Blocked and Reported
Journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal scour the internet for its craziest, silliest, most sociopathic content, part of an obsessive and ill-conceived attempt to extract kernels of meaning and humanity from a landscape of endless raging dumpster fires.
Journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal scour the internet for its craziest, silliest, most sociopathic content, part of an obsessive and ill-conceived attempt to extract kernels of meaning and humanity from a landscape of endless raging dumpster fires.
Recent Episodes
We’re being dogsat!
Katie, thanks for sharing your story. A deeply courageous move, there is still stigma and shame around alcohol (or any substance) misuse even after all we know. I found great value in Gabor Mate's work, and I'm very much looking forward to your book!
I don't remember authorizing any PTO.
I PAY YOUR SALARY.
Really looking forward to Katie's book, it's amazing to me that this subject is being treated as of no interest by mainstream media and the substance abuse industrial complex. Alcoholism is such a heartbreaking scourge that touches so many people, why would we not try everything? I hope Katie is also covering semaglutide and the GLP-1 drugs too (Ozempic, etc) given that they are showing tremendous potential for addiction/impulse control.
Very proud of Katie for a lot of reasons - pushing through the years of struggle, being willing to try the drug, stick with it, and then for her inability to just keep it to herself once she freed herself of her problem. Her willingness to reveal a painful, private thing in order to try to bring this topic to the people who need it is really admirable. A lot of people wouldn't.
Wait. Katie is writing a book??? I thought she would NEVER.
Listening to this had me wondering if the normalization of Ozempic will help to normalize Naltrexone. However I also wonder if one thing that stops Naltrexone from being prescribed like Ozempic is the fact that a doctor can easily bring up the option of Ozempic since a patient cannot hide their weight like they can hide their alcohol use
It's not easy to get insurance to cover Ozempic, so I doubt that. They're not the same, but from the sound of it, the GLP-1 drugs may end up being BETTER at curbing addictive behaviors. I think we're a long way from people being able to use them for addiction alone, though.
Ozempic is not covered by the Medicare PBS in Australia if you're using it for weight loss so I pay 100% out of pocket, but it's only $150aud a month (around $90usd).
Also, ozempic is life long so ka-ching. Meds for alcohol abuse are short term.
People can stay on naltrexone for alcohol indefinitely.
Really. Isn't the idea that you'll eventually stop?
There is no consensus on this. Same story for opioid treatments like buprenorphine and methadone.
Most sources set a minimum amount of time for which treatment is recommended. The family medicine organization says 3 months and up (https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2000/0315/p1891.html). Where I was working until recently,we usually take a full year of medication as the baseline and then would start discussing coming off of it if everything is going well. Of course, not everyone is willing or able to do that.
It depends on what you mean by short term. Three months is longer than most people would be on a medication for an acute illness, but very short relative to a lifetime condition.
I very much look forward to reading "The Quick Fix" by Katie Herzog when it comes out!
In all seriousness though, I'm especially interested in whether research has shown why it works for those who it does / doesn't for those who it doesn't. My husband had an alcohol problem and tried the Sinclair method a couple times before giving up. But then, AA hadn't worked either. He's sober now but Naltrexone definitely didn't work. I have a theory that maybe because he was using it more for "obliteration" than to get a buzz?
I'm also not sure about the statistics for awareness of these treatments - as it sort of depends on how you define alcohol abuse spectrum. Like some medical authorities argue a glass of wine a day, or drinking a few beers on the weekends only makes you a problem drinker, and that type of drinking is very common and (I'd argue) not the type of problem we're discussing a need to use Naltrexone for.
I imagine you’re onto something with the ‘why’ people are drinking.
If it’s obliteration or in response/a cover for other issues be they psychological or a life event then this medicine may not be useful.
It’s probably not going to deal with clinical depression or trauma.
Wow, Katie. Just wow. You've really amped up our parasocial relationship with this episode. Really a great episode.
My heart exploded. Beat me to saying just this.
Oh Katie ❤️
While the story was interesting to hear, I'm reminded how much I dislike this format for podcasts. The soft, sad music fading in as Katie's saying how bad her life got, the cuts between sentences as she talks about her lows. It makes it feel manipulative to me and cheapens the experience.
This Radiolab sound is pretty much Andy Mills’s trademark - so many mid 2010s podcasts sound like this because they were copying him - that I think it’s unlikely that he’s going to change it.
I guess, but I wish he could see that it doesn't add anything. The entire episode could be nothing but the three interviewees talking about it would hit the same, except I wouldn't be annoyed at the YOU FEEL SAD NOW music inserts.
Yeah I hope Reflector grows out of the NPR-isms as they develop. I think they have the potential to do interesting stories. That said the recent episode with Killer Mike was a mess
I enjoyed the two episodes (first with Helen Lewis) following up on The Witch Trials of J K Rowling, although they’re far too generous to Contrapoints disingenuous criticisms. I get why they felt the need to do it, but it really needs pointing out that Wynn exists in a money making echo chamber and isn’t interested in good faith dialogue. I bet they do regret appearing on the original podcast but only because they don’t get to slickly make their arguments unchallenged for an audience that laps up anything they say.
The response to it seem rather pointless tbh.
The second one was very difficult to get through. Treating Wynn like a good faith actor only gives that narcissist a patina of credibility.
I do get why they did it. There thing is to present themselves as champions of good faith conversations and I think they’re genuinely trying to do that.
Given that Wynn has clearly realised that from her business model pov appearing on the podcast was a mistake, they were never going to actually engage further, I think Reflector felt they still needed to be the more grown up party.
If they’d at least addressed the nature of the Breadtube ecosystem and why it’s not really a good faith engagement would have helped. Also, they didn’t address the obvious point that Wynn’s long trains of thought collapse like a house of cards if you don’t buy the premise that Rowling is a transphobic hate monger.
Mean, unhelpful opinion: Also, Andy Mills’ speaking style is annoying.
Great story. Baclofen rather than naltrexone for me, but similar principle.
Katie congratulations on your recovery
I remember reading the Atlantic article when it came out back in 2015. I shared it on FB and ALL the 12 step true believers came out of woodwork to comment. It was a genuine pile-on, albeit respectful. Anecdotal, obviously, but not one person who commented was willing to believe there could be another way besides AA. It's a quasi religion. I know it works for some people (including a few in my extended family), but it doesn't work for a lot of people (including a few in my extended family).
I've always been wary of the program as one-stop shopping for addiction. My husband was going to meetings when we met way back in the midst of time. About five years into our marriage he started socially drinking and it's truly never been an issue. So I've seen first hand that it is possible to come out of the other side of drinking too much and still having a beer with the boys without it spiraling into a wrecking ball.
Thank you so much, Katie.
AA is purposefully and explicitly decentralized. There are some extreme ideas circulated through AA in many cases, but it might be that another meeting has a completely different culture.
Personally I think the religious undertones are a universal problem that manifests to a different extent in each group.
AA worked for my dad, not for my mom. He stopped drinking in NY, and they moved to North Carolina and when my mom tried to quit she was turned off by the fact that most AA groups in her area were very Jesus based, and she is an atheist (still closeted). I think the Sinclair method would’ve worked for her by allowing her to drink socially without getting to the point of blacking out, falling, etc.
I believe atheist AA groups exist, although they maintain a spiritual angle (like NA 'higher power).
In Europe it is much less faith based. You can tell the difference in the English speaking groups with a lot of US Expats.
This is proof that drinking doesn't actually kill braincells and it's just a saying, unless of course, thanks to substance abuse, the world has been spared from a Katie Herzog with a super villain level of intelligence.
I promise you that it does, but like a lot of things the damage will only become apparent after it’s far too late.
Everyone should go watch the three-part documentary about prohibition by Ken Burns. It’s by far my favorite documentary ever!
A few things I remember:
- the Midwest corn boom had gotten started in the lead up to prohibition, but there is no corn syrup so imagine every bit of corn syrup you consume today was cheap corn whiskey making the entire country into alcoholics
- the suffragettes formed an alliance with the prohibitionist movement
- most breweries were run by Germans, who didn’t get around to opposing prohibition because they couldn’t imagine it would apply a beer
Wow, what a great and surprising episode!
Katie, just wanted to say that I really admire your bravery coming forward with a story that I believe will help a lot of people. I am a long time fan of Blocked and Reported and you and Jessie feel like friends, although we don’t know each other. I’m really looking forward to your book!
Great episode. As someone with friends or family that struggle with addiction, I really appreciate you using your platform to spread science based approaches to treatment/recovery.
Also looking forward to what other shows you post here during the tour. I know some didn’t, but I liked the better angles cross-post.
I am so grateful for you sharing this Katie. I work in addiction medicine and prescribe Naltrexone a lot. And find that even other addiction medicine prescribers frequently prescribed this medicine wrong. I would have people come to me saying that it didn’t work. But I’m a pharmacokinetics need and I know the blood level curve and I always tell people exactly what you were talking about. And I have been able to change a lot of people’s experience with it. I’m even more of a fan of the monthly injection form - Vivitrol. You never have to bother worrying about forgetting to take it, or making a bad decision. Not only that, but I think that Naltrexone should be in all Americans’ medicine cabinets. We would have a lot fewer DUIs. People going out for dinner who intend to have one drink, and end up having 2. Or 3 because they are socializing, and get carried away. But if they took Naltrexone before going out, they would likely not even finish that first drink (these would be people who are not necessarily alcoholics, just people who maybe just get carried away by the second drink and have a 3rd). I really commend you for embarking on that journey. And for sharing it with us. Thank you.
So Katie started to drink a six pack everyday right around the time she started a podcast with Jesse... correlation or...
I was really moved by this episode. Not afflicted by addiction myself so far but it’s endemic in my community and my family and I deal with it a lot at work. You can feel very helpless and very hopeless…. Nice to hear it can be beaten.
Already listened to it as soon as it came out, but if you haven’t listened to this yet, do it, right now!!
You misspelled episode
Really enjoyed listening to this, although agree that the NPR-isms are somewhat jarring after getting so used to the geniune format of BARpod (and my consumption of NPR has dramatically decreased in the past 4 years).
While listening, I couldn't help but think about the use of weight loss drugs like ozempic, welgovy & wellbutrin to treat those who are overweight as a result of overeating / binge eating as a parallel here...
Just as those who use AA / abstinence to reduce their dependency on alcohol are glorified and those who take Naltrexone to reduce their dependency on alcohol are not, people are often glorified for losing weight and getting healthier in the "old fashioned" way (e.g., diet, exercise) and shamed for losing it via medical intervention. The person who takes up running and gives up desserts is seen as more "moral" than the person who takes ozempic although the result is the same. Just some "food" for thought
Absolutely. Buti think that people believe these things as abstract. They believe that it's more moral to white knuckle it. But when they speak with people who are doing it the "easy" way, they'll think otherwise.
Katie I loved this episode. And I agree wholeheartedly about medicine to help with alcoholism (it's not a disorder, it's just an addiction) and AA. I went to AA for a while and stopped at the bottle shop on my way home. My local bottle shop had a bottle of vodka ready behind the counter for me every 2 days, sometimes daily. It was messy. AA makes you focus on your drinking way too much. You're constantly talking about how shit your life was and you feel horrible. My doctor (Australia) suggested medication, which I took for some time. I don't remember what it was called but he told me it would make me feel sick if I drank while using it, so I didn't. I also went to a hypnotherapist. I didn't drink for the first couple of years and, when I did, it just didn't have the same pull. The exact feeling I used to love, you know when you're starting to get buzzed and you think, oh this is going to be super fun tonight, well I didn't like that feeling anymore. Feeling tipsy felt bad. I could go on - the middle of the night guilt and shame, the bargaining and promises I made to myself every day that were dismissed by 5. Nothing good comes from being an alcoholic, there's no redemption arc. You just stop drinking and start living a normal life. I have the odd drink now and then but it's one, and never vodka. I'm glad you're better now.
So you’re talking about disulfuram (antabuse). This does indeed make drinking impossible as you lose the ability to metabolize alcohol and it becomes quite toxic. However, keeping up with the pill schedule is not easy. For people who are seriously ill, the risks of this medication might not be worth it. Even as addiction specialists we rarely prescribe it.
My BIL took this and became violently ill at a family gathering - he still insists he didn’t drink either. Was wondering if there was something in something he ate that was close enough to trigger it. Can’t be 100% sure he was telling the truth but either way it’s pretty nasty stuff.
This is another common issue with this medication. The amount of alcohol that it takes to poison you while you’re taking it is much smaller than the amount it would take to get someone drunk. There are trace amounts of alcohol in various “non-alcoholic” products that are still enough to cause a fit of violent nausea.
But when you're desperate, you'll do what it takes.
I think he’s doing a lot better fortunately!
Yes that's the one. You know, I was on lithium for a while, so this was nothing! But something worked for me, and continues to. It's so atrange.
What I tell people is: "I do not have any medications without side effects". By framing it that way from the start, it makes clear that we are not doing a magic trick here, we are trying to find a situation where the good outweighs the bad on net.
You're right.
This is a stupid complaint, but when podcasts like this one insert that very earnest background music, it's like nails on chalkboard to me. Bari Weiss's Honestly is the same. I can barely get through it.
For people who have been heavy drinkers, alcohol-free beers can be attractive. But people who don’t drink beer never learned to like the taste anyway.
Similarly, I expect that for NPR listeners and NYT readers, a certain aesthetic can be appealing in their alternative media, one that is incomprehensible to people who aren’t in the club.
I am curious why Katie like many who talk about 'controlled drinking' end up being abstinent.
Mt guess is for hard core drinkers abstinence is easier in the long run even if they taper first.
"Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult."
Samuel Johnson
From the outside in I have noticed since my husband stopped drinking completely it is so much psychologically simpler. "I don't drink" is a simple phrase that just when you're offered alcohol or thinking about drinking just ends things there - no bargaining or negotiating, it's black and white.
I was never a problem drinker, but I paused for a while as part of loosing 80 pounds. I've had a few since then, and I never officially quit...but now that I'm out of the habit I go years between beers.
With my diet I've found that being nearly perfectly strict is easier than 95% compliance.
I never drunk very much (I think my record for a single evening is about five), but at some point I realized that a. I didn't like the taste of alcohol, so I was only drinking it to get tipsy, and b. nearly every time I got tipsy enough to be worth the crappy taste of what I was drinking, I also got sick the next day. (Not necessarily hung over per se; it tends to give me intestinal upset.) The limited upside didn't seem worth it.
I was a heavy daily drinker. I’ll still occasionally have 1-2 drinks on Naltrexone. but I also go several months at a time with a drink sometimes. My guess is that abstinence on the Sinclair method is often just out of boredom. When getting drunk isn’t fun anymore, alcohol loses a lot of its appeal.
It’s an addictive substance that is difficult to moderate. I was not a “problem drinker” but found so much peace when I just decided to stop.
Thank you for being so vulnerable, Katie! I had no idea you struggled with this, and kudos to you and Janna for your recovery. I’m a psychologist but do not specialize in substance use treatment. I had heard about naltrexone but not about the Sinclair method for treating alcohol use disorder, so thank you for sharing this information. It’s true that the medical community is not very well-informed about medication-assisted treatments for addiction. I am very much looking forward to your book!
A companion to "Sucking and Fucking" is born: Thinking and Drinking.
F*king religion. Thank you for your work and your courage, Katie.
First barpod cry ever. Thank you for sharing your story. Both my parents are/were alcoholics, and AA worked for my dad, not for my mom. I wish I had known about this research 10 years ago.
I am an acute care nurse and on my floor I see probably 4-5 addicts a month for detox, many of whom express a strong desire but inability to stop drinking. I will be suggesting to my MD colleagues they might consider offering this med as an alternative to sobriety, especially to those for whom AA has not worked.
If your hospital has an addiction consult service (which is a niche that is usually only in the big academic centers), the thing would be to learn to utilize them. Depending on hospital might also consider psychiatry consult as they might be more comfortable with it. But there’s nothing stopping a regular medicine doc from prescribing naltrexone and they should be doing it.
I have not heard of us having such a service, but will ask. We are a large academic hospital, and see so many people who want to quit. Plenty who leave AMA (against medical advice) to go back to their addiction as soon as they’re able of course as well.
Part of the rationale for having an addiction consult service is reducing readmissions, which is a huge measure under the ACA regime. But I suspect it’s still a small minority of hospitals that have this; I have sought them out for my training.
Then again, if yours does have someone doing this, it would not surprise me if the word was not getting out about it.
Our med school does have a fellowship in addiction medicine, but no inpatient consult service that I see. We also have outpatient services, but I imagine many pts are lost to follow up. Plus it’s MF 9-5, and hard to get to via public transportation, yadda yadda. Sad to hear there’s a shortage of naltrexone.
And I got a call back, we do have an inpatient addiction team, and they do use naltrexone as a front line treatment. They are focused on harm reduction. Thank you John for your helpful comments.
Things I thought:
There must be parallels in addictive behavior between people who over-drink, and people who over-eat (or over-anything for that matter). The ‘what’ is probably less relevant.
I assume the reason AA doesn’t work is similar to why diets don’t work. Abstinence can cause so much anxiety and anger, the same things addiction provides comfort from.
As much as people might think these meds are a ‘quick fix’ Katie still had to do the work of changing her habits. The meds gave her the breathing room to make those changes.
Naltrexone and meds like Ozempic might just be the training wheels needed as we learn to ride the bike on our own.
If there is audio version of Katie’s The Quick Fix, and she is the reader, I’ll buy it.
I bought Jesse’s OG The Quick Fix”. The thought of Jesse reading for the audiobook fills me with dread.
At the same time, no one can not read the N-word in quite the same way Jesse does not read the N-word...
I actually have the audio book
I worked at an SUD rehab for my first 3 years of practice as a psych NP, and I will say that we used naltrexone and Vivitrol all the time as well as other MAT options both on and off label, but I had not heard that regarding the dose timing. Glad to be able to offer that advice both to my patients and to other providers.
The AA thing surprised me though, because OASAS programs in NY are required to use “evidence based” group programming, which meant AA was an optional group 1-2x a week, and otherwise it was all some other manualized program like SMART recovery.
Katie, you are a superstar. And Andy Mills continues to impress. What a pair of awesome people.
Such a great podcast ep. I listened to it when it first aired and wow I still think about it often. It's had a profound impact.
As long as I hear the correct music I’m open to hearing anything
Great show. Glad you're doing your part to get the word out about this alternative to AA.
I'm in the middle of what you were going through katie. Driving my way to the liquor store, so embarrassed I go out of my way to liquor stores further away because of how often I go and dont want the workers, who I dont even know, recognizing how much I drink. It's bitter, I know I'm killing myself, I've been to the hospital multiple times from uncontrollable vomiting and even alcoholic ketoacidosis. Still I find myself involuntarily, yet consciously making my way to another drink. I hate myself for it. Thank you for being open about this because I related so much to your story. You're maybe my favorite personality online that I really relate to even before I knew you had a similar struggle, so this hit me hard. Your and the jew's podcast is something I look forward to every week and helps me get through some really shitty times. Knowing that you got through this struggle honestly gave me hope, and I plan on asking my doctor about this drug and giving it a go. Thank you for your work and bringing this to light for me, because I will try most anything right now. Im writing this as I'm probably about to drink myself to sleep, but this may have given me more hope than most anything I've heard in years. Thank you. Much love.
Totally agree with all the appreciation being expressed here for Katie's courage, candour, vulnerability etc. Hearing you get tearful, Katie, is going to be one of my most memorable podcast moments for some time to come.
But there's one thing I'm confused about: for months and months you have been mentioning on Barpod your process of giving up weed ... are we now to understand that all that time you were really talking about booze?
Man, Katie, I respected you a ton before, but this took it to a new level. What an incredible episode.
Thanks Katie, I wanted to cry on my drive home today lol. In all seriousness, thank you so much for this ♥️
The funny thing as an addiction doctor is that I was listening and thinking boy she sounds like a great naltrexone candidate but this is going to go off into an ayahuasca trip or some online bullshit drama or something.
Naltrexone is a very useful medication, and while it is approved for opioid addiction and alcohol addiction, we commonly use it off-label for other drug addictions and sometimes behavioral addictions. The thing is, as an addiction specialist, by the time someone gets to me they've probably already gone pretty far down a pretty bad path. So it is important that we get the rest of the medical profession on board with it.
The whole idea of using naltrexone and then alcohol is a bit tough to swallow (so to speak), but it makes sense under a very basic Pavlovian understanding. Therapeutic extinction would be the generic term. If you learn that drinking leads to good times, you drink. If you learn that it doesn’t, you stop.
Notably buprenorphine (Subuxone, among other brand names) has the same property of blocking opioids, so depending on the dose, it is possible that it can prevent a high. I have seen this dissuade some patients from getting high.
I am a bit surprised that they don’t seem to have talked about the naltrexone shortage this year. Either there was a huge increase in demand, or a pretty bizarre serious of manufacturing problems. I can’t seem to get a straight answer on what happened to my naltrexone, but I’m just a lowly doctor, not a journalist.
In a world of conspiracies I might suggest that alcohol consumption decreased after the pandemic so the booze companies colluded to create the drug shortage to make people drink again. Hahha
I doubt it.
Naltrexone is a true opiate, meaning that it is actually made from opium poppy. My theory is that with the decline in prescribing of other opiates (i.e. oxycodone) it became less profitable to grow poppies and naltrexone was a casualty. Which would be perverse in its own way.
I think I would rather the Antabuse then.
I tend to steer people towards acamprosate or gabapentin, which can help with alcohol cravings as well but the latter is off label.
What about smoking? I really want to quit and fuck all works. My will power is very strong generally, I am amazingly good at deciding on new routines and sticking to them. I won't list the things I have decided and stuck to but some of them *should* be harder than stopping smoking yet it defeats me. Listening to this made me think it's not just willpower that I need. I've tried nicotine substitutes, and of course vaping but no joy.
I may order it off line if it can help.
Smoking is an exceptionally difficult thing to quit. Or if you take Mark Twain's logic: "Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times."
Naltrexone has never shown any benefit for smoking cessation in clinical trials (https://www.cochrane.org/CD003086/TOBACCO_do-opioid-antagonists-such-as-naltrexone-help-people-to-stop-smoking).
I've had some longtime smokers have great success on varenicline (Chantix). Hypnosis has also been used with great success, bearing in mind that some people are hypnotizable and some are not (or would prefer not to be). There are other medications and strategies to consider. It is tough to quit smoking, but it's worth trying every reasonable strategy.
I'm too much of a dickhead for hypnosis to work. Chantix has been withdrawn in the UK. I'm literally the only person left in my social circle who smokes (when at one point they all did) so it can't be that hard... and yet.
All that's fair. I can't provide individual advice and I don't know what's available through NHS, but I would hope that a public healthcare system would be flush with options for quitting smoking, given what it costs them in the long term.
Sorry I wasn't trying to get legit medical advice, just picking your brain! The NHS does offer loads of free stuff. Ironically there website links you to the latest research on the most effective way to quit which they say is Cantix which isn't available.
Chantix is a high side effect medication. I'm glad we are allowed to make our own decision on it in the U.S., but it is both very effective for some people and very harmful for others.
A lot of my smokers are on bupropion, which is easier to acquire and does help.
The thing with treating any addiction is that you have to remember that if habits have set in over the course of years, they will not change overnight. We also focus on setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic, Time-limited). You don't have to quit cold turkey on day 1, but setting short-term goals and gradually working towards eventual cessation can be an easier strategy to buy into.
That was pretty interesting. Addiction here in Canada land is a bigger and bigger issue especially around its secondary effect of increased crime, and not to mention the primary effect of destroying people's live and those immediately around them. The general rejoinder I hear to "fix" the problem is always "we need more Treatment" and I never see how effective that treatment is or even what that treatment is.
Appreciate you sharing Andy's work, big fan.
This would've been the perfect opportunity to deploy the now archived new intro theme! For special occasions only, perhaps.
Really valuable episode, thank you for sharing Katie <3 even if it was less funny than usual.
There's a fairly new and not too active podcast if people would like to discuss and get some activity going :)
reddit.com/r/ReflectorPodcast/
Loved this episode, but Gabrielle Glaser's vitriol toward AA is way over the top, not to mention her idea that as a society we don't like the idea of solving problems by taking a pill. I wonder how Katie getting sober affected the early days of Blocked and Reported.
my brother is in his mid 30s and he's dying. Rather, he's killing himself slowly, one bottle of skol vodka at a time, while everyone who loved the person formerly known by his name watches in horror.
His liver is dead in his body, the doctors say, word for word, "we don't know how he's alive, it doesn't even make sense." A transplant, in theory, is his only hope, but he says he'd never do that, and the doctors won't either, since he can't maintain sobriety for 6 hours much less the minimum 6 months or so that is required to even be considered to have someone else's liver put into your body to potentially destroy.
It strikes me that something like naltrexone must seem like a miracle to someone who has reached their own limits and is ready to quit. But for someone like my brother, he'd simply never agree to it because he doesn't want to stop, doesn't want to cut down, doesn't want to live.
He'll almost certainly die before my parents. He's my only sibling, our family is small. Alcohol and his inability to stop using it has ensured that I will be completely without family by the age of about 50.
I despise alcohol and the culture around it. It's absolutely absurd that something like this is legal, while something like cannabis is (at least in many places) a one way ticket to jail.
Just wanted to comment in case Katie reads these threads, but to be predictable - I had no idea. I'm so pleased she was able to find a way through it, and kudos for talking about it with frankness and good humour!
I really enjoyed this and thank you for sharing, Katie, even though you made me feel feelings against my will.
Was Reflector the name of a Judas Priest album?
So wait, did I hear this correctly? I kept waiting for Katie to say she eventually got her story published in The Free Press by "Teddy Kennedy" https://www.thefp.com/p/drink-your-way-to-sobriety-in-2023 but it sounds like she said she couldn't actually get it published by anyone! Which is super weird, because I can't believe she doesn't have any friends there to help get something published...
She did say something about another substack publishing it but putting it behind a paywall.
(or rather, didn't have any friends there *then*, seeing as Kat Rosenfield is there now and surely counts)
Did Jesse know?
Loved this episode. Stunned that this isnt being covered more! Can’t wait to read the book. Def gonna find a way to get a signed copy.
❤️
Please stop substituting other podcasts.
I think this is the second time ever.
No one is making you listen & given that Katie & Jesse are off doing other things it’s not like it’s replacing a Barpod episode.