Dudes, buy the book. You don’t have to be an alcoholic to enjoy it. It’s basically a case study on how a solution can arrive for one of life’s greatest problems, and yet it doesn’t get implemented. It’s strangely common in medicine, and so valuable to know about.
And most importantly it’s super well written. It’s funny and well paced. I really enjoyed it.
gotta be honest, i think the self-help tone of the title is why people aren't buying it. most people may not want to buy a book called 'drink your way sober' and keep it in their house in the same way they wouldn't want a book called 'overcoming your micropenis'. it might be discussing a genuine medical issue that's nothing technically to be ashamed of, but ownership implies something stigmatized that's hard to disprove, and the title sounds a bit Dr. Phil. it's a bummer because it sounds like Katie's done a lot of really good journalism and some solid memoir here
Yeah I’m interested (frankly mostly to read stories about Katie’s disastrous drunken antics) but the marketing of the book is 100% clear about it being for alcoholics which has put me off out of the mild sense of embarrassment at having it permanently in my Kindle library.
I mean, if I’m using it around them, quite possibly! Also I’m so viscerally uncomfortable with leaving a trail of what I’ve been reading that I do virtually all browsing in incognito mode, even if it’s just the news or science articles on Wikipedia. It’s a bit obsessive-compulsive tbh.
I dunno, I like that the title makes the topic clear (but you still have to get the book to find out how). Anyway, embarrassing titles can be solved with ebooks!
The title is ok, but the marketing should have been different. It should be about the science and a good story, that might also teach something about recovery if you have a problem. It shouldn’t rely on the latter alone. I almost didn’t buy it because I didn’t think it applied to me until Jesse said it was a good read.
Got my copy! And Jesse is right about the publishing industry, nobody reads any more really, it's a super depressing fact of life. Got to just focus on why you wrote it, and be happy you got it out there.
I’m sorry but Katie’s attitude about this is really putting me off. She was told what to expect and she decided that she was special and now she’s ranting about it on her very well remunerated podcast? Lady, chill. And frankly why would anyone pay full price for a book whose advice can be summed up in a sentence or two? I get that she put a lot of herself into this but no one forced her to have unrealistic expectations.
I enjoyed the audiobook. Thinking on it now though, the problem might be that neither Katie nor Jesse’s first books were about what they’re known for—i.e. the stuff they talk about on this podcast. I think Jesse’s next book on youth gender transition will sell much better than The Quick Fix. If Katie wrote a book on cancel culture, I think that would also do very well.
I might give it a try, this is what I was worried about - that it wouldn’t be particularly appealing if I were not someone seeking a solution to excessive alcohol consumption.
I loved it. I love the combination of science writing and funny/sad anecdotes. I know many, many people suffering from alcohol use disorder and this made me so excited. I'm thinkin gof seeing if my doctor will prescribe me naltraxone - I am someone who is on the lower end of the AUD spectrum, but it's something I wish I could just not want to have ever again and the idea of never thinking about taking a drink again is too amazing to believe. I was having (n/a) drinks with a friend of mine and he said that even after two years sober, all he wants to do is drink.
I prebought both a physical copy (in case I get to a B&R event that Katie is at — we’re both West coasters it could happen!) & ebook AND I got my library to buy some copies.
Some ideas!
Get book groups to get it—they’ll often buy 10-20 copies
Get Bari to put you on the CBS interview shows!
Do Joe Rogan (even though it didn’t help Jesse) and Ben Shapiro
I know the last time you went on got a little intense, Katie, but it might be time to hit up Megyn Kelly again. I bet she has a lot of secretly ashamed wine moms in her audience who would love the idea of a magic pill.
True! Oh no wait, that’s oppressive to liars… good point! Wait, I forgot about people too poor to sharpen their pencils… I give up (trivializing suicide!!!)
Erin can't help lying about FIRE to readers, describing them as a "right-leaning organization that studies campus speech"
That's so far from FIRE's mission and practice that I can't imagine Erin is simply ignorant, but rather chose to frame FIRE in a way that would discredit them to Erin's readers.
Out of all the gender evangelists, he is up there in my top 10 of please shut the fuck up.
I apologies to all if I am being speechist and looksist towards a vulnerable minoritay, but when that god damn toothy whistle-while-you-talk, we-need-to-make-space, rara bourgoise affected tone voice appears in my ears I move closer to a place of deep hate within my soul.
Ohh, are we cattily shitting on Erin Reed? I will totally participate. I find it super cringey how, in videos, he always angles himself sideways to create the illusion of a narrower (more feminine) jaw. I don’t see him address the camera head-on like a normal content creator. The sideways position is so awkward. Dude, you’re not fooling anyone.
Honestly, I have had my fill of heterosexual men who abruptly announce they are women and then become experts on All Things Queer. And that doesn't even include my impatience with the term "queer."
The inclusion of that kind of aside, even if it was justifiable, makes me instantly distrust the writer. But by the time I got to that, I had already read "far-right academic Eric Kaufmann" and "so-called Centre for Heterodox Social Science", so I had an idea of what I was in for.
So the workers workers, who didn’t apparently do the parts of the job that would have kept the place open, don’t have their names on the paperwork of a failing business with 100K + in debt. Sounds like the owners did them a favor.
If you turn your business into an open air drug market, you are probably risking liability for the owners of the building. I can’t imagine they would have been able to renew the lease when it came up next, regardless of their finances.
Yah. Reminds me of the Philly coffee shop where the workers tried to take over the store until they found out it was a money-losing enterprise. The owners should have rushed to sign over the store and then laugh all the way out of the bank.
Pretty astounding to me that Jesse's go to assumption on which "spirituallity" wouldn't be accepted in far leftist spaces is "radical Islam".... Jesse is not someone tuned into the zeitgeist, like at all.
His 2nd answer, "Orthodox Judaism" is also troubling, it highlights another missing of the issue at hand, which is that all Jews are being frozen out of leftist spaces unless they Sieg Heil to Hamas.
It's the classic, "but I'm one of the good ones, I'll be safe" fallacies.
Katie, I bought your book, and sent it to a friend whose child is struggling, and nothing else has helped. I hope your book does. Thank you for writing it.
i wish the best for your friend and their child. i’m a recovering addict, i have no kids but i know my parents were at a loss and wanted to do whatever they could to help me. it’s a heartbreaking ordeal and disease for everyone involved. i hope they recover
I bought the book - not because I struggle with alcohol or really anyone I know well. I just thought it would be interesting and I enjoy your writing. And I’ll commend to people who I come across who might benefit from it.
I think one of the challenges of doing the podcast circuit to promote a book is that a listener gets the main thesis and points of the book, plus some of the best stories/anecdotes, and probably comes away thinking that they got the gist of it and don’t need to read the whole thing.
A 90 minute podcast gives them the Cliffs notes and a lot of people don’t have the attention span for more than that.
Effective guilt trip on the podcast - I just bought the book even though I barely drink. I agree with your thoughts on promotion via the podcast circuit. I’ve listened to many podcasts with non-fiction authors, and ended up feeling less inclined to buy the book because it’s like, “Eh, I think I’ve got the point now.”
Yeah, and frankly, for most books the podcast version is plenty. I've read a lot of books following a podcast/radio interview, only to be disappointed by the fact that the additional material in the books was padding or inessential. Only the best authors (Bryan Burrough, Robert Caro, Jonathan Rosen, etc.) make me feel the extra 20-50 hours of my time are worthwhile.
I do really like the beginning of Katie's book and am off to Amazon to pony up for the whole thing.
Ok. I’m going to quibble a little here about drug addicts being a marginalized group.
I think the concept of marginalized requires the group membership is usually not by choice. Race, gender, sexual orientation, age AND objectively harmless.
So members of a religion being denied tenancy would be marginalizing that group. Not renting to a religion that practices ritual mutilation of cats only at 3 am while playing Metallica is not marginalizing, it’s just common sense to maintain a decent community.
Severe drug addicts aren’t marginalized or arbitrarily excluded. They’re more prone to crime and violence. They don’t pay rent. They shit and piss themselves and don’t bath and trash everywhere they live. They OD and leave someone to clean up the bodies.
They need help of a very interventionist kind. They don’t need neighbors and they sure as hell don’t need my neighborhood or my stoop to bang dope on.
Katie made an interesting point when she noted that these wxmyn were actually willfully dealing directlly with some of the most marginalized people around, no matter how misguided, distruptive, and ill-conceived it was. Compare to many other orgranizations in the "gender" space that only deal with ultra-privileged people in self-selected marginalized groups (enby!) who don't have to actually work for a living.
Yes, I got that. "Noble diamond in the used needle pile" so to speak.
My quibble is that it's not so noble to invite junkies to your neighborhood as they are not what I would consider strictly marginalized.
Like pedophiles. Pedophiles are not unwelcome in neighborhoods due to some arbitrary prejudice or discrimination against a fixed trait. They're unwelcome because they rape kids.
The same with junkies and open air drug markets. It's not noble, it's just stupid and dangerous for your neighbors to invite that.
Yeah. I might sound harsh or unempathetic, but I was an iv drug addict for years. I KNOW you don't want that anywhere near decent society.
In my honest opinion, nothing can be done till they're sober. Some people can just power through and get sober themselves, but after a point most cannot. Compulsory in-patient treatment for several months minimum is the absolute first thing most need. Then compulsory treatment compliance for those with underlying significant mental health issues.
Their sober, medicated selves will thank you even if their tweaked out psychotic selves resist.
Much like how the left is willing to change definitions over what makes a man a man and a woman a woman, so too is Elon Musk, Walsh, and all the other bootlickers on here. Just whatever becomes a way to own the libs in their warped brains.
Ooooh when I heard the Bluestockings news I thought it seemed made in a lab for BARpod. With a progressive stack like that, no wonder it fell apart like Jenga.
The drama at Bluestockings is classic radical politics. Somehow I don't think that the 19th and early 20th century radicals would have been thrilled about making life easier for drug users. When Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people, he didn't mean it as a compliment. I don't mean to be that person, but it's always so interesting to see how radical politics has evolved in the last 100-150 years and someone like Marx might be called a reactionary.
The Stakhanovite movement in the USSR was launched to reward those who worked the hardest and were most productive. There were similar structures in place in some of the other communist countries. Historically, the furthest-left governments were not especially fond of the idea of people being layabouts or mooches.
He didn't mean it as an insult or as condemnation but, viewing opium as an analgesic, as an understandable way in which people deal with the difficulties of life. In Marx's case he viewed religion as offering false comfort when it was in fact used to immiserate people. For many drug users this is the case: drugs are used to make life easier/more bearable and end up making life worse/less bearable. Marx is not reactionary here.
Started to type out that I just don't understand how even the craziest radicals think it's good *for drug addicts* to let them shoot up in the bookstore bathroom . . . but stopped because, unfortunately, I do understand the thought process. It's just unusual to see people so committed to letting addicts destroy their lives that they invite them to do it on private property.
I think it's probably correct to surmise that the worker-owners aren't around and the worker-workers go home to some other neighborhood. Still a huge failure of compassion *for the drug addicts*.
Dudes, buy the book. You don’t have to be an alcoholic to enjoy it. It’s basically a case study on how a solution can arrive for one of life’s greatest problems, and yet it doesn’t get implemented. It’s strangely common in medicine, and so valuable to know about.
And most importantly it’s super well written. It’s funny and well paced. I really enjoyed it.
gotta be honest, i think the self-help tone of the title is why people aren't buying it. most people may not want to buy a book called 'drink your way sober' and keep it in their house in the same way they wouldn't want a book called 'overcoming your micropenis'. it might be discussing a genuine medical issue that's nothing technically to be ashamed of, but ownership implies something stigmatized that's hard to disprove, and the title sounds a bit Dr. Phil. it's a bummer because it sounds like Katie's done a lot of really good journalism and some solid memoir here
Yeah I’m interested (frankly mostly to read stories about Katie’s disastrous drunken antics) but the marketing of the book is 100% clear about it being for alcoholics which has put me off out of the mild sense of embarrassment at having it permanently in my Kindle library.
Genuine quuesiton, people see your Kindle library?
I mean, if I’m using it around them, quite possibly! Also I’m so viscerally uncomfortable with leaving a trail of what I’ve been reading that I do virtually all browsing in incognito mode, even if it’s just the news or science articles on Wikipedia. It’s a bit obsessive-compulsive tbh.
I dunno, I like that the title makes the topic clear (but you still have to get the book to find out how). Anyway, embarrassing titles can be solved with ebooks!
The title is ok, but the marketing should have been different. It should be about the science and a good story, that might also teach something about recovery if you have a problem. It shouldn’t rely on the latter alone. I almost didn’t buy it because I didn’t think it applied to me until Jesse said it was a good read.
Good point!
I just guilt-bought it, so we'll see if I find time to read it!
I bought it in the middle of the night when I heard Katie talking about slow sales so far.
Got my copy! And Jesse is right about the publishing industry, nobody reads any more really, it's a super depressing fact of life. Got to just focus on why you wrote it, and be happy you got it out there.
Everyone else: BUY THE FREAKIN BOOK
I’m sorry but Katie’s attitude about this is really putting me off. She was told what to expect and she decided that she was special and now she’s ranting about it on her very well remunerated podcast? Lady, chill. And frankly why would anyone pay full price for a book whose advice can be summed up in a sentence or two? I get that she put a lot of herself into this but no one forced her to have unrealistic expectations.
That's true of 99% of business and self-help books. The thing that makes the difference is how you do it.
Needless to say I disagree.
I enjoyed the audiobook. Thinking on it now though, the problem might be that neither Katie nor Jesse’s first books were about what they’re known for—i.e. the stuff they talk about on this podcast. I think Jesse’s next book on youth gender transition will sell much better than The Quick Fix. If Katie wrote a book on cancel culture, I think that would also do very well.
I might give it a try, this is what I was worried about - that it wouldn’t be particularly appealing if I were not someone seeking a solution to excessive alcohol consumption.
💯
I loved it. I love the combination of science writing and funny/sad anecdotes. I know many, many people suffering from alcohol use disorder and this made me so excited. I'm thinkin gof seeing if my doctor will prescribe me naltraxone - I am someone who is on the lower end of the AUD spectrum, but it's something I wish I could just not want to have ever again and the idea of never thinking about taking a drink again is too amazing to believe. I was having (n/a) drinks with a friend of mine and he said that even after two years sober, all he wants to do is drink.
I prebought both a physical copy (in case I get to a B&R event that Katie is at — we’re both West coasters it could happen!) & ebook AND I got my library to buy some copies.
Some ideas!
Get book groups to get it—they’ll often buy 10-20 copies
Get Bari to put you on the CBS interview shows!
Do Joe Rogan (even though it didn’t help Jesse) and Ben Shapiro
It’s a great book well worth reading get a copy!!
Go on the "We Might Be Drunk" podcast hosted by Sam Morril and Mark Normand!
Nope. Here for the inevitable Katie crashout.
What does that mean?
I did. I had it on pre-order for like 3 months.
Katie, 1200 books isn’t bad! Especially for a debut! Let momentum build. I agree with Jesse, it will have a long tail. And don’t forget libraries.
I know the last time you went on got a little intense, Katie, but it might be time to hit up Megyn Kelly again. I bet she has a lot of secretly ashamed wine moms in her audience who would love the idea of a magic pill.
I was thinking the same thing!
Yeah, Katie... go on Megyn Kelly again.
Glucose guardian = gender neutral sugar daddy. I’m so sorry that you can’t unknow this.
That is triggering to diabetics. Should be “Sucrose Supporters” or “aspartame advisors.”
Reading those leaves a weird taste in my mouth, so it’s gotta be stevia caregiver(s).
stevia stewards, perhaps?
When are these bookstore and coffeeshop workers going to realize that their term "melanated people" erases people with albinism?!
True! Oh no wait, that’s oppressive to liars… good point! Wait, I forgot about people too poor to sharpen their pencils… I give up (trivializing suicide!!!)
Ew ew ew ew ew.
Erin can't help lying about FIRE to readers, describing them as a "right-leaning organization that studies campus speech"
That's so far from FIRE's mission and practice that I can't imagine Erin is simply ignorant, but rather chose to frame FIRE in a way that would discredit them to Erin's readers.
Erin is also a terrible writer.
Out of all the gender evangelists, he is up there in my top 10 of please shut the fuck up.
I apologies to all if I am being speechist and looksist towards a vulnerable minoritay, but when that god damn toothy whistle-while-you-talk, we-need-to-make-space, rara bourgoise affected tone voice appears in my ears I move closer to a place of deep hate within my soul.
Ohh, are we cattily shitting on Erin Reed? I will totally participate. I find it super cringey how, in videos, he always angles himself sideways to create the illusion of a narrower (more feminine) jaw. I don’t see him address the camera head-on like a normal content creator. The sideways position is so awkward. Dude, you’re not fooling anyone.
Honestly, I have had my fill of heterosexual men who abruptly announce they are women and then become experts on All Things Queer. And that doesn't even include my impatience with the term "queer."
Well, lying is free speech.
The inclusion of that kind of aside, even if it was justifiable, makes me instantly distrust the writer. But by the time I got to that, I had already read "far-right academic Eric Kaufmann" and "so-called Centre for Heterodox Social Science", so I had an idea of what I was in for.
Am I the only one who noticed the connection between Katie’s low book sales and Blue Stockings’ failure to stay in business?
So the workers workers, who didn’t apparently do the parts of the job that would have kept the place open, don’t have their names on the paperwork of a failing business with 100K + in debt. Sounds like the owners did them a favor.
If you turn your business into an open air drug market, you are probably risking liability for the owners of the building. I can’t imagine they would have been able to renew the lease when it came up next, regardless of their finances.
Yah. Reminds me of the Philly coffee shop where the workers tried to take over the store until they found out it was a money-losing enterprise. The owners should have rushed to sign over the store and then laugh all the way out of the bank.
I pre-ordered Katie's book.Maybe we could be called Primo Primos?
"All Primos are equal but some Primos are more equal than others."
Primissimos?
Same! And so did my husband, so we have 2 pre-ordered copies 😆
Same!
Pretty astounding to me that Jesse's go to assumption on which "spirituallity" wouldn't be accepted in far leftist spaces is "radical Islam".... Jesse is not someone tuned into the zeitgeist, like at all.
His 2nd answer, "Orthodox Judaism" is also troubling, it highlights another missing of the issue at hand, which is that all Jews are being frozen out of leftist spaces unless they Sieg Heil to Hamas.
It's the classic, "but I'm one of the good ones, I'll be safe" fallacies.
Katie, I bought your book, and sent it to a friend whose child is struggling, and nothing else has helped. I hope your book does. Thank you for writing it.
i wish the best for your friend and their child. i’m a recovering addict, i have no kids but i know my parents were at a loss and wanted to do whatever they could to help me. it’s a heartbreaking ordeal and disease for everyone involved. i hope they recover
Thank you so much. Congrats on your recovery ♥️
I bought the book - not because I struggle with alcohol or really anyone I know well. I just thought it would be interesting and I enjoy your writing. And I’ll commend to people who I come across who might benefit from it.
I think one of the challenges of doing the podcast circuit to promote a book is that a listener gets the main thesis and points of the book, plus some of the best stories/anecdotes, and probably comes away thinking that they got the gist of it and don’t need to read the whole thing.
A 90 minute podcast gives them the Cliffs notes and a lot of people don’t have the attention span for more than that.
Effective guilt trip on the podcast - I just bought the book even though I barely drink. I agree with your thoughts on promotion via the podcast circuit. I’ve listened to many podcasts with non-fiction authors, and ended up feeling less inclined to buy the book because it’s like, “Eh, I think I’ve got the point now.”
Yeah, and frankly, for most books the podcast version is plenty. I've read a lot of books following a podcast/radio interview, only to be disappointed by the fact that the additional material in the books was padding or inessential. Only the best authors (Bryan Burrough, Robert Caro, Jonathan Rosen, etc.) make me feel the extra 20-50 hours of my time are worthwhile.
I do really like the beginning of Katie's book and am off to Amazon to pony up for the whole thing.
Ok. I’m going to quibble a little here about drug addicts being a marginalized group.
I think the concept of marginalized requires the group membership is usually not by choice. Race, gender, sexual orientation, age AND objectively harmless.
So members of a religion being denied tenancy would be marginalizing that group. Not renting to a religion that practices ritual mutilation of cats only at 3 am while playing Metallica is not marginalizing, it’s just common sense to maintain a decent community.
Severe drug addicts aren’t marginalized or arbitrarily excluded. They’re more prone to crime and violence. They don’t pay rent. They shit and piss themselves and don’t bath and trash everywhere they live. They OD and leave someone to clean up the bodies.
They need help of a very interventionist kind. They don’t need neighbors and they sure as hell don’t need my neighborhood or my stoop to bang dope on.
Katie made an interesting point when she noted that these wxmyn were actually willfully dealing directlly with some of the most marginalized people around, no matter how misguided, distruptive, and ill-conceived it was. Compare to many other orgranizations in the "gender" space that only deal with ultra-privileged people in self-selected marginalized groups (enby!) who don't have to actually work for a living.
Yes, I got that. "Noble diamond in the used needle pile" so to speak.
My quibble is that it's not so noble to invite junkies to your neighborhood as they are not what I would consider strictly marginalized.
Like pedophiles. Pedophiles are not unwelcome in neighborhoods due to some arbitrary prejudice or discrimination against a fixed trait. They're unwelcome because they rape kids.
The same with junkies and open air drug markets. It's not noble, it's just stupid and dangerous for your neighbors to invite that.
Absolutely! It's misguided and ultimately unhelpful because more people will OD and die, more people will be victims of crime.
Yeah. I might sound harsh or unempathetic, but I was an iv drug addict for years. I KNOW you don't want that anywhere near decent society.
In my honest opinion, nothing can be done till they're sober. Some people can just power through and get sober themselves, but after a point most cannot. Compulsory in-patient treatment for several months minimum is the absolute first thing most need. Then compulsory treatment compliance for those with underlying significant mental health issues.
Their sober, medicated selves will thank you even if their tweaked out psychotic selves resist.
Literally every person on the identitarian left for the past fifteen years: "Transwomen are women!!"
Eric Kaufmann: "Transwomen clearly identify as nonbinary."
Much like how the left is willing to change definitions over what makes a man a man and a woman a woman, so too is Elon Musk, Walsh, and all the other bootlickers on here. Just whatever becomes a way to own the libs in their warped brains.
Ooooh when I heard the Bluestockings news I thought it seemed made in a lab for BARpod. With a progressive stack like that, no wonder it fell apart like Jenga.
The drama at Bluestockings is classic radical politics. Somehow I don't think that the 19th and early 20th century radicals would have been thrilled about making life easier for drug users. When Karl Marx called religion the opium of the people, he didn't mean it as a compliment. I don't mean to be that person, but it's always so interesting to see how radical politics has evolved in the last 100-150 years and someone like Marx might be called a reactionary.
It's been a while since I looked it up but I'm pretty sure Marx *haaated* the Lumpenproletariat.
Well if your economy requires everyone to be chipping in some effort, then the people who put in zero effort are a problem that is hard to ignore.
The Stakhanovite movement in the USSR was launched to reward those who worked the hardest and were most productive. There were similar structures in place in some of the other communist countries. Historically, the furthest-left governments were not especially fond of the idea of people being layabouts or mooches.
He didn't mean it as an insult or as condemnation but, viewing opium as an analgesic, as an understandable way in which people deal with the difficulties of life. In Marx's case he viewed religion as offering false comfort when it was in fact used to immiserate people. For many drug users this is the case: drugs are used to make life easier/more bearable and end up making life worse/less bearable. Marx is not reactionary here.
Started to type out that I just don't understand how even the craziest radicals think it's good *for drug addicts* to let them shoot up in the bookstore bathroom . . . but stopped because, unfortunately, I do understand the thought process. It's just unusual to see people so committed to letting addicts destroy their lives that they invite them to do it on private property.
I think it's probably correct to surmise that the worker-owners aren't around and the worker-workers go home to some other neighborhood. Still a huge failure of compassion *for the drug addicts*.
Meanwhile, one block away, there’s a high school complex where nearly every student is a low-income minority. They have to deal with this nonsense?