We thank you all for jeanine in and what we can only describe as Interesting Times we are grateful for the opportunity to invite virtual audiences together in dialogue even though we are not exactly together in space. I would like to think erica and claire for help of keeping these ideas alive here at town hall. Tonight our program run about 40 minutes but we say at this point followed by audience q a and you can review the event on facebook, comcast or youtube. Keep insisting so we can get to as many as possible. If you news need close cap using enable real time captions on youtube with the button in the righthand corner. Upcoming staff includes on tuesday nicole haner jones discussing race in journalism, congresswoman offering of blueprint to Political Action for the next generation of women and people of color and a special live stream recording of our first podcast residency life on the margins this week featuring [inaudible]. Also make sure to visit townhalls Media Library for hundreds of events from both the recent and pre covid path which is frankly, also pretty recent. This is made possible by our sponsors [inaudible] as most of you know townhall is a Member SupportOrganization First and foremost and want to thank all our members. On that note, quickly, townhall has been hit hard by the economic of the pandemic and thanks to that to maximize access we hope youll consider making a donation by clicking on the button at the bottom of comcast are using the urls of the other platforms or becoming a member. One final point on the economy, lets be honest, if we were all gathered together many of you would visit the book signing table so we hope you will purchase her book or preorder that copy through our terrific partners at the la book company. Local author and local bookshop big data launch and keeping it local and maybe some of the things we loved about this pre epidemic might get to the other side. Erica barnett is in their awardwinning reporter beginning her career at the Texas Observer cofounded by molly eisen and wrote [inaudible] as a reporter and news editor for Seattle Weekly and the stranger. Shes written for a variety of local altercations including the huffington post, seattle magazine and was a cofounding editor of the beloved and spicy political [inaudible] and sorry for the air quotes. Virtually every other minute config of and shes regular guest on ko w the weekend interview. Shes a seattle native and two critically acclaimed memoirs and a Nonfiction Book investigating how relationships to good art from [inaudible] people. She is an educator [inaudible] erica barnetts first book is called quitter and its a subject of tonight talk. Please join me in welcoming erica barnett. Hello. Hello. Im so excited to be here with you. Me, too. I will jump in and say congratulations the book is incredibly impressive achievement and it reads like a house on fire and as a reader and a longtime fan of your work in a sober person i am so glad this book exists. Im honored to be here as part of your launch. Hello, this is josh from townhall and we are running into some tech issues right now. We will try to get the show back on track as soon as we can. Give us one second. Claire, are you still there . I just re arrived. Erica . I think im here. Great. Already, go ahead. Erica, i will kick it over to you for a reading. And q, claire. Its such an honor that you agreed to do this and that you will be my interviewer tonight britt im such a big fan of yours as well. This is a reading from my first book, quitter, and more of drinking, relapse and recovery. Let me tell you what is like to be sober, really sober for the first time in years. It feels like seeing color for the first time that feels like youve been looking at the world through someone elses glasses and suddenly you can make out every individual light up grass. It feels like you have a secret superpower that no one can see in the clarity of mines allows you to Reach Insights out of the most moments and your body feel stronger that it has ever been and food taste better and desire returns. At the same time everything has an intensity that scares you a little. When you have a feeling, oh my god, how will i ever stay and pack my debt you just have to sit with it, figured out, wait for 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 and who do i need to apologize to first and how will i ever make time for nine hours outpatient treatment every week and do i really have to go to an aa meeting every so they . Why does my boss look at me like that . Does he think ive been drinking . Its been over a month since i have been a sober and ready to get back to work. My stay at rest 12, like a wakeup call, an important life that been hurtling forward with nose steering and faulty brakes. When iran to that gauntlet of upraised arms i felt the way im in bornagain cushions feel when they emerge from the baptismal waters, not just that my life was new but that it was finally mine. Almost everyone had high hopes. Mom would been so worried when she showed up at 12 weeks into my stay at home after words and proud of you, i know you can do this. My coworkers melissa and emily both also in covering and if she waited into me in their secret lunchtime ritual of driving across town to attend a new meeting once a week. It felt almost as good as been invited to a secret after party. Friends asked me out for seltzer waters and coffee and sent cards telling me i was brave. We talk about sobriety or even recovery the words are often shorthand for not drinking or not using drugs. The really overwhelming part of being sober isnt say no to drink or learning to avoid the proverbial people, places and situations that induce temptation but its figuring out how to live an unfiltered life and that is hard enough when things are going pre much okay but how many times have you said i need a drink when what you really mean is this date was moderately annoying and can be damn near possible when there is wreckage stretching out over the horizon in every direction. To recap, over the past few years of drinking i had broken my moms heart, riven away my best friends, alienated all my other friends with my erratic behavior and constant sob stories and nearly lost my job and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt through emergency routes and detoxes. I was ashamed to show my face at work, overwhelmed by all the moments in a mens i thought i needed to make right away. I was scared to death that josh would continue to doubt my commitment to sobriety or that he would be watching over my shoulder every minute ready to pounce on any sign i was slacking off. I had wasted so much time and had to fix everything right away but i had absolutely no idea how to start. So, i froze. I withdrew to my comfort zone and worked and went to the gym, lifted weights and work to the phone and before long i was too exhausted to go to outpatient therapy three nights a week. Too exhausted to make it to aa every day too exhausted to do anything besides go from work, to gym, to home and to fed. Aa meetings which i attended sporadically for the past seven years bummed me out and everyone was so relentlessly all the time and i found the three hour outpatient sessions i agreed to do part of my post rehab depressing with watching these etch videos on derby couches and complaining about how sobriety sucks. Not more than a month went by before i fell back into drinking. Not jumped, fell. The way you fall into fed with the exlover because you dont have anything going better on. I cannot pinpoint when i said screw it, its too hard but its more like an in support imperceptible slide into drinking from selfpity to indifference to bottoms up. I was a non drinkers said i was a drinker again and simple as that. I passed the liquor aisle in the Grocery Store, drop back and dropped smirnoff in my casket casually like a vegetarian dropping a tray of beef on two of granola bars. I wish i had a better story, one that made sense and maybe i lost my job or had been evicted but my relapse would have been justified but some alcoholics refer to events like this as was ovations and if my mom dies then i will drink if my husband leaves me or if i get a terminal illness but i dont have a good reason or any reason at all. Normal people look at alcoholics who relapse the way i didnt wonder what made you take that first drink and for me the answer was always nothing in particular. One minute youre a sober person in recovery in the next youre telling yourself everybody else does it so i can die. I learned so much and i will manage at this time. Maybe you dont even think about it at all but selective amnesia of the chronic relapse is a force of nature and rather how many bad things happen or how many times we say never again and mean it we forget all of it instantly happened to look up as we walked past the liquor store. The relapse is never a conscious decision but more an act of not deciding and it is true as many addiction researchers have argued that people who suffer from addiction [inaudible] and have trouble developing order cognitive function like impulse control and the ability to way consequences. I have the same sense of invulnerability and not that i didnt remember what happened the last time i drink or hear the warning i learned to repeat in rehab that before you take the first drink, play the tape forward. I did but its just theres a lot of voice in my head saying you know how to handle it and it will be different this time and rehab equips you with mantras like what it can force you to do is hear them. Its astonishing how quickly the compulsion return. My head the voice of someone in a meeting and alcoholism is coming, baffling and impatient. In the after buying that first celebratory bottle and look at me, i beat this thing i woke up with my hands shaking in a race for the bathroom to retch into the toilet bowl print right away a magical thinking set in. On the way to work i grabbed another bottle just to get rid of the tremors, i thought. By three in the afternoon i was peering over the edge of the same familiar pits. In meetings oldtimer state you dont have to drink even if you want to but the fact is most of us to drink again and our brains think relapse practically inevitable and even after physical withdrawal and the thinking of early sobrietys slighted my brain would not stop whispering, isnt this better with a drink . Dependents doesnt make a brainless capable of expressing pleasure or even maintaining equilibrium without a steady supply but it also creates longlasting pathways between neurons that cause the brain is strongly to associate certain mental states, depression, loneliness, excitement and guilt or experiences with an overwhelming urge to drink. Every time i relapse i went through withdrawal and that desire got stronger and stronger more key likely that i would relapse again. Dont talk about the high failure rate of residential treatments failure in this case many people dont stay sober after they leave but that rate is important and it is something people should be armed with before they decide to spend tens of thousands of dollars on what may be little more than a 28 date tryouts. Here are the numbers. Before and six alcoholics who enter residential treatments to get out until the end and about those, half will relapse within the first year of leaving treatment. Over four years 90 of people who go to treatment will start drinking again and although many of them will eventually quit and yet Treatment Centers focus on all entirely on relapse prevention will teach her patients almost nothing about what to do about relapse when it occurs. It teaches you to halt when you file drinking and hungry, angry, lonely or tired and for conditions that can proceed relapse. They teach you to practice dreams which practice for diet, exercise, acceptance, meditation and schedule. They teach you the tool of rational theater therapy. Having trouble keeping track of all these acronyms imagine how hard it is for alcoholic and early sobriety. I created a card in my wallet and carried a card in my wallet for months to keep them straight. In early severity your brain is still putting itself back together and during a process called postacute withdrawal syndrome better known as its own acronym, pause. Can last for more than two years my first few weeks of sobriety when i could barely remember to brush my teeth twice a day i picture brain as a soft sponge, filled with holes. I never found out how long it would take me to get this through this phase because before i could get there i went back through the revolving door. Thank you and that should give people some idea of the nature of this book. Erica has weaved reporting and research in with her own personal story and it is quite astonishing. She makes it seems easy and its not. So, thank you. I wanted to start by just asking if you could give the people in the audience, since the book is not out yet and will be out jult preorder it but since the book is not out yet i was wondering if you could give the audience just an overview or macro sort of a funny word but idea of your dragging story just what that looks like, what the timeframe was. Sure. I started drinking pretty young and i think a lot of people who have become heavy drinkers later in life do. I didnt really drink much when i was in college. I was a good kid quote unquote. I didnt drink and early adulthood. The time i talk about in the book really is a time of ten or 30 years from basically my early 30s to my late 30s so i was here in seattle and working and you know you sort of describes where the places i worked so it was sort of when i worked at [inaudible] and then of course i didnt mention this in a particular excerpt but it was about the first time i went to rehab but i got fired from a job and then got sober shortly after that so that was about five and half years ago. Were talking about a decade of time. Got it. Okay, thats helpful to have that out there about what happened. I think one of the things that is astonishing about this book and we talked about this a little bit before is a show called the ugly drunk story. Its very warts and all and the warts are wordy. There are some tough stories in here and i feel like that is really an contrast with most recovery stories we see from women. Womens memoirs of alcoholism tend to storefront the idea of im high functioning and keeping it together but im a drunk and i can only think of a couple exceptions to this rule, a notable one being karen [inaudible] if you have read her book. I guess my questions are to start with, why do you think that is and why do you think those are the stories that get told in or published . Spirit could i jump on that one and then we go to i think there is there is such a taboo still about admitting that you are a messy drunk or an ugly drunk or a problematic person or just like a piece of crap and i thought of myself, even when i was still drinking, maybe especially then as a dirt bag drunk because there is some early discussion of the book cover being a glass of wine and my reaction to that was i never drink from a glass. I drink from the bottle. Thats just the kind of drinker i am. As a woman i think it is very uncomfortable for people to think about women being that w way, although we can think of all kind of examples of men being that way and the guy on the bus drinking out of the paper bag over all the stereotypes and even like the sort of ones we agile late like [inaudible] was someone i worshiped when i was a kid and that was also a messy drinker and drug user but i just think women are supposed to be tidy we are supposed to be careful and i think we are supposed to keep our problems secret and small and in my problem was not small and it certainly by the end was not secret either. I think the one thing happening that we can talk about later but in the dialogue around women and dragging right now is this idea and im just going off what you just said, this idea that we need to push against that stereotype of the wino with the ground paper bag because alcoholism can look a lot of different ways to look like the bottle of the wine you drained after putting your kids to fed and its important to tell those stories but that is not every womans story and the fact that that is getting presented as the face of female alcoholism, your story, your book pushes against that and says that you know, this is where addiction can end up in it is scary and raw and real. Do you think that is fair . I think it is not just where this can end up but that this is where it can end up for women to and i think there is, you know, a very upper middle class white aesthetic to the new acceptance of a certain kind of woman drinker and this is not a book about drinking per se but kat parnells book when you mentioned karen, she wrote a wonderful book about being an absolute mess and not in like a hot fun way. I would read her book and think oh my god, i did think she was so cool because she is so much cooler than me but i also was just like while, i relate to this and i havent related to many addiction memoirs because they do tell a story that takes an arc and then everything is okay and my story is like arc after arc after arc. I think this is just an aside popping into my head but especially when i think of goods or wellknown books about drinking and women but this includes some of the people like [inaudible] or carolyn and one thing that is unusual about your book is that you stay with it at every step so what often happens with you are calling it relentle relentless. Yes, lets jump ahead to that royal question. [laughter] not only do you stay with it but you stay with it in theme. You dont start to generalize about what is happening. You take us through moment after moment after moment which is from a rating point of view pretty astonishing and we can talk more about the content of the book but want to acknowledge the structure and writing of the book. Its complete and exhaustive and at times it is exhausting and i mean that in a good way. We feel your weariness and inability to escape. You hold us in the story and its quite unusual. Could you talk about how you structure the book, especially the length of the book . It is quite big which is it is funny that you say that because the original manuscript i turned in, i dont know what we eventually got to but i believe its under 100,000 in the ministry pattern and was like 125, 12030 so we cut so much from the book and i think that was right i have this amazing editor who was able to get to the heart of one of his being repetitive and when i was being relentless and when i needed to let the reader take a breath. I wanted to be, you know, very thorough about telling the various points when i have what you would consider to be in a traditional narrative a rockbottom in the book starts with one of those and then comes back to it later but there are many in between and it happens over and over again because that is what it was like. It is just like there is no such thing as a wakeup call. Could be there is to som