Search Engine - When do you know it’s time to stop drinking?

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

This week, a question a podcast has no business trying to answer. We talk to writer A.J. Daulerio about his own story of recovery, and the story of how he found himself opening a very unusual community on the internet. You can find the Search Engine newsletter here. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vote. Each week we answer a question we have about the world. No question too big, no question too small. It's the new year. We're back from the break, and we have a new one for you. When do you know it's time to stop drinking? That's after some ads. This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Serval AI. If you ever worked with an IT team, you know how quickly their day gets eaten up by repetitive tickets, password resets, access requests, onboarding. It all adds up. And as your company grows, those are quick. just keep piling higher, pulling your team away from the work that actually moves the business forward. That's where Serval comes in. Serval can cut up to 80% of your help desk tickets, and it's not just another tool layering on AI as an afterthought. While Legacy Platforms bolt AI on, Serval was built for AI agents from the ground up. Here's what that looks like. Instead of a new hire onboarding taking hours, or even days, a manager just drops a request in Slack,

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It's January, the time of year when we all try to be a little bit better. You can see the evidence of all the trying, if you know where to look. January is when the gym rats complained that all the New Year's resolution people are hogging the treadmills. January is when the Apple podcast charts, which are normally dominated by the Hubermans, the smartlases, the crime junkies temporarily make way for all the Bible in a Year shows. Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Hello, I'm Pastor Jack Graham with today's episode of the Bible in a Year podcast.

Hi, I'm Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a year podcast. This is day one. So let's get started. These podcasts promised to summarize all 1,500 pages of the Bible in just 12 months. The lapsed Christians, guiltily streaming back into the Apple podcast store to speed run scripture. I know I'm being a little teasing here, but I just want to be clear. I'm on the side of the people who try. I try. I find it embarrassing, but I do it anyway.

For me, this year, I'm not on the treadmill. I'm not listening to the Bible. But what I am doing is dry January. Dry January is simple. The idea is that for 31 days, we stopped drinking. Just for 31 days. I was thinking about doing it this year, and I felt some uncomfortable feelings that surprised me.

Then I thought about recording a conversation about those feelings, and I felt much more uncomfortable. And so I decided I should do it. And so I called my friend A.J. Delaria. AJ is a writer. He runs a newsletter I really love called The Small Bow. When I recommend it to friends, what I usually say is that it's a newsletter about recovery,

as in they often run funny or vivid essays from people who are sober are trying to get sober. But I'm neither of those things, and I love it. And I know a lot of people like me who also love it. The Small Bow is a place where, year-round, people talk about what it's like to try to change, how hard it is. And so in January, when many of us are just dipping our toes in those feelings, I wanted to talk to A.

Hello, AJ. Hi. Where am I talking to you from? Where are you? I'm in Los Angeles, California. I'm in a... a renovated carriage house at a place that we're renting in Hancock Park. Is that too much information?

I think that's an okay amount of information. I don't think anyone's going to swat you at this point. Okay. So what I'm interested in asking you is like this question like, when do you know that it's time to stop drinking? And when I'm asking that, obviously that's like a general you. But I was wondering, before we get into how specifically you answer that question for yourself. I was wondering for you, like, what was even your first experience of rehab?

When I was 19 is when I went to my first rehab, and I went there basically because I had clinical depression, but was too ashamed of saying to people that I was depressed, so I kind of told people that I had a drinking problem. And I got put into this place in Northeast Philadelphia off of Roosevelt Boulevard on Harbison Avenue that I would go to, you know, between community college classes, I would go here for the day. It was kind of like detention, basically. And I would go there and, you know, we would have counseling sessions and we would watch, you know, movies like Clean and Sober with Michael Keaton, I remember was a big one. And I was there basically, you know, pretending to be an alcoholic. But I do remember going to a couple meetings, and I obviously didn't stay sober at the

time. I had no desire to. But I remember being there thinking that, oh, I'll probably be back here in some capacity. I've no idea why, but I just had that sinking feeling that, you know, as much as this stuff was, I thought, like, you know, doing really well for me, that being, you know, drinking, partying, whatever, I knew I couldn't handle it. right, in the ways that, you know, normal people can. And when you're talking about, like, you know, at 19, you had this sort of intuition that your relationship with substances had an expiration date on it. Like, what was your relationship like to drinking or a substance at that point? And how did that change by the time you're in your 40s?

I think I was a very normal, recreational high school college drinker, right? I don't think there are any real red flags at that point. I mean, I could be wrong, but I didn't feel like I was in jeopardy of really having any sort of ism that was going to actually impact my day-to-day. I just knew that I had a deep sense of unease that was always with me throughout most of my life that I was constantly in search of a solution for, right? And wait, what do you call that unease? Do you call that unease depression? Do you call that and use something else? I mean, it's just like a overall sort of like swirling tornado of inadequacy and depression

and anxiety, that feeling that I'm completely left out of every single good part of life, that I'm unable to really kind of participate in that being who I am, so I had to kind of turn into something else. I've had that my whole entire life. I was at this meeting one time, and this man who was sharing his story about his alcoholism said something along the lines of just like, you know, I was an alcoholic the first day I went into kindergarten. And that hit me right in the chest because I was just like, God, I know exactly what he means by that, right? Just like the first day that I kind of stepped into like a classroom around my peers, I was always looking for a way to kind of be accepted. in a way that I didn't think I could.

I feel like so many, I mean, I don't know what it's like to not. The joke that I always make privately in my own mind is that like, my last name is vote, but if I'm somewhere like a car rental place, people have mispronounced it as void a lot of the time. Yes. And in my head, it's not a funny joke, but in my head, the joke is always that like, they're saying void and they're just like naming me and my companion. They're like you and like the endless void that's inside of you, like step forward and get your hurts. I don't know what it would be like to not feel a sense of unease all the time.

Do you feel like that that is something that addicts share? Do you think that's something that addicts have to a different intensity? How do you categorize that in the human experience? I mean, I think everyone that I've met on this side of recovery has definitely felt that at some point. And obviously, when I talk about this a lot on the newsletter, there's a lot of people who say that I feel that way too. and struggle with that every day, whatever. And let me ask you this. I mean, it's just like, you know,

when you started to have success podcasting, did you think that that was actually supposed to kind of change all those sort of feelings for you and were supposed to kind of be at that inner peace? I mean, did you ever have that when you got some of the things that you were always after, professionally speaking? I completely expected it would fill it.

And it was very shocking. it surprised me that it didn't. It's a horrible feeling that when that happens, because that happened for me too. I was at a place in circa 2010-11, where I was like, oh, I'm getting all the attention that I thought I wanted. I'm getting paid the amount that I thought I wanted.

People think I'm interesting in a way that I thought I always wanted. And, you know, I'm still out drinking and carousing every single night because I'm still lonely at the end of the night. And whenever I would, it would inch up to like two, three o'clock in the morning, I would get so anxious because I was just like, God, I don't want to go to bed yet. I'm not junk enough yet to fall asleep. I would never sleep in a bed. You know, I always needed to fall asleep on the couch. Always needed to fall asleep with like three or four cigarettes

before I went to bed. And that's when things were going well for me, right? You know, And that's the stuff that I look back upon where I'm just like, God, this was never going to work. No matter how much of my professional life was, I was having success in that, it wasn't going to be enough for me. AJ was having a lot of professional success during what, in retrospect, feels like a very strange moment in media. In the early 2010s, a lot of investors had decided the best way to make money was by investing in bloggy websites. This was the ascendant era of vice, of Gawker Media, the era when men with money were giving snarky, acerbic, mostly other men, lots of cash,

because they believed that the future of journalism might just be someone like AJ, a brash perpetually hungover guy who was never afraid to pick a fight on the internet. A.J. had run Gawker's big sports website, Deadspin, and he'd been editor-in-chief of Gawker, where in 2012, he'd made an editorial decision there that would help lead to the demise of the company. He'd posted a sex tape of wrestler

Hulk Hogan, which would result in a company-ending lawsuit, funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel. But the actual Hogan trial wouldn't happen for years. And in the meantime, before those dominoes had fallen, AJ would leave Gawker as a star. He'd move between lucrative gigs sponsored by different people who were enamored with his ability to command internet attention. I was the classic case of failing upward. As much much as I was a fuck up. I mean, that was kind of part of my brand at the time. I had become one of those people. And man, I got away with a lot of things. I was rewarded for it sometimes. And it was constantly bouncing out of a situation that was good. I was usually quitting my

jobs, too, as a way to really chase that other place to fill that hole. I remember, like, I took this job at what used to be spin. magazine, which was now Spin the Music Magazine. But this was Spin the Music Magazine. It was like my dream job, too. Oh my God, no. It was the coolest music magazine. I even remember going to a barber with a spin cover of like Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys,

like looking very cool, a very cool haircut, and being like, give me this haircut. I'd like, anyway, spin magazine. But it was one of those jobs where I was just like, oh, this can be the one where I can actually just like shed all the reputation that I kind of, built up at Docker Media and Deadspin and go into something where I can be treated seriously and I don't have to be the guy that I'm being now, right? And I remember I got, you know, called for an interview and the man who had taken it over was kind of just one of these dot-com guys who had just, you know, got too rich and just decided

to start buying media properties because he was bored sort of guy, right? And, you know, I'm having the interview, and I remember showing up very hungover and just completely ganked on Adderall. And I was wearing visors a lot at the time. That was, like, my thing. Like golf visors? Golf visors, yeah. Yeah.

This is the darkest part of your story. Also, like, 15 years passed when visors were actually just, like, cool, you know? And, you know, wearing them crooked most of the time. and just like just smelling like shit all the time. But being able to kind of be in this room with this person and convince them, I will take the job. I will take the editorial director job at your place of business. It's just crazy.

You're describing a person where your memory of yourself is that your life is slowly falling apart, but that professionally people are buying what you're selling. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's the craziest thing. But, I mean, you know why? Because I had confidence, this artificial confidence that had come with all of the substances and, you know, the internet confidence, whatever sort of stuff. And look, I mean, and after that, I raised $1.1 million for my own company after that, after I lost that job, right?

And again, sort of same situation. I mean, when I was raising money for this company, my co-founder, Julia, She would make these decks and he would go and we'd have these meetings. And the deck presentation would never go great. But if I showed up in my uniform with that visor on and smelling like last night and just dazzling these dudes with all the stories about Deadspin or Gawker or just like gossipy stuff and like all those sort of things. So crazy. Like people would buy in, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I was just wearing a coat of red flags, yet at the same time. I mean, people were absolutely into it, at least a certain segment of people. But there were obviously other people who knew that I was headed for disaster. One of the people who could tell that something was wrong, actually, was AJ. In 2015, he decides to go to rehab. His professional life was still humming along. The Hulk Hogan trial still a year away. But he'd begun to suspect his personal life might. not be manageable. His problems, which had seemed like a fun joke, something to advertise in a confident, ironic way, they were beginning to seem real. What do you think made you finally take it seriously? You know, I knew something was coming for me, right? I knew it was either going to be kind of sobriety that was by my choice or it was going to come because there was this, this big reckoning that was about to happen in my life. And in prepping for this, I actually just started to go through my phone from 2015, which was the time when things were really going

bad for me. And I came upon this photo that's in my phone that I've saved and I've sent to other people as well. But it's of my workstation, so to speak, and it's like a coffee table in my apartment in Williamsburg at the time. And I remember working this day, and it wasn't really like a work day. I had to do one post for the company that I was running at the time that was my own that I was failing at and flailing at.

And I remember just being on Friday trying to figure out the right combination of either drugs or alcohol that I could put in my system so I could get done the one post. And, you know, on this table, there is a small bong, an empty bottle of Modelo, an empty bottle of Prosecco, two lighters, a full ashtray. It looks like, and I'm pretty sure this is like Xanax from Mexico, a bunch of other smashed up white pills of various sort of consistencies.

There's pot, two empty bodega coffee cups. But the thing that I remember that's most disturbing about this is there is a Pringles can. And it's a Pringles can of Pringles' buffalo extra spicy hot wings flavored Pringles. And the reason why this is the thing that gives me the chills the most and just like it actually makes me shiver is because I remember going to the bodega that day, having not eaten in a pretty long time and knowing that I had to eat, but also not having enough money to really buy anything substantial. So I opted for these pringles because it said they had buffalo chicken on them, and I thought that that would be sufficient amount of protein.

And that was it. And those are the types of decisions that I was making about my life pretty regularly, right? I was 41 years old at the time when these are the type of things that are going on. I would say at this time in my life, especially when I was supposed to be very productive and had my own startup and everything like that, I probably only worked on Wednesdays. And I say Wednesdays because, you know, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I was either getting after it or hung over. Right.

And then Thursday, Friday, you know, start up again. So Wednesday was really my full day of clarity. But I think on this Friday, I was really trying to push it. through and get one post done for the week. But I didn't think that I needed to stop at that point. I did think I needed to adjust the things that were going into my body to find the perfect combination that would make me productive. Never once considering that stopping all these things would be the best way to do that. I know some people listening to this interview are in recovery and some are not. I know some people listen to this and find their ears have sort of sharpened

curiosity, that they're listening while trying to figure out what category they belong to. Maybe you'd never do this, but maybe once you did something like that, what I relate to here is that there were times in my life where I found myself holding onto something tightly, even though it was hurting me. Times where, instead of removing my hand from a hot stove, I felt like the one thing I was sure of was that my hand needed to be on the stove, that pulling it off was scarier than anything I could imagine. And in those times, because I couldn't imagine a life without what was hurting me, I just reorganized myself around managing the pain. So I could keep not changing. We find ways to be functional. We figure out what works until it stops working. For AJ, that moment

with the Pringles-Buffalo scorching potato crisps, which, it turns out only have one gram of protein preserving, it was somewhere around then that he realized he needed to make a change. Soon after this photo was taken in August of 2015, I went to a detox center in North Jersey. I went there for nine days. I showed up there and it felt like right away that this is not the place for me that I shouldn't be there. And they give you these options, depending on the type of insurance you had. And I had pretty good insurance at the time to where you can either get a single room or stay with you. other people, kind of like a dorm sort of situation. Yeah. I opted for the single room and kind of stayed in there all the time, got up, smoked cigarettes,

did some push-ups, read two pages of the book I'd bought or whatever, and then, you know, went downstairs and was trying to interact with, I'm going to call them kids, but most of them were, who were there for heroin, right? And, you know, I was there for everything. I was what they call in rehab a classic garbage head. Wait, what's the classic garbage head? A garbage head is somebody who identifies as an alcoholic or an addict, but doesn't have a real preference for which one is going to get them.

The ruination basically comes from all sources, right? Oh, you're just like, give me whatever. Exactly, yeah. And feeling very much as, as most people do when they get thrown into those situations, well, I don't belong here. I'm not that bad, right? Yeah.

And feeling a little bit of a sense of relief on that, where it hadn't gotten that point. And I'm being proactive by even coming here and doing this nine-day stint. You're seeing people with, like, real problems, and in your mind, you're just a person who needs an adjustment. Yeah, I remember there was a kid that came up to me and it was asking me, you know, where I was from and everything like that.

And he had an abscess on his hand that, that was like the size of a cockroach. And I mean, he couldn't have been older than 20, but it was so nonchalant about it and almost kind of like showing off as like this badge of honor, right? And, you know, I had nothing except like some crappy tattoos, basically.

But it was there that I was like, oh, I'm not this bad. Whatever I have that I'm struggling with, these are the real problems here, right? but I also isolated the whole entire time. I never ever took things seriously that I had a serious problem. I was there because I said I had a Xanax problem. I didn't really have a drinking problem. I wouldn't identify as an alcoholic or anything.

I had to do the whole nine days in order to get the Xanax out of my system. And I remember checking out of that place, and one of the technicians, as they're called, and they're basically the counselors asking me where I was off to next, right, assuming that I was going to take to Florida or Arizona for 60 to 90 day rehab after that. And I looked at them like that that was the craziest idea. I was just like I just did nine days, right? I mean, acting like I was in solitary at, like, you know, kind of a terrible just prison someplace.

But it was really hard for me to conceive of going someplace for that long, being kind of cut off from my old life and not drinking or doing anything for that long. And then when I got home, when I got back to Williamsburg, you know, and I talked to the people that I was working with at my company at the time, I was just like, yeah, well, I'm going to just smoke pot, which I wasn't a big pot smoker at the time, and drink beer. do civilian stuff. But a funny thing happened was I got back and my drug dealer texted me and he said, can you meet me downstairs? And I thought that there was something really bad had happened. So I meet him downstairs, right?

Instead, he's like, you know, I got this new combination of Hash and Molly. And I wanted to give you a free season. example of it. So he gives me this thing, and I didn't mention him where I'd been. Oh, he didn't know. Oh, he didn't know. No, he didn't know at all. Okay. I know. But he remembered that I liked these sort of hybrid drugs that he was kind of experimenting was. And so he gave it to me and he's just like, just tell me what you think of it. Yeah. So now in the sober 12-step world, there's this thing called God shots. which are essentially just like when the spiritual realm kind of interacts with you and kind of pushes you towards the good path. This was the opposite of that, right? Wherein I thought that this was a spiritual intervention telling me just like,

hey, you don't have to quit drugs yet. Here's some free ones for you, right? Right, why would this show up in your path? Why would this show up, right? Yeah. And then probably about a month after that is when I, you know, was already relapsing pretty hard at that point and went to Florida for what was 45, 46 days or something along this line for inpatient rehab. And when I was there is when I realized that,

yeah, this is the only way that this was going to get me to stop is to be kind of locked up in this situation. So that was the place where you understood like, hey, I'm not going to really be able to have a future with substances. No, not at all. And it was so sad for me to think that. There might be a few times in your life where you experience something like this, where you have to firmly shut the door on a way of living, on a group of friends, on some version of your life that has become untenable. Nobody does this because things are going particularly well or according to their plan.

But knowing it's the right choice doesn't make it feel good. It's very sad to know you've done something for the last time. After the break, now what? This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there whose job is to help your clients keep more of what they earn, Vanguard is here to help you with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. That's on top of big fee cuts they gave last year to investors in 87 of their funds.

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Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak. Got that right. So what was it like when you became sober?

Like, what was new sobriety like for you? You know, there were so many great days, right? There really were. In rehab. What's a great day like in rehab? Man, beach volleyball and rehab is probably one of the most fun activities I've ever been been able to participate. Really?

Are you being sarcastic? No, I loved it. It was amazing. Why is beach volleyball in rehab so right? I think it's just because, you know, you have all these people who are there and have been, their lives have been kind of decimated in some capacity are just like, you know, shipwrecked at this place. And then all of a sudden you're kind of forced to play this kid's game that most people haven't done since they were in elementary school gym class and just enjoying it in ways that, I mean,

were completely unthinkable to me. And I think that was just it for me. It was just like, oh, you know, the beach in this shitty part of the, you know, the beach in this shitty part of Florida is actually kind of nice. I mean, I'm having fun. I'm laughing genuinely. And this is just like filling me with a lot of good vibes that I had been absent in my life for such a long time. But, you know, the minute I got back on the plane to Brooklyn, it was December when I finally got back into town. So it was like Christmas time. And I remember just feeling the weight of, God, what do I do now?

Like, who are my friends that I can hang out with? Like, how am I supposed to interact with people? And it was like, you know, holiday party season at that point. And I was just like, can I even go to these? And they're, no, of course not. I can't. But it was just like that's when the loneliness started to sink in. All of those good feelings of kind of being inside an institution were gone.

Now I was back out in the world. and the world has gone on without me. It was really sad when my phone was in like a plastic bag that when you check in at rehab. And I remember this is how seriously I'm going to take this. I'm going to give the man my phone, right? And I remember coming out and being very excited at like day 47 or whatever like that to finally check my phone. And all of the emails, like nothing happened.

Right? Like I missed nothing. Nobody missed me. You know, everyone is kind of moving on with their lives. And I was just absent from it for two to three months. That was really it. And then kind of just to come back and figure out how to build a social life and figure out who my friends are and who I want to have like kind of just,

you know, meaningful relationships with. That's a lot to process. Yeah. No more beach volleyball days anymore. So things were just different for me, and I didn't know where to start. And I think that that is just like the feeling that most people go into this with. Like, if you're trying to get sober, and there's a difference between, you know, stopping drinking and trying to get sober. What do you see the difference has?

The difference is the changes that I needed to make about myself that I always wanted to make, I was absolutely incapable of doing well. I was drunk or on drugs. But now I was absolutely forced into kind of actually confronting those things and given the choice of basically, okay, I have to change or I'm probably going to have to go back to living the way that I was living before. And that wasn't, I wouldn't say I was going to die, but I would have been completely unhappy and nothing good would have ever happened. I would have just been sinking further and further down into a morass of self-pity

and substances. Yeah. I remember, I mean, I haven't been sober, but I had like a year where I didn't drink, I didn't use substances. And I remember one of the surprising things was when you sort of describe Christmas being hard, like just realizing how much, like the two things I realized very quickly. One was so much of social life for walls around alcohol. And like at first you think everyone's paying attention to whether you drink or not. You very quickly learn for the most. part, they're not, but you just kind of have to make this affirmative choice all the time. Like, I remember learning about seltzer and bitters. That at a bar, you could order seltzer and bitters and, like, the bartender would know that that meant who weren't drinking, which just feels good, that they're like a comrade. You will have a drink that looks alcoholic. So if you have one friend who's just very rude, they're not going to know to be rude. And it was kind of just like a code that let people around who were also not drinking,

like, it kind of put a signal up. But, like, seltzer and bitters took me like, I don't know, a month and a half to figure out. And there was all sorts of things like that. And I also noticed that there were friendships I had with buddies who, like, we'd go to the bar and drink and ketchup where I could replace that with coffee and it'd be fine. And there were friendships I had where once you took substances out, the friendships just didn't work, whether it was the person didn't want to see me or we had less to talk about. And it was really surprising. Well, I wrote about it in one essay where, you know, I describe a lot of those sort of attempts at reconnecting with people as a sober person. And some of the people I said,

it was kind of just like, instead of a catching up period, it was like an exit interview, right? Oh my God. Kind of realizing that, you know, we weren't going to be part of each other's lives in any significant way anymore. And yeah, those are the sort of things that, I mean, year after year, I tend to have those sort of relationships kind of fade away in some capacity. And a lot of it is just like, you know, absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I was drinking or sober or whatever. I mean, I think this is the important part of that I'm learning in sobriety is that I have to remember that I'm a bad memory for a lot of people. Like that, like the interactions that I had had with them kind of left a mark that isn't great. Yeah. And, and I mean, that's, that's, that is part of, of this

life, I think, that there's just natural auditing that kind of happens that have to kind of get used to. Before The Smallbow, I didn't really read AJ's writing on the internet. When he talks about how he's a bad memory for a lot of people, I know he partly means in his real life, but I think he also partly means his online one. During his gawker days, a lot of his work lived up to the site's name, gawking, making entertainment out of strangers' mistakes. The site often functioned by creating the worst day of someone's life.

so that board office workers had something to read and comment on. To be fair, Gawker was not alone in this. Commenting wryly on someone else's public humiliation was something many people working on the content production internet treadmill of 2010-2020 did. Few of us have clean hands here, myself included. A couple of years after coming out of rehab in 2018, AJ starts his recovery newsletter, a small bow. And it's this newsletter which I would find a year later.

The site has a very simple description. Quote, we send out essays and illustrations about long-term recovery every Tuesday and Friday, end quote. The newsletter has these drawings from Edith Zimmerman, one of the internet's great voices. In this newsletter, AJ's still AJ. You remember why he was always good at making people pay attention to him online. He's very funny. He has a perfect eye for detail. In the first edition I read in 2019, there's a story about a guy who inexplicably keeps showing up to recovery meetings

dressed as the Joker, like from the Batman movies in a purple suit. And then, a while later, another guy who also doesn't seem to be doing very well, keeps showing up dressed in a Superman costume. And there's a fateful day when the Joker and Superman both show up at a meeting together. I promise, whatever you're imagining is not how the story ends. At the small bow was sort of, not funny, but maybe surprising, ironic, is it AJ's still interested in the worst days of other people's lives. It's just now he's there to help, or at least to help understand. So you come out of addiction, you're at peak, if not peak, like you're feeling like deep amounts of self-loathing. Yes. How did you, why did you decide to start the small bow? Like, that feels like a really

scary, hard thing to do to start writing about recovery from a deep hole. You know, When I was talking about that time when I came out of rehab in like early December, and I remember sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn. And, you know, I don't know if I was kind of just lonely or desperate or whatever, but I remember Googling, I'm 50-something days sober, and I want to run into traffic. And I don't know what I was looking for, but I was hoping that something would come up. I mean, I was just like, I just got out of rehab and I feel really bad about myself still. And I don't know what to do exactly.

I don't want to go to an AA meeting right now. You know, I don't want to, like, you know, I call a friend. Like, it was just, you know, kind of being a drift. And, you know, the only things that came up, and I remember this specifically, where, you know, the suicide hotline number or advertisements for more rehabs, right? And I guess that was the first sort of kernel that was there where it was just like, oh, if I can figure out a way to actually just like, you know, get back into publishing again, maybe there's something there that I could actually get into it. Was it scary? Like, was it scary sort of stepping out on the internet and saying, like, not like, my name's AJ and I'm a recovery guru, but like to talk earnestly about something that's hard to publicly say, I'm a person who. is trying to, I think sometimes it's hard to say you're trying to figure out how to be a good person

because it can sound like you're saying you are a good person, which is one of the most dangerous things you could say on the internet. Dangerous, yes. Did you feel afraid to be working this stuff out publicly? 100%. Yeah. So it's 2018 when I started the Small Bow. Yeah.

So I was about two years sober, right? Yeah. And that is way too early to start a recovery site. I'm just letting people know that I'm 100% aware of that now, but that's like five years ago now. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of comical that I thought that was a great idea. I think that one of the parts that I was so paranoid about was that what I was doing was kind of a form of penance that I was asking for

and like trying to kind of pretend that I was being a better person than I actually was trying to kind of pander to people. And that was something that I was so paranoid about. And it was always constantly, you know, would write an essay and be like, oh, I can't write this. I have to have someone else do it first. Or just like, I have to make people aware that I know that you think I'm a piece of shit. Yeah. I'm right there with you sometimes.

But it's tricky. I know I have so many friends in recovery. and I know, and some of them are public people, and they don't talk about sobriety in public. And I understand that that is one of the sort of, if not rules, at least a strong piece of advice from recovery communities is that if you talk about that stuff in public, you can set yourself up for a relapse.

And I also appreciate, it's hard to learn from people who have figured something out. It's easier to learn from people who are figuring things out, for me, at least. And so I appreciate, even though maybe you shouldn't have done it, as someone who really, really cherishes a small bow, just selfishly, I'm glad to that you did do it. Yeah. I mean, there were all positive sort of feedback and a lot of people that were interested in participating and helping out and wanted to write for it. And I thought that was really great.

And, you know, I mean, I was very, very much of the mindset that I have to like handpick every single person that writes for this in this first year in order for the, you know, I mean, I was very, very much of the mindset that I have to, like, handpick every single person that writes for this in this first year in order for this to go right. Why? Because I was so concerned about having someone else's voice come in who, like there were a lot, I'll put it to say, there are a lot of people who had 10 years of sobriety who were basically going to come in and speak from an AA perspective, right? Yeah.

And I try to just not publish those sort of essays where people are kind of parroting the big book and along this lines. Because it just felt like, that wasn't what I was looking for. that night. You know, I was looking for something that would actually just like, I think, come from a place of really, I still needed things to be wounded. I still needed everyone that that wrote for it to publish there. I still needed them to be wounded in some way. So anyone that was coming with the solution, so to speak, is what they call it. You know, I didn't think that was appropriate. Well, my theory for why you find it, or for why you might find it helpful to talk to people in tough situations and why you tell, you tell, people in tough situations that one day they will be consoling someone in a tough situation. Like the reason I think that that helps. I mean, one, it suggests that there's an after the moment that someone's in, but also any kind of real crisis, whether it's like a public blowup or like the premature death of someone you love or a horrible accident. The thing it does is

you feel pulled out of the world and into this darker other place. And the world is happening above you and you are in this very lonely and personal hell. And the thing that that hell tells you is your experience is too bad to be understood in the rest of human experience and you will not connect with other people. And if you meet other people, you do not want to connect with them because they're in other hells that are even worse than yours. And I think what I hear in that story and what I hear in you talking about this is like, The real truth is that most people's lives go off the rails they've imagined for them at some point.

And when you leave the community of people who are perfectly happy and who everything has worked out for, you enter the community of human beings. Yes. And your ability to understand and connect with those human beings is like really strengthened once you can heal. One of the really important conversations for me to hear was, I interviewed Jason Blair. And I don't know if you remember Jason Blair with the context as with him. And he was the New York Times.

New York Times plagiarism. Yes, exactly. So I think that was 2003-ish, right? He wrote a memoir about that soon after everything had happened, but has gone on to basically be a life coach. And he and I started talking. And I asked him, you know, would he have written a memoir,

knowing what he knew now. And he said, absolutely not. It was the worst decision they'd ever made because he was writing it out of desperation and fear. And that was the only way he thought he could make money. But the other thing that he said

was that while everything really hit a lot of heat on him from the Times scandal at that point, and he was going to recovery meetings. And he was afraid to kind of go into some of the Upper West Side sort of meetings because he thought he would be recognized. And he said he had this conversation with this one woman there where he was

kind of sharing that like a little bit kind of sheepishly, a little bit ashamed of and just like a little bit sort of like ecocentricly too. And she said to him, there are murderers here. I'm sure you're going to be okay. And it was just like this wonderful level setting sort of thing where it's just like, oh yeah, I mean, just like, you know, there are people who kind of just like, you know, live these absolutely just, you know, had these horrific sort of situations in their lives and may have been murderers. And I am not one of those. And, you know, just to kind of remember that, okay, well, they have a life that they can kind of be proud of now too, right? And so it was, it was really important for me to hear that. And I always remember that when I go into any sort of meeting,

we're just like, oh, yeah, there are murderers here. It's funny. It's probably the only context where there are murderers here is something someone says to calm down and feel good. Right, yeah. But it's so great because it was instant humility, right? And I think I got that early on too in recovery, especially when, you know, I was in Florida and I'm in the thick of the Hogan trial and going to these meetings and thinking everyone in the room knew about this trial and all eyes were on me. just like, you know, here I was being brave and raising my hand at these meetings, and boy, aren't I important. And yeah, and it's hearing like these people with real problems who had like lost loved ones and lost jobs and houses and all those things and just like being like, yeah, I'm not really that interesting in this situation. I have never been to an AA meeting. I've never been to rehab. But I have spent time in a psychiatric

unit, which as far as I can tell seems a bit similar. I still think about my time there. I remember what it was like to be trapped in a place where the only thing I was really allowed to do was the thing I at least wanted to, where all I could do was think. I will say, I feel gratitude for these rooms in America that most people hope to never wind up in,

rooms where you can talk to other people who have made real mistakes, rooms where no one really judges, where your problems, however big, are always dwarfed by someone else's. I want to acknowledge that dry January My slight and questionable newspeg this week is a pretty silly reason to talk about any of this.

Dry January is the time of year when many people stop drinking because they'd like to lose a little weight or challenge themselves or just to see. But I do think some of those people are actually up to something else. I think they're finding a way to ask themselves questions that can just be too scary to face head on.

Am I really okay? Is this all still working for me? The reason I wanted to talk to you at this time of the year is that for many years around New Year's, you've sent out this newsletter called It's Okay If You're Not Ready. Can you just tell me the story that you tell in that essay? Like what's in that newsletter? Sure. I mean, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about in those early days of me coming home from rehab. So this is 2015 December. And like I said, I was very much. afraid in a lot of ways about what I was supposed to be as a person now and what the holidays were going to look like. And again, I remember feeling like so sad and desperate to be someplace else, right? And wanting to kind of just like, you know, not be in my apartment, not be in my body, not be like, you know, in whatever sort of, you know, friend group I was in, I just didn't want to be there. But I also didn't want to be sober. But I also knew that I was staring down kind of

this very important date, right, which is January 1st. And I remember being so sad that I was never going to potentially have another New Year's that was fun again, right? Yeah. Like, I mean, that kind of just, you know, hit me square in the job. in that moment. And I was just like, God, I don't want to drink soda right now. You know, I know. I don't want to just go home and watch a movie or watch the Godfather or whatever. I don't know. I mean, it was just so much stuff that I felt like completely on the sidelines about. And I was just like, this is not the life I want. And I was like, yeah, I'm not ready to be sober. And, you know, I didn't relapse the next day, but I couldn't 100% kind of commit to something that I really

wasn't ready for at that point. And that was just like this moment where I was just like, I think most people that have come upon January 1st and thinking that their lives need to change in this sort of fashion and feel like failures if it doesn't happen. And that's a tough conversation to have with people. This is my attempt to basically have that conversation with people and say, yeah, you're fine, right? That's it, you know? Like if you're not, if it's not working yet, that's okay. That's okay.

It's 100% okay. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, good job, good effort. I think the greatest thing about AA, more than anything, is that, like, you can be a part of it and you could have like two years of sobriety. And then, like, one night you can absolutely just, like, get completely blasted and just, like, you know, have your car and run into a building. And then the next day, you can go there and everywhere. and we'll clap.

Right. You know? And that's, it's an amazing thing. So, I mean, this is my way of at least extending

that hand out to people to say to them just like, yeah, I'm going to kind of run this essay every single year and the off chance

that someone is Googling like I was that very lonely night in early December when I thought that no one else could understand me or understand exactly

what I needed at that point and not knowing myself what I needed, that like, okay, maybe this essay they will connect to them. I feel like what you're describing when you say you can crash a car and come in the next day

and people applaud, it's like, you're talking about grace. Yes. And it's just like a very hard thing to find in a reliable way, maybe outside of your own family. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think, I never grew up with that. My family was punishing. Yeah. I mean, this is like, you know.

But yeah, I mean, learning how to have that. And I mean, I try to kind of provide that as much as I possibly can, both with my children, with myself and with my wife, and with anybody that's kind of part of this little community that has kind of built up due to this newsletter. After a short break, I ask an uncomfortable question. So good, so good. Springstiles are at Nordstrom, Rwry.

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It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person who gave me the deal. Additional Terms, Conditions, and Restrictions Apply. Welcome back to the show. So to be honest with you. By this point in the conversation, actually asking AJ the title question of this episode felt dumb. But rules are rules. We have a format. And so I asked it.

If you ever hear me more uncomfortable asking a question on the show, please let me know. So the question that I came to with, when do you know that it's time to stop drinking? Yeah. Who's asking, right? I mean, that's the thing. It's just like, I mean, that's like, in your mind, who is asking this question? I think, I think, I mean, I think what you're saying is that it's highly personal and that rather than focusing on January 1st, what your message would be is like, if you have the inclination that this might be the right choice for you. That's probably the right choice.

Right. Right. Yeah. And it's a lot more serious than basically a resolution. I mean, it's an absolute kind of just complete, just full-scale change. I mean, it's a teardown. Yeah. So this year, I'm doing Dry January.

I feel slightly uncomfortable with Dry January. How do you feel, as someone, you know, who is committed to the world of Syria sobriety and sobriety is a teardown, how do you feel about dry January? I feel that it's fine. I mean, I mean, it's honestly like, I was trying to kind of think of some way to compare it without sounding. Like a dick. Like a dick, right? Because I don't want to sound like a dick. Because I think it's great that anyone wants to kind of better themselves and whatever

facity that is. But like asking, you know, an alcoholic for someone that's in. active recovery, just like, you know, every single day of their life. Right. About dry January, I think is like the equivalent of having someone who, like, runs a turkey trot every single year. I knew you were going to compare this a turkey trot to a marathon. I knew that's exactly where you were going to go.

It wasn't even a marathon, like as someone who's just like, you know, kind of like Usain Bolt, you know, like, I mean, like, yeah. Not on the same level, man, you know? I mean, it's just like we have different goals here. Yeah. And that's okay. But yeah, I think that the dry January has very little to do with sobriety. Sometimes you go to someone with a question, not realizing you still have basic,

wrong-headed assumptions about what the words you're using even mean. Like, sobriety. Depending on my mood, it can mean for me something I'm proud of the people in my life for doing, something I wonder if I should do, something I hope I don't have to do. Mainly, though, I think of it as not doing something. abstaining. Talking to AJ, I realize for him, abstinence is like the first and in some way's least interesting part of the whole deal. For him, real sobriety means trying to see yourself clearly, trying to evolve, and then this sounds like the hardest part, to do this while offering

yourself the kind of compassion you'd want from your parents or from God. So when I first got sober and coming out of rehab, and I think this is part of the struggle that most people have when they kind of just try to get sober, is you're dealing with a person who absolutely hate you more than anyone on the planet Earth, and you're kind of stuck with that person. Yes. And trying to kind of make friends with that person is very, very difficult. It was for me, and I had to kind of just, you know, do a lot of extra work on top of just like showing up the 12-step meetings. I had to do, I had to get a therapist, I had to get on medication, I had to do

meditation, all those stuff, in order to start, like, maybe getting 1% more in the direction of basically liking myself more than I hate myself. I would say I'm about 50-50, no? It's weird because it's also like, if you come out of a crisis, you're sort of like, there's this person inside me who tried to kill me. Yes. And he's also me. And the first instance, sanctus, I got to get as far away from that person as possible. I have to kind of destroy them. Right. And in a way, I think you do. Like, I think the people who get better evolve in a way where the people they were are a little alien to them, but also you have to love that person. Like, if you're trying to kill that person, you're also that person and you're trying to kill yourself.

It's really hard. Yeah. No, it is. And I think that there's just like a lot of stuff that I work through in therapy is just actually just caring for that person that work. And, you know, version of yourself that was so broken and then trying to kind of look at them with a little more kindness. And that's really kind of just like where I'm starting to look at that a lot more. I think saying that out loud is still hard for me to say that I'm trying to learn how to love myself. Yeah. But I am. And that is exactly just like where I have to start every single day, because if I don't, then I'm kind of starting a little bit in the red. Right. A.J. Delario. He's trying year-round, not just in January. He writes the Smallbow newsletter, which you can find at www.thesmalbow.com.

AJ, thank you. Absolutely. I hope this was helpful. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. for Citizens Bank. Hey, business owners, the NFL season is a big revenue driver. Now there's a smarter way to get ready. EverPass is the only authorized commercial platform for NFL Sunday ticket, delivering every live out-of-market regular season Sunday afternoon game.

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Fact checking by Sean Merchant. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bizarrian. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Porello, and John Schmidt, and to the team at Odyssey, Jady, Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Kate Hutchison, Moira Curran, Josephina Francis, Court Courtney, and Hillary Schuff. Our agent is Orrin Rosenbaum at UTA. Our social media is by the team at Public Opinion, NYC. Follow and listen to Search Engine with BJ Vote now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, that's it for us this week. Thank you for listening. We will see you next week.