For keeping ideas aloft at townhall tonights presentation will likely run about 40 minutes. Followed by audience q a. You can view that a crowd cast , youtube and participant in the q a. Use the ask the button . Crowd cast for it in a close captioning, youtube is your best bet. You can enable realtime captions by clicking the cc but in the bottom right corner. Coming up with new events and podcasts every day, nicole haner jones discussing race in journalism, congresswoman offering a blueprint to Political Action for the next generations for women of color in a special life string reporting of our podcast residency life on the margins this week featuring an audit. Also make sure to visit townhalls Media Library for the recent and free covid past which is also pretty recent. Anyway townhalls in support of our sponsors at supported by the real network, true ground most of your townhall is a Member SupportOrganization First and foremost party went to thank all of our members tonight. Or it quickly townhall is a nonprofit its been hit hard by the Economic Impacts of the pandemic. To maximize access we hope you consider making a donation by clicking on the bottom of crowd cast or use the url from the other platforms about becoming a member purred one final point on the economy a promise, be honest if we are all gathered together in the great hall many of you would visit the book signing table. So we help you use the link on this lifestream page to purchase your copy of erikas book orations a priori the copy of erikas book directly the book company. Local author, big big launch of the book keep it local and maybe some things he loved about the city preepidemic might make it to the other side. Erika barnett is a world waiting political reporter getting her grid the texas cofounded by ivan she went on to work as a reporter and newsletter for the chronicle, Seattle Weekly and the stranger. Shes written for a variety of local publications including the huffington post, seattle magazine and grit grit purchase a cofounding editor of the beloved and political sorry for the air quotes, she helped out with addiction, housing, poverty, drug policy in virtually every other mall you can think of. She is a regular guest on ko debbies friday news round up the weekend and review. Shes seattle native and author of two critically acclaimed memoirs and a fictional book investigating how relationships. Her work as appeared in the new york times, the views the atlantic other public shes also an educator the university of washington specific South Pacific university of universities across the country. Erika barnetts first book is called quarter a memory of drinking, relapse, and recovery. It is the subject of tonights talk. Please join me in welcoming erika barnett. Hello. Hello. And so to be here with you. See what i will jump in and say congratulations break the book is an incredibly impressive achievement. It reads like a house on fire. As a reader, longtime fan of your work and sober person im so glad this book exist. I am honored to be heres part of your launch. Hello everyone try to get the show back on track as soon as we can just give us one Second Period clear are you still there . And erika . Okay great. Already go ahead. Stuart alright eric im gonna kick it over to you for a reading. Guest great. Thank you claire is such an honor the agreed to do this and theyre going to be my interlocutor tonight. Im such a big fan of yours as well. This is a reading from my first book quicker a memoir of drinking, relapse, and recovery. Let me tell you what its like to be sober. Really sober for the first time in years. It feels like seeing color for the first time. It feels like youve been looking at the world through someone elses glasses and suddenly you can make out every individual blade of grass. It feels like you have a secret superpower that nobody can see. The clarity of mind that allows you to breach insights of the most phenomenal moments for your body feel stronger than it has ever been. Food taste better. Desire returns. At the same time, everything has an intensity that scares you a little. When you have a feeling, oh my god, how my ever going to start paying back my debt . You just have to sit with it. Figure it out, wait for it to pass. When you dampened every experience with the white noise of alcohol for a decade or more, experiencing the world at full blast can be overwhelming. Who do i need to apologize to first . How my ever going to make time for nine hours of outpatient treatment every week . Do i really have to go to an aa meeting every single day . Why is my boss looking at me like that . Does she think ive been drinking . Its been less than a month since i graduated from resident 12. Sober, hopeful, and excited to back to work. My stay at rest 12 felt like a wakeup call. An important pause elected been hurdling for with no steering faulty brakes. When i rented that gauntlet of upraised arms i felt the way bornagain christians feel when they emerge in the baptismal waters. Not just that my life was new but it was finally mine. Almost everyone had high hopes. Mom, who had been so worried when she showed up at rest 12 to exceed my sin told me after words im proud of you i know you want to do this. Melissa and emily also both in recovery initiate me into their secret lunchtime ritual of driving across town to attend a new meeting once a week. And felt almost as good as being invited to a secret after party. Friends asked me out for salsa waters and coffee sent cards telling me i was brave. We talk about sobriety the words are often shorthand for not drinking or not using drugs. But the really overwhelming part of staying sober isnt saying no to drinks are going to avoid the proverbial people, places and situations that induced temptation. Its figure out how to live an unfiltered life. Its hard enough and things are going pretty much okay. How many times have you said, need a drink, what you really mean is this day was moderately annoying. It can be damned near impossible when there is wreckage stretching out on the horizon in every direction. So to recap, over the past few years of drinking i have broken my moms heart, driven away my best friends, alienated all my other friends with my erratic behavior and constant sob stories, nearly lost my job, and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt through emergency room and detoxes. I was ashamed to show my face at work, overwhelmed by all the immense i felt i needed to make right away. Too scared to have a heartfelt conversation with either my parents and scared that joshua continues to doubt my commitment to sobriety are that we been watching are my shoulder every minute ready to pounce on any sign that i was slacking off. Id wasted so much time, i had to fix everything right away. But at absolutely no idea how to start. So i froze. I was out of my comfort zone. I worked in went to the gym, lifted weights and worked the phones. And before long as to exhausted to keep going to outpatient therapy three nights a week. I didnt make it to aa every day. I could hardly do anything of the trench from work to bed. Aa meetings which i attended sporadically for the past seven years, bummed me out. Everyone seems so relentlessly all the time. And i found a three hour intensive outpatient assessments that i had greeted as part of my post Rehab Treatment Program repetitive and depressing. Boozers gathering couches on a drew Downtown Office but he watched dhs videos about relapse prevention and pitching about how much sobriety sucks before going into interlock devices and driving home. Not more than a month put by before i fell back into drinkin drinking. We followed that with an exlover because you dont have anything better going on. I cant pinpoint the exact moment where i said screw it, this is too hard. It is more like an imperceptible slide from not drinking to drinking. For selfpity from indifference to bottoms up. I was a nondrinker then i was a drinker again. I passed the liquor aisle in the Grocery Store, doubled back and dropped a bottle of smirnoff in my basket, casually like of budgetary tossing a trey of brown beef on top the granola bars but i wish i had a better story to tell you, one that made sense. Maybe its a close relative a dyed red lost my job or had been evicted my relapse wouldve been justified. Some alcoholics or forge events like this is reservations part of my mom dies and i will drink. If my husband leaves me, if i a terminal illness. But i dont have a good reason or any reason at all. Normal people look at alcoholics in real absolutely i didnt wonder what made you take that first drink . For me the answer is always nothing in particular print one minute your sober person recovery, the next are telling yourself everybody else does it, why cant i . I learned so much. I will manage at this time. Maybe you dont even think about it at all. The selected amnesia of the chronic relapse is a force of nature. . Alcoholism is powerful and patient. With that celebratory bottle i woke up with my hands shaking racing for the bathroom to the toilet bowl. Right away the thinking set in and i grabbed another bottle to get rid of the tremors. By 3 00 oclock i was peering over the edge of the same pit. The oldtimers say you dont have to drink even if you want to but most of us do the brains make relapse practically inevitable even with a physical withdrawal and early sobriety subsided wouldnt this be better with a drink . Doesnt make their brain less capable of experiencing pleasure without a steady supply it also creates longlasting pathways between neurons that they associate a mental state like depression or loneliness or excitement were guilt within overwhelming urge to drink the urge got stronger and stronger making it more likely i would relapse again. With residential treatment failure in this case meaning they dont stay sober after they leave but that rate is important and should be armed with they spend tens of thousands of dollars for 20 days. Of those that stick it out half will relapse within the first year 90 percent of people who go to treatment will start drinking again although many will eventually quit the Treatment Centers on relapse prevention but nothing what to do when it occurs they teach you to halt hungry angry lonely or tired and they teach you to practice diet rest acceptance meditation and schedule and the tools of rational therapy which is cognitive behavior behavioral therapy imagine how hard it is for us being an alcoholic with early sobriety i carried a card in my wallet to keep them straight. Early sobriety your brain is putting itself back together through the withdrawal syndrome called pause that could last for more than two years. My first two weeks and i can barely remember to brush my teeth twice a day i never knew how long it would take me to get through the phase. Thank you the nature of this book the quality of clarity and immediacy and the way that erica weaves reporting and research and with her own personal story is astonishing. She makes it seem easy and it is not. Thank you. I wanted to start by asking since the book is not out yet can you give the audience a macro overview of your story and what that looked like and the timeframe . I started drinking pretty young like a lot of people who become heavy drinkers later in life. But i didnt drink much in college. I was a good kid. I didnt drink in early adulthood. Really its a period of ten or so years from my early thirties through my late thirties. I was here in seattle and you described the places i have worked of course i didnt mention this in that excerpt because it was the first time i went but i was fired from my job and then got sober shortly after that and that was five and a half years ago. This is a decade of time. That is helpful to have that out there. And what is astonishing about the book and we talked about this before it is the ugly junk story. Warts and all. There are some tough stories in here and i feel that in contrast that we see from women that im high functioning and i keep it together but i am a drunk. Theres only a couple of exceptions to the rule. So why were those told her published . There is still such a taboo to admit you are a messy or ugly drunk or a problematic person. And then with a dirt bag drunk there are some early discussions of the book cover being a glass of wine. My reaction was i never drink from the glass. I drink from the bottle. And as a woman and we can think of all kinds of examples. Or men drinking out of a paper bag and all of the stereotypes that we would add to late like somebody i worshiped when i was a kid. That is also a messy drinker and a drug user. Women are supposed to be tidy and careful and my problem is not small. One thing that happens in the dialogue right now is the idea we need to push against the stereotype of the brown paper bag because they can look like the bottle of wine and its important to tell those stories its not every woman story. And you push against that. And this is where addiction can end up. And where it can end up and also for when an. And uppermiddleclass white aesthetics but this isnt a book about drinking for say when he wrote a wonderful book about being an absolute mess not in a hot and fun way. I would read her book to say she is so cool. And then i relate to this and i havent related to many addiction memoirs. And arc after arc after arc in the story. This is just an aside. And those that were drinking men or women and and then if you stay with it with every step. And not only stay with it. And moment after moment and after moment and we will talk about the content of the book but i want to acknowledge the structure and the writing. It is exhaustive and exhausting sometimes in a good way. We cannot escape with you. It is in the story. And how you structure the book and the length. Its funny that you say that because the original manuscript it was now under 100,000 what i turned in was 135,000. I cut so much. I had an amazing editor who could get at to the heart when i was being repetitive or two relentless and let the reader take a breath. And those that i would consider to be a traditional narrative of rockbottom it starts with one of those then comes back later. There are many in between and it happens over and over. That is what it was like. It was like wakeup call but it was is important to tell the story. You dont just hits a rockbottom there is no cause and effect any alcoholic and stay sober. Tell the story afterthefact to say i quit so the worst thing that happened before was my rockbottom. Thats fine but that is like the ex post factor of the justification or to explain to yourself how you were able to get sober. That is helpful. But first and went to acknowledge on the writing part of it what you said about repetition. In writing life stories in memoirs. So when we make bad decisions it doesnt matter if you make one but starting at 14 and going to 44. That is what is interesting because how do you represent that honestly cannot make it inert for the reader which i feel you achieved. Thank you. Since you brought up rockbottom i want to talk about this which is at the heart of the book content wise. With those certain perceived narratives and drinking stories how the rehabilitation industry works and what it means to relapse. But youre dealing with the idea that rockbottom needs to be interrogated. Can you talked about that . When you think of yourself as having hit rockbottom are leaving one learning a lesson from that it makes it impossible to relapse. And then to look at that experience what you told yourself what the alcoholic or the drug addict. If i was fired from my job i would probably think, i dont have a husband this is a hypothetical that all of these milestones you think of ourselves if all that happened and then i get sober and relapse what is my problem . It must be a me problem that im failing to fit into the story. It doesnt fit. So because it is so incredibly common. But it also sets us up for failure. Because we dont think we need and i thought when i left that at rehab the first time i know they wont get it but i will. [laughter] and i could not be further from the truth. So many questions. I was just opening the book during the technical issues and it is opening to the page which is germane to what you just said. Talking about your friend josh he knew something about me i still wasnt willing to acknowledge about myself turning anything into the intellectual exercise, even my own wife. Did that keep you stuck in your loop . One of the characteristics , i dont want to talk about myself but that this is a universal truth for people that relapse a lot they over intellectualize everything. I thought i could talk myself through it and if i fully and thoroughly understand every aspect, i can do the things that are required or according to me are not required. And it will work. It ended up working with a combination of everything i have done up to this point. The last thing i tried was a a. Literally its a system anybody can do. You let yourself then and decide not to reject things. I just decided to stop rejecting things and making intellectual arguments why i didnt need to do things. And there is a certain kind of alcoholic whose very special and the structured approach that brings you to your own ordinariness. And one of the things when i was is in treatment i got my entire medical file for writing the book and one of the things kept coming up over and over was intellectualize. Intellectualize. Its almost like they could just check a box. Unfortunately i love and want to do it to everything but it doesnt workforce a variety of never seen anybody get sober by talking themselves out of drinking. [laughter] so is a a part of your life now . To a lesser extent than it was at first. It was like a lifeboat for me. So as i got a little more sobriety under my belt and didnt need that daytoday even if im not going to meetings there is so much i integrated into my life to pause and be grateful sorry if my parents are watching and i really integrated into my life that is organic and i have just a completely different attitude and outlook on life even when i was first getting sober. There is 150 people listening to this right here. Thinking some of them might want to drink someone a basic human level is or something you can say and early sobriety . I held onto any word i can get. Thats one of the things i clung to. But this is sent universal but and then for me they got better very fast but i dont thank you can guarantee your life will be better. It just gets different. And then to say i will make it to this point and i will not drink until this point then we will see what happens. I think what you will find is in addition to all the Health Benefits of not drinking especially a heavy drinker like i was, your brain will come back and that is such a gift. I cannot even remember what pause is but it is totally true it took my brain a good year to mandate and recuperate to feel like i am back at baseline and if you dont stick with it you are robbi