June. Gone. And we’re almost at the halfway point of the YEAR.
It was another excellent month for TSB—we’re growing and glowing in all the right places.
For all the new readers, I hope you’re getting situated and figuring out which parts of The Small Bow will be helpful to you. Are you in active addiction? Do you have decades of recovery? Or maybe you’re certain something is wrong with you but aren’t ready to define it yet. This is the category most people who read The Small Bow identify with. So welcome, flawed humans—we totally get it.
And by the way, TSB is funded entirely by paying subscribers. Your money helps pay for all our freelancers and TSB's fantastic illustrator, Edith Zimmerman. We’re in the process of building this out—more contributors, more podcasting, more meetings, more merch, and more MORE—so we need all the help you can give to us.
Here are some messages from our readers who've pledged their support. Maybe some of them sound like you?
"I'm in recovery from prescription stimulant addiction. A friend gifted me a monthly subscription, and I can't not stay. I like reading first thing in the morning. When I wake up, and the dread of the struggle to continue surviving begins to descend, the thoughts and stories shared give me hope, make me feel less alone, and motivate me to keep going. Thank you." — Rachel
"I found you through Kathryn’s newsletter, and your perspective on parenting resonated with me. Specifically the essay on your anxiety about taking your son to that birthday party. I was ugly-laugh-crying by the end of it because I have been there. Am there. Thanks for this space for all of us!" — Erika
"Been reading your newsletter for a few months. There's a lot of content in this world, and anything that makes me want to read more is worth paying for. I'm somehow not a chaotic drug or alcohol user, but I'm on kind of a sobriety journey of my own- sobriety from self-loathing, sobriety from misery and darkness and anxiety. Your writing is with me on the path. Thanks for putting it out there." — Devon
You all sure know how to write and package a great newsletter for your audience/community -- and for a newly sober editor/writer type person who tried to make their way through AA lit, that's a freaking breath of fresh air. THANK YOU for existing and for keeping me sober" — Anonymous
"Although I probably don't meet the definition of an addict, I get something out of every post I read here, so supporting this community feels like the right thing to do." — Anonymous
Paid subscribers get access to the entire archive, the Sunday roundup of book and recovery recommendations, and the complete rundown of my weekly recovery program. Please consider signing up if any of our newsletters over this past month have made you feel…better? Or less afraid of being afraid? Not awful? All of the above works, too.
We need ya. We love ya. Hope to see more of ya on Sunday morning.
Now, let’s revisit some stories.
MOST POPULAR POST IN JUNE:
“Making Things Hard Is Easy to Do”
by The Small Bow Family Orchestra
“I'm working on the 6th step with my sponsor, so I'm thinking about my character defects. I'm thinking about the death drive and my impulse towards self-sabotage. The last month has been good. I picked up commitments like you're supposed to: secretary at my home group and driving an elderly woman to Sunday night meetings. Work is fine, and my friends and family seem happy with me, so the hurricane in my brain starts churning up a maelstrom of horrible ideas. The bars are colorful and shiny at night. That guy I hooked up with showed me the train station where you can cop. There are a million ways I could fuck things up. Why do I want to? I'm hoping to figure out why I keep making this mess over and over.”
Other Popular TSB Stories From June:
“When Your Job Owns You”
by TSB
“I wanted an eye-popping number commensurate with what I believed was my extraordinary talent as a manager, editor, and talent developer for online media properties. (But I failed to mention my extraordinary talent as an HR nightmare, an irresponsible cad, and a conspicuous drug user.)
The high salary was supposed to compensate for all the self-worth that I'd never acquired. I wanted that salary because it would be a big enough number to show up at the 25-year reunion with and make my friends understand why I waited tables and drove to East Brunswick every day while they were out working for pharmaceutical sales companies or teaching Social Studies. That high salary would also compensate for the loss I felt no longer had those solid friendships.”
*****
“Interviews with Older Sober People”
by TSB/Oldster
"I will never forget the day I was walking into the grocery store and realized I was seeing the sky because I wasn’t looking down at the pavement, ashamed of myself because I couldn’t quit drinking."
*****
“Nothing Will Ever Be Boring Again”
by The Small Bow Podcast featuring Emily Gould
“It's hard not to feel a sort of urge to romanticize or be nostalgic about those parts of the past. And it is; it runs really counter to my other feelings, which are of deep shame and regret about some of the ways that I behaved when I was, really making life hell for everyone who had to deal with me.
It was so weird. In my experience of what my life was like during that time, I felt like I was really happy, but my friends were like, you just seemed really angry. You were just so angry all the time.”
COMPANION POST:
New episode dropped today: “Dead Inside” with Megan Koester [TSBPOD]
ALSO NOTEWORTHY: BOURDAIN DAY
“The Unsolved Mysteries of Anthony Bourdain’s Big Life”
by TSB and Laurie Woolever
"The moments that stick with me were the times Tony was frank about his weariness. We were in Manila in early summer 2017 at the World Street Food Congress, having just come from a shoot in Sri Lanka, where everyone had been sick. It was the end of the TV shooting season and he seemed completely burned out. The crowds there loved him so much and were so eager to get a selfie with him everywhere he went, even at breakfast in the hotel. He was supposed to stroll around and meet food vendors that had come with the hopes of being in his New York food hall, but he got completely mobbed and had to be led away by literally ten security guards, and he expressed frustration and disappointment at having been unable to move freely.
and
“No One Wanted to Take His Inventory: On Working With Anthony Bourdain”
by TSB and Laurie Woolever
“The question of “Tony as an addict” is really a delicate and specific thing. There are a few people in the book who say, straight up, that Tony was an addict, and on its face, that seems like a fair enough assessment. He wrote freely about his adventures and his struggles. He kicked narcotics and used methadone for a while, but he wasn't a program guy, and he wasn't sober, and never claimed to be sober. When I told him that I had quit drinking and started attending meetings, he was actually really dismissive.
The best guidance I got on how to treat this question of “Tony as addict” was actually through a series of rejections. There were a few sober writer friends of Tony's, people he liked and respected, all of whom declined to be interviewed for the book because they didn't want to go on record taking his inventory (to use some 12-step language). I was disappointed not to get a chance to talk with them about Tony, but it was also a really useful reminder about how to proceed.”
DEPARTMENT OF STORIES IN OTHER PUBLICATIONS
“I hate that you feel this way because, dammit, I feel this way, and I know what a sorrowful existence it is. As much as I’m extremely proud of my sobriety, my self-esteem took a severe hit after I cut out all the drinking, drugs, and cigarettes. Whatever insecurities I’d covered up with my drunken persona became stark and debilitating in the aftermath. Nondrunk me became 6 inches shorter, my nose got 3 inches larger, my skin became dry, and my hair went gray—you get the idea. Being forced to look at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth in the morning was unbearable. (And, man: my teeth! They look like something you’d find inside a pirate’s skull.)
And it’s not just my physical appearance. In my former life, I had been very attached to my identity as a “writer who lived in New York City,” and I would proudly tell anyone who asked because I thought that it made me an exciting and interesting person to talk to. I could say things like “I had an op-ed published in the New York Times” or “I did an awesome article about betting on the bird flu for Salon.com” or “I was the top page-view leader this month thanks to a video I posted of a man getting hit in the crotch with a football.”
Ask A.J. [SLATE]
*****
“The Bear Season 3, Episode 1 Recap”
“But Season 2 will mostly be remembered for the genuinely bonkers “Fishes,” with its mind-bending cameos and the brutal emotional abuse doled out by multiple members of the Berzatto family. Most prominent: Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) alcoholic mother, Donna, played with tragic desperation by Jamie Lee Curtis, and the fork-chucking physical altercation between doomed brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) and his uncle, Lee, played by a snarling Bob Odenkirk. Christmas Eve’s feast of the seven fishes ends with a completely intoxicated Donna driving her car through the front door of the house. The whole dinner sequence is mesmerizing, but also the most upsetting ten minutes of television ever, the emotional equivalent of an Al-Anon meeting in the middle of the Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan.”
[Decider]
This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
You can also get a Sunday issue for $8 a month or $60 per year. The Sunday issue is a recovery bonanza full of gratitude lists, a study guide to my daily recovery routines, a poem I like, and more exclusive essays.
If you would like to donate to The TSB Podcast, this is where you can do that.
Or if you like someone an awful lot, you can give them a subscription.
Thank you so much for your support! Follow us on Instagram if you want more of Edith’s illustrations. We also have merch.
ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
Monday: 5:30 p.m. PT/ 8:30 p.m ET
Wednesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Thursday: (Women and non-binary meeting) 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Friday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET
Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET
Sunday: (Mental Health and Sobriety Support Group) 1:00 p.m PT/4 p.m. ET
*****
If you don't feel comfortable calling yourself an "alcoholic," that's fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, DEBT, codependency, love, loneliness, depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.
FORMAT: CROSSTALK, TOPIC MEETING
We're there for an hour, sometimes more. We'd love to have you.
Meeting ID: 874 2568 6609
PASSWORD TO ZOOM: nickfoles
A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
Elevator Music
by Henry Taylor
***********************
A tune with no more substance than the air,
perfomred a unedmater instruments,
is proper to this shortlift from the earth.
It hovers as we draw into ourselves.
and turn our reverent eyes toward the light.
that doesn't count us to our various destinies..
we're all in this together, the song says,
and later we'll descend. The melody
Is like a name we don't recall just now
that still keeps on insisting it is there.
ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN