You’re getting two episodes’s worth today, that’s right, two full-length, downright magical episodes of Breakfast with an Alcoholic distilled down to an even richer…
Sorry. You can see how I get carried away sometimes. I’m going to start this with a confession: I didn’t write the Liner Notes for Episode 22: The fabulous breakfast with Paulina Pinsky. I had this idea that I might write the Liner Notes while I was in Stockholm. Then I got to Stockholm and was having such a nice time and then I was in Copenhagen and editing Episode 23 (the equally fabulous Tatiana Gallardo) and I made the executive decision that there would be one combined, way-better-than-average set of Liner Notes.
I started this whole thing after having breakfast with an alcoholic friend and thinking how interesting the conversation was—these were two fascinating conversations and I really hope that comes through. There were so many moments when Paulina or Tatiana would say something and there would be a long pause and then I’d say something dumb like, “wow,” and be taking a note because they had just said the most amazing thing. Maybe, I shouldn’t edit those moments out, but there were a bunch of them in these two interviews.
Refresh My Recollection:
Episode 22--Paulina Pinsky
Episode 23--Tatiana Gallardo
Here’s one: Tatiana was talking about the origin of her Substack newsletter: Brazenface. It was a word that had stuck out to her when she was younger and it meant “Boldly, without shame.” That’s how she’s living this year, boldly, without shame and fear—brazenly. The funny thing is the connotation for “Brazen,” the popular definition is almost exactly opposite. Brazen criminals, brazen crimes. When you think about how it’s used, it’s almost like the definition has been changed to:
“Ok, you don’t feel shame but maybe you should.”
We’ve imported shame into a word that was expressly defined not to include it. I think that’s a funny comment on a shaming, judgment filled world.
Then Tatiana began to talk about courage and how one of her goals was to live this year courageously. One of the reasons she stopped drinking was because she thought that alcohol was robbing her of courage. Of course it was.
Courage is keeping the heart the seat of feeling and thought. Courage is living from the heart. That is so amazingly simple and it hits me so hard. This idea has been swirling around in my head for a while now. I wrote this a few weeks ago:
Courage is just the willingness to let my heart guide me where I need to go and faith is the thing that lets me take the next step. All I have to do is be willing to believe and then pay attention to what unfolds.
It turns out that Tatiana beat me to the punch, while I was trying to write that down, she had already bought a one-way ticket to Europe and was living it!
I think a related concept is “authenticity.” Being authentic, being genuine is an exercise in being yourself. That sounds pretty uncomplicated, but everyone knows how hard it actually can be. A lot of us struggle with fear and insecurity and I think those feelings are part of the kindling that eventually catches the flame for alcoholics. A fire we absurdly try to extinguish with more alcohol.
One of the constant themes around here is that sobriety is the process of rediscovering and reclaiming yourself.
I have my own personal, ever-evolving view of alcoholism.1 One of the things I think is that for those of us who are afflicted, every drink takes us further from ourselves and from the life we were meant to lead. I was terrified, completely terrified at the prospect of having to give up drinking. I’m not exaggerating; It provoked panic in me. Why? I had sailed so far away, I couldn’t see land anymore. I only knew what it took to keep wind in the sails—even though every gust took me farther and farther away. Sobriety was drifting lifelessly, the sails slack and forlornly dreaming of the days when the wind was at my back.
In my personal theory of alcoholism, the “Bottom” is the point at which you are the farthest away from the person you were meant to be, farthest away from the life you were meant to lead. For me, one of the things that happened at the bottom was that I started to lose my fear. There is definitely a what-the-fuck element to the moment, no reason to fear that anymore. Because you realize that most everything just doesn’t matter anymore. That’s why the Big Book describes it as the jumping-off point. Once you realize you’ve lost most of what mattered to you, that there isn’t much in your life you care about anymore, once you have given up hope of seeing the land again, well, the choices tend to narrow.
Paulina had that moment. She was with her fiancee on a road trip to New Orleans and she got to the spot where she knew she just couldn’t do this anymore, live this way anymore. She was screaming “I can’t” over and over again at an Alabama gas station—realizing finally that the course she was on had taken her very, very far away. When she got back home and saw her Mom, all she could do was scream.
I have lots of WTF moments in sobriety. Out of nowhere, events, situations, people from my drinking career pop into my head and I literally can’t believe the things I said and did, the situations I got myself into. How did I ever think that would turn out ok? When I think back on those vignettes, I struggle to recognize that person. How could that have been me?
That’s the point. Whatever the mechanics of this disease—it somehow creates replicas of us, replicas that may look and sound like us, but are decidedly not us. They are not authentic. You hear people call addiction a disease of connection, and I think that makes sense, but the most important connection is the connection to oneself. That’s the primary connection in life and it’s the one that is severed by addiction. The primary task of recovery is, I think, re-establishing that connection. When people talk in AA meetings about putting on your own oxygen mask first, well, isn’t that what this is?
Paulina had a great line, I mean she had a lot of them. But the one I have been thinking about the most is one of her wtf moments, a moment when she realized:
“oh shit, I’m living something I’m going to have to write about.”
That really struck me. It turns out that writing is a pretty critical part of re-establishing that connection for me. Writing is what helps me make sense of what happened and what helps me see the the path forward. I’m not sure what the mechanics of that are either and for some people it’s other things, but anything that allows you to see yourself honestly and then express yourself (as honestly as you can) seems to do the job.
It’s why alcoholics helping other alcoholics is the foundation of the Program. We help others by sharing our experiences authentically and honestly and our ability to do that is a function of that re-established inner connection. Our newfound ability to share a part of our story authentically gives someone else the idea that maybe they could do the same kind of thing themselves. And so on.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer and I’ve kind of always known I was supposed to be a writer. The whole writing thing is not a recent phenomenon with Tatiana or Paulina either and what is so compelling to me is not just how breathtakingly honest they both are. Sharing the story of the worst days of your life, well, that’s not really an easy thing. Sharing your greatest fears is not really an easy thing. That’s what Tatiana and Paulina are doing publicly and that’s what make their writing so compelling and so inspiring.
What they are doing is courageous. Courage is inspiring, courage is contagious. Bill W. is one crafty motherf*****, I think. I’ll be the first one to tell you that I think I’m pretty much insane these days, and that I think Bill W. manages to intrude on my signal every once in a while and I have these aha moments—usually provoking disconcerting, out-loud laughter. Bill knew all of this. It’s why he wrote that sentence about “all people of faith having courage,” it’s why his collection of Grapevine writings is called “The Language of the Heart.” Bill figured out that sobriety was about re-establishing that connection to himself—it required a precipitating event, a spiritual awakening to begin the process—but it was an inside job in the end. Sobriety was about courage, about re-establishing the heart as the seat of feeling and thought.2
I can see that maintaining the First Definition of Courage, keeping “the heart as the seat of feeling and thought,” requires the Fourth Definition’s kind of Courage:
“The quality of mind that shows itself without fear or shrinking; bravery, boldness and valour.”
Boldness, where have I heard that before? Brazen: Boldly, without shame.
Being sober and living brazenly—you can see how perfectly those fit together, right? Doesn’t that sound like a way better way of doing things? A better way of living? My sad-sack view of sobriety, barely afloat and hoping the wind picked up some day was no way to live and a worse way to get sober. Sobriety is hope and re-invention, rediscovery and ultimately recovery; Recovering the parts of us that got lost along the way. I’ve come to believe that every time we share a part of our story honestly and authentically, in a way that flows from that restored inner connection, we get another piece back. I think that’s pretty groovy and if that is what living brazenly is all about, then I’m all in.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
I’ve also run my own personal sting operations. That’s the best criminal defense I’ve ever heard.
If you’d like some really compelling examples of that, well that would be Episodes 22 and 23 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic.