bits and decimations and not just our reconciliations and resurrections.
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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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The Outsider: A Conversation with Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea discusses her forthcoming collection, Against Memoir, out tomorrow from Amethyst Editions/The Feminist Press.
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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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The Delusion of Objectivity: Talking with Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison discusses The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, understanding that every text is incomplete, and whether motherhood has changed her writing.
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After the Telling
We want to protect our children from everything, even sometimes ourselves.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar discusses his new collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf, finding community in poetry, books on craft, and mining the supernatural for poems.
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Voices on Addiction: The Honeybee
She never stopped, a bee buzzing from flower to flower to flower, collecting all the sweetness she could.
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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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Grief Is Not Regret: May Cause Love by Kassi Underwood
When women do not want a pregnancy, we may not experience the marvel and awe some claim are instant and “natural”—or, if we do, they are overshadowed by fear, and grief.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #32: Make the Soup
I am meditating. In a room in Rodeo, at the rickety old secretary/dresser I use as a desk. It is by a window. I look out at the roadway, and think I am glad to live at a crossroad. The house across the street is silver grey. By its front stoop is a tree all […]
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A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
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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 Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #27: Spring Is Sprung
It is springtime for sure in the house of The Storming Bohemian and Argyle C. Klopnik. All day, every day, Klopnik digs his garden. Our once-chaotic backyard is now a richly soiled pile of black, with a section of lawn and some brick pathways, terraces, and several rose bushes a-blooming. (Ah-choo!) Our landlady is delighted […]
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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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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.” […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr discusses his memoir Sirens, writing for his daughter, and why he values art that trusts its audience.
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The Rumpus Interview with Melissa Febos
Melissa Febos discusses Abandon Me, confessional writing, Billie Holiday, reenacting trauma, cataloguing narratives, and searching for identity.
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Daddy Issues
What I’m saying is I was a fucking wreck and it’s not my dad’s fault.
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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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Voices on Addiction: A Bad Night
Trying to protect him from himself is like trying to protect atmosphere from weather.
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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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Voices on Addiction: The Only Thing That Has to Change Is Everything
The word rehab is short for rehabilitate, which means to restore to a former capacity. Like houses, I remember thinking. Demo the kitchen. Tear down the walls.
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #11: Politics, Madness, and Sanity
My family was always political, but I have a love/hate relationship with politics. Today, I can feel the country swinging towards madness. And make no mistake, a country can go mad. It is familiar territory, exciting and threatening, seductive and fearful. It feels good; it does NOT feel good. Or, if I may coin a […]
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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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