Recovering Roundup
Hi! As always, this is a lot of links (especially since this covers two weeks). You can skip down to the 5 things I loved this week at the bottom.
A reminder that Quitted, my new podcast with Emily McDowell, drops at midnight E.T. on Wednesdays. Tomorrow we’re chatting with Dr. Nathalie Douge, of the film The First Wave, about quitting being a doctor in the middle of a pandemic. It is the best one we’ve done, hands down.
On Friday I’ll be publishing Recovering’s first guest essay (or op-ed) by Kailey Brennan on why psychedelics are re-emerging right now. Our March book review comes out next week (book reviews for paid subscribers).
Onto the goods.
Free and paid subscribers of Recovering get the same exact content. Paid is for those who’d like to offer financial support, and be patrons of this newsletter and my work.
Link Party, Week of March 27, 2022
A big fucking deal: A new report reveals US alcohol-related deaths increased from ~79,000 in 2019 to ~99,000, or spiked by 25% (that’s a huge change); for the same period, among adults younger than 65, alcohol-related deaths outnumbered COVID-19 deaths
And the Swiss drank less!
Finally: the research you can point to when someone tells you “but studies have shown red wine is good for your heart”
In the psychedelic roundup, Rhode Island considers decrim; New York Magazine uncovers disturbing stuff about the MAPS MDMA study (more on that below); and researchers know a little bit more about how psychedelics affect the brain
This article on the problematic drinking culture at Tulane states that “neither Tulane as an institution nor its administration is to blame for the drinking culture on campus” and then I typed “beer sponsorship Tulane” into Google and found that no, they are
Are we more than our mental disorders?
“Say you’re a tobacco company without saying you’re a tobacco company”
An article asking where all the “Artist-Addicts” have gone and my hope is to some place that respects person-first language and therapy
How do you stop drinking if you don’t want to stop drinking
A skin graft can treat addiction; VR can treat addiction
This tweet I snagged from Roxane Gay’s roundup, The Audacity, which I consume each week like it’s a jar of Reese’s pickled baby corn (aggressively)
“I have been doing my best to set the bar as low as possible, that if all I do today is don’t drink and stay alive I have done an EXCELLENT job.”
This article doesn’t really answer its own question but it does have a lot of good definitions
For me it’s always going to be about Chicken in a Biskit
A completely unshocking revelation about caring for our Vets
More on the tricky waters of court-ordered treatment
A diet that definitely reminds me I wouldn’t have made it through the 70s
Talking to your kids about smoking grass
The DSM-V—the bible of mental health diagnostics—added Prolonged Grief Disorder to its cannon; if your grief goes on for too long, it’s now a mental illness because this book says it is (the same book that up until 1973 said being gay was a mental illness). Here’s a great threaded response to that (click through to read in its entirety).
A report that ranks the drunkest towns by Instagram posts
Wild, a book that changed my life, turns 10
Thanks Jessica Hoppe for unearthing yet another Maia Szalavitz article on harm reduction so we can keep this weekly theme going: “The work you’re doing before you get out of the chaos still counts.”
Two Black trans women were murdered last week; as I have mentioned before from time to time I’ll share what organizations I support and Black Trans Travel Fund is one
Five Things I Loved This Week
This entire podcast series on MDMA assisted therapy for PTSD. This is an investigative piece by New York Magazine that unearths some pretty terrible abuses that have come with the re-emergence of psychedelic assisted therapies, and specifically tracks the MAPS MDMA trials. I find all this so complex, both knowing many people personally who credit their sobriety, breakthroughs with treatment resistant depression, or reduction in suicidal ideation to these emerging treatments. That being said, I’ve tried them (in a limited capacity) and had a pretty terrible experience with a guide who was recommended by a reputable mental health professional. This is a really hard listen; if you’re a survivor of abuse or sexual assault I don’t know if I’d recommend it. What stood out to me is how much repression exists, how afraid we are to have conversations about the very real down-sides of psychedelics because of how sensitive and novel the legalization and decriminalization is; as if all the progress made could be undone by telling the truth about what goes wrong. I don’t think this series was important just to get an idea about MDMA-assisted therapy, but to get an idea about how anything at all requires our discretion. The psychedelic train has left the station just like the wellness train has left the station, and we owe it to ourselves to invite nuance.
Speaking of inviting nuance, this entire thread on throwing the baby out with the bathwater by one of the Conspirituality hosts (thank you Carl Fisher for forwarding)
This song on I listen to on my runs that makes me break out into spontaneous dance
I cannot stop thinking about this article about Bella Hadid’s nose job and beauty culture from The Unpublishable by Jesssica DeFino. “Beauty culture creates the illusion of lack, it hollows out a void within us, it generates a hunger. It teaches us that beauty is purely physical (it’s not). It teaches us that our physical selves do not meet the criteria for beauty. It stifles actual beauty to the point that we cannot think about anything else. It makes us wild with the need to inhale it, consume it, become it.”
This 17-minute segment by John Oliver on Harm Reduction that as of today has 2.2 million views; watch it, share it
Subscribe • Donate • Ask me a question
The Mantra Project, a 40-day email course to support quitting drinking, is available for purchase here
Hmmm…I remember you recommending a book (‘best’) you read on grief. So you recall the book, by chance?🙏🏼
The John Oliver piece on harm reduction was SO GOOD. People can't recover if they are dead, and statistics show that a majority of addicted people do recover given enough time.