#30 11 reader questions asked and answered

Beauty culture, NA beer, sober sex, comparison, dating, powerlessness, more.

Hello from New York where unlike Los Angeles (93 degrees when I left) it is absolutely fall and I am absolutely wearing much L.L. Bean. For whatever reason or perhaps because I/we/earth had a summer that felt like what actual hell probably feels like, for the first time in my adult life I’m excited for fall and not overwhelmed by the pending doom that is my S.A.D. Normally around this time of year the angle of the sun changes (barely, imperceptibly), and there I am just totally terrified of winter and consumed by a depression brought on by the anticipation of depression and life loses most of its meaning. This year: the angle of the sun changed, the plants began to brown, and instead of convincing myself that I was about to be in very much pain, I opted for a fall colored manicure (teddy-bear brown, teal accents). I found myself excitedly anticipating: sweater weather, hot cocoa, long runs in below freezing weather, short days, long nights. Winter. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it’s just this year. Maybe it’s being back in California. Or maybe it’s the summer that makes me depressed now. Maybe it’s the endless sunshine that is the worst. Maybe the dark cold is finally a thing get excited for.

This week I’m answering a bunch of questions from you (thank you for submitting them!). This is something I do regularly but inconsistently (answer questions) and here I’m trying out a new format. Longer form questions (like this one about moderating alcohol, this one about whether I miss drinking, or this one about how do you tell your family about your recovery and get them on board with it) will still be answered as stand-alone long form essays; here, today, I’m answering as many short form questions as I can with short* answers (*short for me). If you want to submit your own, you can do that here. Note, Q&A/AMA essays (ones where I answer questions) are partially pay-walled as a paid subscriber feature. They take a long time to do. Ten Things Right Now (links) will come as a separate email on Monday (because this one is very long, and because I have about 20 links I want to share this week.)

Remember as you’re reading this, I’m answering these questions with my narrow, subjective perspective. The reader is always the authority. These are my humble attempts to engage on subject matter I find interesting or relevant.

Okay! Let’s do it.

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1. Why recovery? Many of us have been able to stay sober without it being our "job". I read QLAW, but would love to know if you ever feel pigeon holed. I imagine you do. Is that helpful or hurtful?

Good question. When I left Tempest, my whole identity was wrapped up in being either the Sobriety Lady or the Quit Like a Woman Woman or the Alcohol is Awful Girl and I did believe for a while that I had no value outside that context and that my life was over. That was real. But honestly? I’d already moved beyond the subject matter years before. My platform until 2015 was solely about alcohol and sobriety and recovery and was very pink cloud, but as I wrote about in chapter 16 of Quit Like a Woman, I began to see addiction not as a symptom of the system, but a feature of it; a lens you could peer through to make sense of the world, of these times. When that happened, I started to expand my scope to include social justice issues, to talk about the intersection of sexism and racism and all the isms, and while I received a lot of pushback (“keep it about sobriety”), my answer then was the same as my answer now: When we are talking about almost anything in our current cultural context, we are talking about addiction/recovery, and when we are talking about addiction/recovery, we are talking about anything in our current cultural context. They are, to me, wholly inseparable.

For me, studying drugs, addiction, sobriety, and recovery is how I study the world. It’s what I love, it’s what makes sense to me, and while I absolutely imagine myself writing a novel or exploring different areas of interest that might “not have anything to do with recovery”, recovery is a keystone, the piece that holds the arc of my sense-making together. I do not feel pigeon-holed, but I get why you’d imagine I do. I feel lucky, and I feel like all the work I’ve done gives me more options, not fewer.

2. You use the terms sobriety and recovery interchangeably. Why?

I play loose with the terms but I don’t believe they are interchangeable. Abstinence is the complete removal of a substance; you can be abstinent but not “sober” and you can be abstinent but not “in recovery”. Sober can mean abstinence and often that is what people mean when they say it, but I see sobriety less about what chemicals you ingest or behaviors you take part in (because I have yet to meet a person who is 100% “sober”), and more about how accountable we are to ourselves, how in integrity we are, what we do when we meet our edge, etc. Recovery, to me, is neither about abstinence or sobriety (though they are tied together and relative and sometimes the antecedents to or products of recovery), but rather, I think, about a return to wholeness, a reclaiming, a healing, a way of being. Sobriety is a loaded word, sometimes a gate-keeping word, a confusing word. While I identify as sober, I am less inclined these days to say I’m sober, and more inclined to focus on the fact that I am a person in recovery. In my next book, I’m exploring these words and ideas and this paragraph is probably riddled with errors in my thinking but this is my quick answer to why I use one word here and another there to sometimes describe the same thing. I would also check out my about page to read my manifesto for this newsletter, and why I call it Recovering (as opposed to something like THE SOBRIETY TIMES). It’s also really important for me to make clear that a lot of readers of this newsletter do not identify as in recovery, sober, or abstinent, but I see the themes I address here as belonging to everyone.

3. Do you have information for Males? Your information is so informative but directed at females. I am afraid that my male friend would be turned off and not relate.

[Another similar question submitted:] Your work has inspired me to quit alcohol. What sources would you recommend I share with male friends who are considering this journey? Especially, if I feel they would be uncomfortable with Quit Like a Woman?

I get this question all the time. All the things I have ever written or created can be used by males! We just don’t see it that way because we’ve been conditioned to believe things centered on the experience of cis-gendered men (or the dominant/default gender) are for everyone, and things created for/centered on non-dominant genders (women, non-binary, etc.) are “gendered” and meant only for that non-dominant gender. For instance, I am happy using either a Flamingo razor (made for women) or a Mach III (made for men). For me, it would be no big deal to use a a Mach III, or a Flamingo, I find them both effective and good in different ways. However, if my boyfriend had to use my Flamingo razor, it being pink and all and made for the ladies, that would be a Thing because according to maybe him, or to society, me using a Mach III is just using a razor, whereas his using my Flamingo means he’s using a girl’s razor. That’s what we are talking about here.

Years ago, some guy wrote about how the company I was building at the time (Tempest) was leaving men out in the cold (lols), and here’s a longer argument similar to the one I just gave, which will help you understand why when people ask me for a “man’s resource” or a “man’s book” I insist that my book is a man’s resource, a man’s book. That being said, I do believe that men—especially now, especially in America—have a different set of needs (for instance, addressing toxic masculinity) that are beyond my ability to address. That still doesn’t mean that my work isn’t for them.

holly

A post shared by Holly Whitaker | she/her/hers (@holly)

“I want to take a minute to explain the difference between CENTERING and EXCLUDING, and who Tempest is for.

The WORLD is centered on the experience of white, heterosexual, cis-gendered males. This isn’t hyperbole this is fact; almost every book I read refers to a he pronoun; medicines I take were formulated based on the male interaction with the drug; the constitution of the country I live in was created to protect the rights of white men; the Big Book of A.A. was written to reflect the stories of 100 men and how they got sober and was developed to break down male privilege. My default role is: a caregiver, a supporter, a mother, a wife, a servant, a subservient. I live in a world that was built for men and I am expected to understand that even though this is the case, I can still use it. I can still read the Bible even though there’s no first person women’s narrative and God is a He; I can spend most my life watching male dominated movies where women have no speaking lines and believe it was made for me; I can run a business in a world where there are more Fortune 500 CEOs named Mike than there are women and still believe bossing was made for me. The world tells me: things CENTERED on men and made for men are for everyone. The world tells me: even though A.A. literally reduced women to the wives of alcoholics AND STILL HAS THAT CONCEPT WRITTEN IN ITS MANIFESTO, everyone can use it.

But when we dare center it on she, or they; when we center it on anything but a man; it becomes GENDERED. It becomes inaccessible; exclusive. It becomes a WOMAN’S PRODUCT.

Here’s who Tempest is for: everyone. And here’s the kind of men that can use it: the ones who don’t see a different identity centered and see it as exclusion, unfairness and being left out.”

4. For the love of god how will I ever date again?

I’m assuming you are asking “How will I date without alcohol?” and I can only offer my own experience here. I bit the bullet and went on a date in early sobriety, and what I remember the most from it was that I did it—I went out on a date believing that I was allowed to go on dates, that I didn’t have to hide myself from the general dating public as some defective that couldn’t get happy hour-drunk with a stranger and call that intimacy. Then I didn’t date for a year. It’s been nine years since then, and I’ve been out with probably a hundred different people in that time (so either I’m the best person to be giving this advice or the worst, depends on how you see it), and I can tell you that there’s no right or wrong way—there is no how. There is experience, a refinement of your always evolving interests and tastes and preferences, an obscene amount of growth, much awkwardness, potentially good stories to tell your friends. There is aloneness and defeat and frustration and feelings of unworthiness that are sometimes portals to claimed worth. So much giving up and trying again and very much disappointment. There is every good and terrible feeling you can imagine! But there is no how.

5. Thoughts about beauty culture?

Things I know about beauty culture: Like diet culture and drinking culture, it is a system of extraction that forces us to use the source that extracts from us to fill us back up. (I.e., a culture that sets a standard and sells us the means to achieve the standard, where both things make us sick). Beauty culture is based on patriarchal white supremacy, sexism, ageism, ableism, materialism, all the hits. This is, basically, the extent of my knowledge.

For me personally, the last decade and especially the last five years have “aged me” and I am freaking the fuck out about it. I’m using a red-light mask, I’m using a guasha, I’m using the eye creams and the eye masks, I’m Botoxing, I’m popping vitamin C, I’m dyeing my roots, I’m keeping up my end of the bargain because I believe (for myself, specifically, and not for anyone else but me, as in I am the sole exception to this fucked up rule) that pretty and young are the cost of my admission (to everything we are supposed to want). I am not yet that lady who doesn’t give a fuck about my jowls; I am not the lady growing out her gray or the one getting ready for menopause like it’s a triathlon or any such thing we are now supposed to be doing in a culture of forced acceptance because it’s so sad to be the one holding on to what we all know is a toxic, losing game. I am telling you this because I want you, as you read me and read my opinions on subjects where I am very clear and very unbothered, to understand when it comes to aging, I am bothered. I am listening to smart people like Jessica DeFino, Virginia Sole-Smith, and Sarah Sapora. If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments.

6. I see people functioning and looking put together on the outside and then compare my life/myself and feel I’m failing terrible. Worse, I’m damaged and will never be okay…like the other people. I’m not sure what I’m asking. Is it about acceptance? Comparison? Perfection?

I don’t know what it’s about for you. I could guess and name many things that we are all subject to in this culture, at this time, but that would still be a guess of what it’s about for you. What I can tell you is that what you are feeling is normal, that more often I hear from people who see themselves exactly like you do, and that I too feel that way. Especially the “I’m damaged and will never be okay…like the other people” part. Here’s how I’ve worked with it and continue to work with it.

First, I don’t spend much time paying attention to people that are “thriving all the time” because that’s not real, and it’s a mind fuck. I unfollow social media accounts, unsubscribe from newsletters, I have yet to watch a show about the Kardashians, etc. If it doesn’t feel real or if it makes me feel terrible I’m outta there. I also lean towards normalizers—Lisa Olivera and Mar Grace are examples of two people who remind me what people’s insides look like. I read and listen to people who fill me up.

Second, I use the practice “just like me” which I got from Pema Chodron. This means when I see another human and I feel disconnected (either by judging them or being annoyed by them or thinking they have something I don’t) I repeat things that are specific to me, like “just like me this person feels like they will never get it together” or "just like me this person feels unlovable sometimes” or “just like me this person is misunderstood” or “just like me this person feels so alone”. This reminds me of a few things: first, that I’m not alone in my own hells, and second, that we are all so much more alike on the inside than we are different. “Just like me, this person is scared.” Try it. Try it on a stranger, try it on someone you love, try it on someone you think has it more together than you.

Third, I use a lot of positive self-talk. I’ve written about it in my book and countless other places, but one of the absolute keys of my sobriety was working with my thoughts; noticing what stories I told myself, catching those stories, and replacing them with sometimes ridiculous and overly optimistic affirmations. Somewhere during the late 2010s, this practice became less important, and really tanked over the last few years. I worked with a therapist recently and we listed out some common stories I have about myself: I am not lovable, I’m not desirable, I’m stunted in my growth, I have nothing left to give, I’m disgusting, I’m not worthy…real fun stuff that I had let calcify and write my script. She said “you’re your number one abuser”, and she was right. The interesting thing: I’d decided to work with this specific therapist to do some deep dive stuff on my romantic relationship patterns, and I thought we’d go way down in there and pull out all my dark stuff and examine it and find more parental issues and such and we’d finally discover why I do what I do. Instead, this therapist was like, “let’s just practice repeating nicer things to yourself and see how it goes.” I came up with a list of counter statements (I am easy to love, I am infinitely creative, my life is just getting started, I’ve grown so much and I continue to grow, I’m worthy, I’m loveable, I attract friendliness, I have attractive energy, I’m desirable, so forth) and that’s what I did and have done—I’ve sat every day with a list of nice things I say about myself and to myself and suddenly, it doesn’t even matter what other people are doing or how I compare or how perfect I am or any of that crap. I think I’m trying to make two points here. The first is, how we talk to ourselves matters. The second is, I went into that appointment thinking I needed to do even more god damned fucking work on myself; more processing, more somatic experiencing, more shadow work, more family systems, more codependency work, more more more, and it turned out I didn’t need a new system, a new therapist, a new method, a new book; I just needed to be a little nicer to myself. A small tweak. That is: I think sometimes when we ask a question like you are asking, we are asking “how do I fix myself I’m broken”, and I am saying, sometimes the fixing is not fixing. Sometimes the need to always be fixing, or the idea that something is broken, is what’s actually broken, and we’re just fine.

7. I watched you speak about sex without alcohol. I generally was never over the top drunk but enough to feel relaxed and not as self conscious. I have have been sick for 3 years with a lung disease and recently had two surgeries on my lungs. I used to be in great shape but sadly I did not think I was. Now I am in the worst shape as I gained weight from drinking so much and not working out. I have lost most more than half of the weight but I still have the worse body image of myself. You had mentioned sex is better AF. You shared you are confident with you body -as you stay in shape doing yoga. So my question - were you ever self conscious having sex when you stopped drinking? If yes, how did you overcome it? I am in a really bad place. I feel pretty fkd up with the whole thing. Note: my husband never ever makes me feel this way. It is all me! And not even for a minute do I think or want to drink to help the cause.

I don’t remember what I said before, so take all that with a grain of salt. I write from where I am, so I’m going to write this from where I am. The first time I had sober sex I was in my early thirties; I was in different shape, as you say I did yoga, and I am not sure I’ve ever said I was confident with my body but if I did, good for that version of me. I am sure back then I conflated youth and thinness and taught-ness with self-confidence. When I think about what you’re asking, I’m thinking less about my body and how it looked or looks and gaining confidence from that, and more about what sober sex has taught me, which is how to take up space and know myself, which I am still learning. I am still learning how to not prioritize someone else’s pleasure, I am still learning how to ask for what I want, I am still learning how to be that vulnerable, I am still learning how to let someone love me, I am still learning how to be naked and seen, I am still learning how to get out of my head and into my body, I am still learning how to not abandon myself. You asked if I was ever self-conscious and I think I am telling you, I still am.

But. This all makes it sound like sober sex is some special experience, separate from me, that shaped me, or that I conquered or am trying to conquer, which I perhaps thought of as at one point, but no longer do.

I’m in recovery, which to me means that as a baseline of my existence and necessary to my survival, I’ve had to transcend or break many social contracts. Recovery also means I’m committed to remaining with myself, to my growth and my healing. These things combined (the breaking of social contracts, the commitment to healing and remaining with myself) have given me the ability to experience things differently, including sex, but also including friendships, family dynamics, travel, personal finance, professional failure, etc. What I mean to say here is that there isn’t something out there separate from me—like sober sex—that might shape me; it means my choice to be in recovery shapes my experiences, makes them different than if I were not in recovery. So yes, sober sex is fucking better than the sex that came before, but that’s because everything is fucking better. And by better, I just mean lived. Lived, on the dot, in it, pressed up against it, with no escape from it.

I read your question and maybe you’re asking for how to feel a certain way, or how to find confidence, or reach for these things we think we are supposed to have, and I think I’m saying you have all those things right now. Imagining it’s supposed to be “like this” or you’re supposed to be transformed, or accepting of your body, or like some sex goddess, or whatever it is we all think we are supposed to be, is the missing of it as it’s actually happening. Sitting here what strikes me about all the times I’ve had sex since getting sober is that I was there—not how I looked (even though I’m sure I was fucked up about how I looked, even if I once said I wasn’t). I think what I’m saying is we get to have fun, we get to experience it, even when we feel all the terrible things, even when we think we should be at some different place with our circumstances. We get to have sex and hate or love our bodies, and it still gets to be good just because we are there, having that experience, living.

8. (1) Is there any alcoholic beverage you miss the taste of? (2) What do you think of NA [non-alcoholic] drinks?

(1) No. Not at all.

(2) Regarding the whole NA beverage movement: When I got sober, we had O’Douls and that was it. I had one (O’Doul) when I was about three months sober while on vacation and hated it because it went against the premise of what got me sober (divesting from alcohol culture; thinking it was ridiculous we give a beverage all this power and glory and that everything in my life was built around consuming it; etc.) and because even though it was fake beer, it made me feel buzzed (I think either from the fractional alcohol content, or placebo). Anyway, that was it for me save this one time when I split a fake beer with a boyfriend on Valentines Day or took a swig of hops water at my book launch, until a year or so ago when I had an Athletic Brewing fake beer, which was a whole new and weird experience. It tasted exactly like what I remembered IPAs tasting like, and consumed with my sober friends in the country sitting around a fire it was kind of like “oh right, this is nice.” Since then I’ve bought six- and twelve-packs of Athletic, Hops water, and a few times other fake IPAs, and I’ll have a fake beer at a restaurant once or twice a month.

I think this is really sketchy territory—I’m pretty sure if I’d been picking up a twelve pack of Athletic in early recovery I would have probably drunk alcohol again; I think I needed that decade away from mimicking alcohol culture, a decade away from believing I needed a drink in my hand to connect or socialize or enjoy a dinner or fully live into a summer night, a decade away from a taste even remotely close to the thing that almost fucking killed me. I needed that reset. Even now at ten years in (October 2012 was when I first attempted sobriety) it feels fraught, like it’s not a huge leap from a fake beer to a real one, even though I absolutely am clear I never want to drink again. In summary, I didn’t have the NA thing going on when I got sober, I just recently tried a few of its offerings, it felt innocuous at first and like a gift, and then I decided that overall NA drinks make me feel wobbly, uncomfortable, and a bit unnecessary. I think you’ll find people who feel like NA cocktails and NA beer saved their life and gave them the means to transition out of alcohol culture or even alcohol addiction (as part of other measures), and you’ll find people like me who feel like it can fuck with you and that it’s mostly not worth it.

9. Am I powerless to alcohol or do the men in my life, i.e. my father, make me feel powerless?

I need a bit more than this but my gut reaction is (1) no, and (2) maybe/yes/probably. Let’s take them separately. (1) Am I powerless to alcohol? In AA, the first step is to admit you are powerless over alcohol, and this is something I both agree and disagree with. Agree as in: I do believe when we try to make alcohol work when it historically hasn’t worked for us (or made us sick or made us want to not live life or ruined our entire fucking lives, etc.) that we are on the losing side of things. Trying to control a psychoactive drug that by its very nature reduces our ability to exert control is a losing battle, is the definition of insanity, is the story of addiction. Fully disagree with as in: I don’t think powerless is an effective word here, especially given that agency (“the feeling of being in charge of your life”—Bessel van der Kolk) is one of the cornerstones of an effective recovery. When we tell ourselves we are powerless, even if it’s powerless over alcohol, we’re in some very real ways reinforcing a harmful belief that we’re passive participants who lack control or influence or agency and often enough in the world of recovery where the norm is to stigmatize, shame and coerce, powerlessness is one of those concepts used against our most vulnerable. A better word is surrender, or any other word that isn’t loaded with the cultural baggage powerlessness is. (2) …Or do the men in my life, i.e. my father, make me feel powerless? I don’t know the answer because I’m not you. I have enough first-hand experience with men (especially as a former lady CEO who raised a lot of money from men and hired men as advisors and answered to men on her board of directors and had men reporting into her) that a man’s favorite trick can be to make you feel powerless because they themselves often feel so deeply inadequate (because, patriarchy), but that would be my own subjective experience, not yours. I find often enough I don’t ask questions I don’t have answers to (that is, you know the answer to this). I also find often enough in my own experience, the very situations that make me feel powerless are the ones that lead me to claim my truer and enduring sources of power.

10. Would you ever consider running another sobriety school in some form?

No? Maybe? I don’t know? Possibly. As of now the thought of running any kind of online course where I am accountable to people or supporting people in the way I was when I was running HSS feels like something a different version of me was able to do, but that this current version of me could not. Right now, I’ve cleared every single thing from my life that distracts from researching and writing, and I am just now finding my groove and my life within that context (as a writer). I am working on a few side-projects to provide asynchronous (“go at your own pace”) courses, materials, and workbooks to help people with sobriety (here is one that’s live and on sale for $11), but a sobriety school…probably not. The Luckiest Club is running a 13-week sobriety course over the holidays for a lowish price point (note this is not an affiliate link), so that could be great for some of you. (As far as Tempest, I’m not involved nor do I have any insight into what the program is or who is running it and cannot recommend.)

11. Do you ever go back and listen to the HOME podcasts? I listened to a lot, but never got all of the way through them. I recently have been going back and listening to all of the ones I hadn't, and it's interesting to me, knowing how much you and Laura have evolved and done what you were talking about back then. So just curious if you did that.

The last time I heard a HOME podcast was probably the month it ended in 2018. I almost never go back over my old work, be it old essays, my book, podcasts I’ve recorded as the host or interviews I have given, talks I’ve given, courses I’ve taught, etc. (Unless I’m re-releasing or editing/updating). Re: podcasts, the only time I listen back to myself is when I’m editing (like for Quitted or HOME) and the end-product depends on me listening. Otherwise, I trust the earlier version of me that made the art (the essay, the book, the podcast, the talk) did her best and I leave her alone and save her from my judgment. I’ve mentioned before in other places that I preternaturally lean forward, that I don’t spend much time looking back.

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