There's More Than One Way To Get Sober

Author Katie Herzog examines new approaches to treating addiction, the cultural obsession with moralizing sobriety, and why she believes freedom means choosing how to heal.

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There's More Than One Way To Get Sober

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The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and visionaries who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.

Today's guest is Katie Herzog, co-host of the popular Blocked & Reported podcast and author of the paradigm-shattering new book Drink Your Way Sober. Katie writes about her and other people's experiences with The Sinclair Method—a medication-assisted approach to alcoholism where you use one drug to counter problematic use of another. Her story—and the cutting-edge research and treatment she reports on—upends just about everything we think we know about drug use, recovery, and autonomy.

She talks with Nick Gillespie about naltrexone, the drug that helped her retrain her brain, why Alcoholics Anonymous works for some people but not for others, and how modern medicine is finally catching up to the idea that we should treat adults like adults when it comes to what we put in our bodies.

They also get into the insane cancel culture politics that gave rise to her and Jesse Singal launching the Blocked & Reported podcast in 2020, whether we've passed peak woke, and if conservatives are now simply presiding over their own version of cancel culture.

Previous appearance: Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal on Left-Wing Cancel Culture, June 17, 2020.

 

0:00—Introduction

1:34—What is the Sinclair Method?

6:59—Herzog's experience with alcoholism

15:50—Sexuality, self-identity, and self-loathing

22:22—Recognizing addiction and the myths of willpower

27:43—Alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous

35:03—Herzog on differences in weed and alcohol use

38:44—Beta-blockers for overcoming anxiety

43:51—Transgenderism in media and cancel culture

58:29—Tolerance vs. agreement

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Ian Keyser

Comments

[But SkyNet is a Private Company]

The cultural obsession with moralizing sobriety?
Lol

[Kungpowderfinger]

AA provides results, Katie Herzog provided Reason with an interview.

[Use the Schwartz]

You wanna know why we moralize sobriety?

'Cause junkies are unreliable, narcissistic, liars, thieves, criminals, and general assholes. If you've ever had a junkie in the family you know from experience that they ruin everything they touch.

Maybe it isn't as much "moralizing" as it is recognition of reality?

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

They can be worse than an untrained dog.

[Chumby]

Watching Maddow religiously and regurgitating Dem talking points is not one of those ways to achieve sobriety.*

Based on the experiences of another Maineah.

[Rick James]

Look, I'll never criticize someone for finding a novel way to stop a chemical addiction, but really? Another magical prescription pill to fix humanity? How many are we up to now?

[Rick James]

Anyone getting the impression that Gillespie has been humbled on the trans issue?

[Rick James]

@58:23 Herzog suggests that everyone just "be fucking normal". She refers to the "Gender critical"* space becoming more extreme and less compassionate. She references J.K. Rowling's earliest liberal criticism of the trans movement with her open letter "dress how you want, just don't force everyone to participate". Unfortunately what Herzog whistles past is the "just don't force everyone to participate". Those words have meaning and they encompass a set of views and more importantly actions that manifest as a method of "pushing back" against being forced to participate. When she refers to the 'figureheads' of the TERF movement, I'm around 390% sure who she's talking about because those are the left-of-center feminists who have occupied a space in my algorithmic feed, and they have been very effective in putting the words "just don't force everyone to participate" into concrete results. While I have nothing against Ms. Herzog, and she seems like a perfectly reasonable person, if she thinks a court ruling recognizing that "biology matters when defining women" was 'going too far', then she's basically the Bill Maher of this whole topic. She has decided that sure, the cuckoo bananas activists went a little far when they decided to try to abolish the nuclear family and other Neo Marxist horseshit, but at the same time, she's shruggingly agreeing that that world might be kind of flat... right? The so-called English TERFS are the only people who have recognized how utterly destructive this movement has been, how misogynistic it is, how homophobic it is, how ghoulish it is in regards to the butchering and sterilization of children, and just how utterly creepy it is when you realize just how far the "sanitization" of sexual perversion has become in an attempt to mainstream things like amputation porn, or grown men getting their kicks breastfeeding infants.

So no, we're not going to say, "Dress how you like, but like, don't force me to participate man" and then we agree to disagree on the last part and let the Queer Marxists have their way.

*FYI, I've got a lot to say about the "gender critical" space. I understand that it's a term that people found useful, but it's like if half a dozen people decided they believed the world is flat, and then after a long protracted fight, everyone decided that the people who believed the world is round got their own special category, everyone nodded along with eye-rolls and statements such as, "okayyy, you have a protected right to believe the world is round... we may not agree with you but we'll defend your right to blah blah blah *hand waves and lol-snorts of dismissal*" and then the people who believed the world is round were called "flat earth critical". No, the people who believe that a man can become a woman are "round earth critical".)

[Rick James]

I also got a kick out of Gillespie's quip, "Yeah man, like can't we just go back to like, the 1930s when they just had "bathrooms"?

As if sex-separated bathrooms are some late-stage Capitalistic artifact of the Reagan era when Jesse Helms decided that we needed to get rid of those single-sex bathrooms and impose a strict Puritan system of bathroom duality.

Couple of observations on that:

1. If he's talking about small businesses, restaurants etc., yes, there often was just a ' bathroom' because the relative cost of putting in a second washroom in the early 20th century, let alone the late 19th century was astronomical. And there are still plenty of places-- especially restaurants in quaint old spaces that still operate this way, and no one bats an eye, or ever did.

2. When the question comes to communal washrooms or changing rooms, like in places of work or factories etc, yes there often was just one bathroom because we still lived in a time when women in the workplace were a relative rarity. But women were increasingly entering the workplace and as such, those early 1st, 2nd etc. wave feminists demanded their own facilities and single-sex spaces. But once society began to swivel its hips and allow the chicks in because that was the way of progress, the sex-segregated spaces began to pop up because women demanded them, and rightly so.

I would suggest that Mr. Gillespie invite a one Mary Harrington to "the pod" and discuss these issues with her. FYI, Ms. Harrington occupies a special place in my feed, so I'm guessing Gillespie will have nothing to do with her. Sure, Gillespie loves to interview the feminists, just not that kind of feminist.

[NCMB]

Whatever works to break a harmful addiction is good; there is no one size fits all approach.