A Conversation With Author Sarah Hepola
I spoke with the author Sarah Hepola over zoom about her book Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, society’s changing attitudes towards alcohol, and finding identity and connection in sobriety. So first of all, I loved Blackout. Regarding the subtitle, “Remembering the things I drank to forget,” can you talk about some […]
Anthony Kiedis
Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has been continuously sober since the year 2000. He’s struggled with cocaine, heroin, and alcohol use. The song “Under the Bridge,” one of the band’s most popular, is about a time Kiedis used drugs under a bridge in LA. One day during his first attempt at sobriety, […]
Addiction in the Creative Professions
In every artistic field—music, literature, visual arts, comedy, etc.—there’s no shortage of famous people who struggled with addiction. That’s why there’s a myth that addiction and mental health struggles fuel creativity. While those with creative brains may be more prone to addiction, substance use only holds them back; believing otherwise can stop people from getting […]
Maria Bamford
For years, comedian Maria Bamford has been making comedy about her mental health struggles. She has a (very funny) song about her compulsions, which are part of OCD. She has a whole YouTube series about living in her parents’ attic after a nervous breakdown.[1] She’s made comedy about her multiple stays in mental health treatment, […]
Sober Stories: Scott
What led you to get sober? For years, I had a feeling about the person I could be. If the person you want to be is always in front of you, I found that after so many years of drinking, I was literally looking backwards. Who I felt I actually was—who I aspired to be—I […]
French Montana
The rapper French Montana has been sober since November 2019. He got sober following a hospitalization a little over a week after his 35th birthday, when he collapsed from mixing Adderall, Percocet, and alcohol. Montana says his life was out of control, but he was the only one in his orbit who didn’t notice. “It’s […]
John Mulaney
John Mulaney’s pandemic relapse made a lot of news, but before that he’d been sober since 2005. He first quit drinking and using drugs at age 23. Mulaney started drinking at 13; at that age he felt awkward, and thought alcohol made him funny and gregarious. He also started using cocaine and prescription drugs. “I […]
Kaveh Akbar
Poet Kaveh Akbar got sober in 2013. Since then, he’s released a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, and his first full-length poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf. The latter—which draws from his experience as a Muslim Iranian-American in recovery—won several major awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Akbar says that he didn’t write with any […]
Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison—author of The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, The Empathy Exams, and others—has been sober since 2010. In The Recovering, Jamison tells the story of her own recovery and those of other famous creatives who got sober. Like some of the artists mentioned in the book, Jamison produced work while in active addiction. “It […]
Eileen Myles
The poet Eileen Myles—who reached some mainstream fame as the inspiration for a character on the show Transparent—has been sober for decades. “I remember the first spring I wasn’t drinking; it was 1983,” they said. “My friend Tom and I were walking around the West Village, and we were staring up and pointing. ‘Isn’t that […]