for keeping ideas aloft at townhall tonight's 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 real-time 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 townhall's media library for the recent and free covid past which is also pretty recent. anyway townhall's in support of our sponsors at supported by the real network, true ground most of your townhall is a member support organization first and foremost party went to thank all of our members tonight. or it quickly townhall is a nonprofit it's 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 erika's book orations a priori the copy of erika's 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 pre-epidemic 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. she's 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 debbie's friday news round up the weekend and review. she's 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 she's also an educator the university of washington specific south pacific university of universities across the country. erika barnett's first book is called quarter : a memory of drinking, relapse, and recovery. it is the subject of tonight's 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 i'm so glad this book exist. i am honored to be here's 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 i'm gonna kick it over to you for a reading. >> guest: great. thank you claire is such an honor the agreed to do this and they're going to be my interlocutor tonight. i'm 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 it's like to be sober. really sober for the first time in years. it feels like seeing color for the first time. it feels like you've been looking at the world through someone else's 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 i've been drinking? it's 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 wake-up 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 born-again 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" i'm 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 isn't saying no to drinks are going to avoid the proverbial people, places and situations that induced temptation. it's figure out how to live an unfiltered life. it's 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 mom's 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. i'd 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 didn't 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 ex-lover because you don't have anything better going on. i can't 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 self-pity 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 it's a close relative a dyed red lost my job or had been evicted my relapse would've 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 don't have a good reason or any reason at all. normal people look at alcoholics in real absolutely i didn't 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 can't i? i learned so much. i will manage at this time. maybe you don't 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 o'clock i was peering over the edge of the same pit. the old-timers say you don't 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 wouldn't this be better with a drink? doesn't make their brain less capable of experiencing pleasure without a steady supply it also creates long-lasting 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 don't 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 didn't drink much in college. i was a good kid. i didn't drink in early adulthood. really it's 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 didn't 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. there's 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 it's important to tell those stories it's 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 upper-middle-class white aesthetics but this isn't 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 haven't 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. >> it's 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 rock-bottom 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 wake-up call but it was is important to tell the story. you don't just hits a rock-bottom there is no cause and effect any alcoholic and stay sober. tell the story after-the-fact to say i quit so the worst thing that happened before was my rock-bottom. that's 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 doesn't 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 rock-bottom 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 you're dealing with the idea that rock-bottom needs to be interrogated. can you talked about that? >> when you think of yourself as having hit rock-bottom 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 don't 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 i'm failing to fit into the story. it doesn't fit. so because it is so incredibly common. but it also sets us up for failure. because we don't think we need and i thought when i left that at rehab the first time i know they won't 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 wasn't 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 don't 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 it's 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 didn't 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. it's almost like they could just check a box. unfortunately i love and want to do it to everything but it doesn't 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 didn't need that day-to-day even if i'm 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. >> that's one of the things i clung to. but this is sent universal but and then for me they got better very fast but i don't 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 don't stick with it you are robbing yourself of that experience. that is early sobriety. just the first 60 days is a little better every day i couldn't do it for a long time. but if you relapse counting days is pernicious and it makes people feel like a failure. you feel that compulsion to crawl back to your program and say i was at 37 now i am at zero. i think that is problematic and toxic way you did not lose that time. you had your experiences and you learn something from it. you absolutely learned from how many days you could make it and you just start over. it's a new day. >> thank you for speaking to that. can you talk about your thoughts about the rehab industry. i thank you call the alcoholism industry. >> the treatment industrial complex. i went to treatment twice and detox a bunch of times and therapist. but we have specifically that's a people think of with treatment i went to the 28 day treatment twice. it's good i went both times but from the perspective of health insurance my bill was less than $10000 which was a lot but ultimately it wasn't the end of the world. i paid it off but what they teach you just going into treatment in every single aspect is you don't know how to manage her own life. they take away your phone, and you can't communicate with the outside world or have a computer or outside reading materials. they make you do chores because you don't know how to be responsible for anything. i think that's fair to tell people that and especially women because no matter how screwed up we are we tend to feel responsible for other people and a tremendous weight of guilt and shame when we cannot be there for other people. i don't have kids so i can't imagine that burden of what that feels like but i definitely felt like i went into rehab both times with an amazing way to shame just to compound that like i didn't know how to do anythin anything. if you go to rehab more than twice you just give them money. in one case it definitely saved my life because i could detox. alcohol withdrawal can be deadl deadly. detox is incredibly important. that was important to me but i don't know taking you out for the world for 28 days then to drop you back is good i didn't learn any of that that wasn't a way to deal with a deadly brain disease. >> so talk about that guilt and shame and putting out the ugly drunk book and that you don't feel shame that you do feel guilt about your story. can you talk about putting that behind you? >> yes. i want to distinguish between guilt and shame. guilt is something you feel because of other people or you feel an obligation to make things right like a healthy emotion and it causes us to behave better but shame is something you do to yourself. it's all in your head. i had gotten beyond a lot of the shame so one of the questions i heard a lot was it hard to talk about that? it was and it wasn't it wasn't as hard as you think. i already talked about it so much with my sponsor and others in my parents and i apologized. i started the process to assuage the guilt so i didn't feel shame and it's funny because some of it was fairly public and well-known maybe not to the extent i thought it was. i thought i would be buried in shame the rest of my life and it was terrible when things became public about my behavior. now i feel unafraid because first of all i have a disease. and addiction is a type of disease. i have made my a piece with the people i know that to to the extent. it's an ongoing process here whole life because you always screw up and say i'm sorry. but there's no room i can walk into a not talk about what i have done and to say that was me. >> it seems very free. >> is the biggest gift sobriety. it three or four years to really start doing that internal work and you feel great because the shame is the worst emotion. i could be angry and get over it but it gets into your dreams and your relationships and it is so toxic. and then to say this happened. well you can get over it. [laughter] >> i got past all this and didn't have to go to antarctica or leave seattle. some people talk about my experience with addiction even now. i think it's very sad and i don't take it personal anymore but i did at first. >> we will open to questions in a moment. with people weaponize seeing your struggles with addiction against you in this moment you did a lot of work that is politically adjacent. it is too bad it's more about them than you. and you have done such incredible work this past month. you're always doing great reporting and what changed in your work once you stop drinkin drinking? >> everything. and just to sit and think about what i want to do next. this is that the exact question you asked but another great gift of having a really bad addiction experience but if you can get through it and stay sober it's a way that is totally unexpected for me. up until the time i was 37 when i got fired and when i lost the job it felt like i lost everything. i don't know who i am anymore. i have no identity. then when i got past that i could do anything i wanted that was an incredibly freeing feeling. so now i started my blog and it is self-sustaining which i do full time. i was covering that i cover addiction and homelessness a lot and people that are vulnerable in the reasons that may not be immediate. but when you talk about people have mental health struggles that is prevalent i felt it could have been me that for a lot of privilege and luck an insane amount of luck runs through my story just like driving down a freeway for 30 minutes in houston and a complete blackout who knows how fast waking up in the parking lot hit it mine - - headed to the airport why am i alive? i don't know. if i look at somebody who is living in a tent addicted to alcohol thinking if i didn't have privileges that could be me. so i feel and empathy for homeless people i feel in a different way because i truly felt i could've been there in that tent. >> sobriety has change my empathy level for sure not about how great i am but it just happens to me. >> how do you feel your writing was affected? >> and writing a column it was a greatest thing in the world and then just thinking that there was that very the base level it's not as good writing or great journalism you just can't write as well. i think the idea of writing a book just would have been impossible. we can't really write more than 500 words because i don't have that attention span. i'm not literary. i just don't have the focus. they are so many stories that are partly true but also the capability inside me somewhere. you did come in industry soaked in alcohol. >> that's a really interesting question and so if you are someone who's barely hanging on. and then make it makes sense. you don't think of more ambitious things necessarily. and another gender break. and perhaps somebody thinks of themselves differently. that i'm not good at this. that people are thinking to fooled what i was doing. that's what i believe. [laughter] >> but it is something else. >> what are some tools you would use to get over the regret from the time you lost when you were drinking? >>. >> i file last the time to put a positive spin what that was like that i wouldn't be where i am now had it not gone that way. i had no way to know what it would be like if i didn't lose those ten years. i find regret like shame is a toxic emotion. but it's harder to expunge so you say i could've done this in this. that comports with my own age even though i never wanted to have kids but i could've had kids or people didn't get that time with them. and then is there anything that i can do now that's helpful to you that you are who you are because of what you have been through. and then to thomas of stories that were true. i thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen but it was the best. it was crazy to hear coming out of my mouth now. >> that the two sticky emotions that your answer has to the men's that takes the emphasis off of the south a lot of recovery work. >> in figuring out what you can do for other people. the great way to recover from all kinds of things, not just addiction. >> that's for something for all of us to think about. >> can you take when my question? >> another great question what are your thoughts about the alcohol industries influence and the lack of regulatory limits? >> that is a great question. the reason we don't talk about relapse and alcohol addiction is it is pernicious with every aspect of life. just in the grocery store they scream in your face. policy wise i would like to see more regulation on alcohol advertisements or taxes on alcohol it reduces the amount they drink. i don't know if we will ever get to that point. we have drugs we may completely illegal like carol when which i don't think it should be illegal and those that are extralegal like you are supposed to be consuming them and if you don't there is something wrong with you like alcohol. it used to be cigarettes as well. we are not headed in that direction during quarantine mike have happy hour with your friends. it's 4:00 o'clock somewhere. and i picked up on this mysel myself, tremendous pressure you can have fun while stuck inside. >> i wanted to bring that up. you talked about reservations people having certain reasons they can relapse and in this moment in covid constantly coming up with justified relapse people talking how they need to be drinking. talk about how we use our situations to justify. >> i did when i was drinking even publicly. most of mine was shameful and private. but there is a sense when i was reading an advice column the other day the lead question was somebody is having a dry wedding and the answer was bring a flask. it is just everywhere. i wish i could make it stop and that people make their own choices because we think it's the only way to get through things and cope instead of i don't know running or another substance. it is just constantly pushed on us. >> it connects back to the question that this idea you are free the drinking that it's your choice but there is a trillion dollar industry to make sure you do that and that you are subject to that capitalistic court. >> we don't have her choices in a capitalistic system. you thank you have free will like this and fill of capitalism. more than your evening glass of wine. and then one more question. did you use other drugs? how long have you been writing? >>. >> this is josh i can still hear you go ahead we can hear both of you but erica will respond. >> i started drinking when i was 13 and i did a lot of other drugs in high school like weed and acid pretty minor stuff. with the scale of things but i didn't drink heavily and tell my thirties. i really didn't do a lot of other drugs either. drinking was my main thing once i started and i have been sober five and half years. my sobriety date february 4, february 4, 2015. i basically been writing forever started writing professionally when i was about 19 in college with an internship back in the day he didn't get those paid and i have been doing it ever since. and then i then in weeklies ever since and then in 2009 went out completely to the online platforms that's been more than 20 years. >> i will step aside and let you to close this out. >> erica any final words? >> thank you so much for hosting this. i'm glad we can get past our technical difficulties. thank you everybody tuning in. >> again, thank you everybody our apologies for starting late. thank you for bearing with us and thank you for being here. if you enjoyed this event you can find this on the website town hall seattle.org we hope you will consider making a donation. interesting on - - interest in ordering her book quitter use the link and finally thank you again for being here. we hope you have a great evening.

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