Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "The Alcoholism Myth" with Katie Herzog

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"The Alcoholism Myth" with Katie Herzog · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, one dangerous idea that
• 0:08
  is floating around in the ether is the idea that there is such a thing as an alcoholic
• 0:14
  or an addict and that that person is contitutively different from the rest of us healthy users
• 0:20
  of the substances over which we are entirely in control.
• 0:24
  Katie Herzog is writing a book which will be released next year about her experience
• 0:28
  with alcohol and specifically with a drug that is underuse and underrecognized,
• 0:34
  but incredibly useful in helping people kick booze or at least get it under control.
• 0:40
  The drug's called Naltrexone. It changed Katie's life. I have some personal experience with it
• 0:45
  myself just because I happened to be part of a clinical trial in which it was involved.
• 0:50
  You'll hear all about that, but this is an absolute must listen for anyone who just wants to
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  get a better handle on the relationship that we have with substances that conform habits
• 1:02
  and how there might be pharmacological solutions that are being overlooked in our quest to try
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  to have some sort of deep spiritual understanding of where the whole of addiction comes from.
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  If all that sounds a little bit daunting, you need to hear Katie speak.
• 1:16
  She's a fabulous journalist. Her life was upended when she was a freelance
• 1:20
  journal in Seattle and she happened to write a piece for Seattle's progressive alternative
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  newspaper, The Stranger, about detransitioners, in other words trans people who sort of changed
• 1:31
  their minds. This was at a moment when it was incredibly taboo to do so in progressive
• 1:38
  circles and despite the fact that Katie is gay herself. She nonetheless lost dozens of friends.
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  There were enormous protests. People were burning stacks of the newspapers. She was getting hate
• 1:48
  mail. There were stickers calling her transphobic bigot and ultimately she left Seattle.
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  It was all for the best in the long run because she now co-hosts one of the most successful podcasts
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  and substacks. It's called Blocked and Reported. It's a fascinating listen that of course is with
• 2:05
  my friend Jessie Single and they dissect all kinds of internet nonsense. We don't go too much
• 2:10
  into that and I'm sure that you'll hear her on the media trial next year when she's promoting her
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  book about the topic of today's conversation but this is an early glimpse, let's just say,
• 2:21
  into a fascinating field of under-reported analysis of addiction, alcoholism and
• 2:27
  naltrexone. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Katie Herzog.
• 2:33
  Why don't you and Jessie like going on about some stupid BLT and Los Angeles or something?
• 2:36
  It wasn't a BLT, it was a beat sandwich. Yeah, right. That was very good.
• 2:41
  Tidious. Just Tidious. I mean, who? I haven't had it. Where is it? I'm going to be in LA in November again.
• 2:47
  It's a dune. It's worth, it is worth going together.
• 2:50
  Is that how, is that how your accent pronounces like a sand dune, like the movie dune,
• 2:55
  with Timothy Shalame? Dune, yeah. Yeah, do you any? I always say it. Dune, dune, dune, dune, dune.
• 3:02
  Dune, dune. You know the word that my American husband hates that Australian say the most is
• 3:07
  debut. debut. How do you say it? Debut. I always say debut. Oh, I hate it. Debut. Debut. Debut.
• 3:17
  Yeah. Debut. Katie, thank you for being here. It's lovely to finally catch up. I've kept
• 3:22
  wanting to talk to you for so many different reasons about so many different subjects. But I'm glad
• 3:27
  that this one is coming from totally left field because this is like a side of you that I don't
• 3:31
  even know about. Yeah, this is the most uncomfortable. This is truly, actually, but it's also like
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  this huge unspoken thing that's looming over everybody's lives that nobody talks about. Yeah,
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  which is, which is booze. Yeah. How did you tell me your potted history of your relationship with?
• 3:49
  Do you want to go first? Sure. I mean, regular listeners will know that I haven't drunk since 2020.
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  In the first year of the pandemic, I ice cream and drink liquor and watch Netflix as many people
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  did. And then after putting on 10 kilos, like 25 pounds, I was like, oh, I'm just going to be
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  a fat man. I'm just going to turn into a fat man. I'll turn into a fat drunk is what's happening
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  to me now. And so I quit drinking and we can go into that and we can go into the house. And I
• 4:28
  started working out and I started eating well. And like I lost 20 kilos, 50 pounds. And I,
• 4:35
  I've never been happier, Katie. It's like the real meh. It's just blasting through. But I'd had a
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  long and like arduous relationship with trying to cut back with occasionally quitting. And
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  indeed, while I was living in New York, I saw a poster on the subway, which was recruiting
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  gay men in their 20s and 30s who wanted to trial a drug called Naltraxone to highlight,
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  like I was like, I'm a 57 year old straight man. So and it was to try to cut down on drinking
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  on binge drinking in the gay community in New York. And it was a double blind placebo trial
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  run out of Columbia University, which I took part in and went on Naltraxone for six weeks or
• 5:20
  eight weeks or something. I absolutely could tell that it was a, that I got the Naltraxone
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  totally 100%. First time I popped it, I was like, oh, this is not a placebo.
• 5:30
  Yeah. And what was your experience of drinking on Naltraxone like?
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  It was funny. I remember I was living in Chelsea on 8th Avenue and my roommate and I poured
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  myself a glass of wine as I did every evening when I got home. And half an hour later, I walked
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  back into the kitchen to chat with my roommate, Erica. And she was like, she went to offer me some
• 5:52
  wine and she was like, oh, you still got some. I still had a half a glass of wine, half an hour
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  later. And that was not conscious and not normal. Yeah. Very weird. Now all about you. Okay,
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  enough about me. Go on, go on. So just give us the big picture here as I understand it is
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  we're not terribly good as a medical industry and a culture at actually grappling with the sort of
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  edge cases of alcohol dependency or addiction and understanding the tools that are actually
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  available for people to completely revolutionize their lives. We have this very old-fashioned binary
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  almost theologistic or like understanding of human brokenness when it comes to addiction that
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  is not very helpful to many of the people at the margins of whom you perhaps were one.
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  Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. So my drinking history, like a lot of people I
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  drank and I started, I had my first drink when I would think I was 12. You know, I drank
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  irregularly in high school, very regularly, very frequently in college. And then by the time I was
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  out of college, I was a full-blown barfly. I loved bars. And I really, what I really like to do
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  at that time was to go to a bar and bring a book and talk to, read for five minutes and then talk
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  to the closest alcoholic sitting beside me. And I like to do this during the day. I was always
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  a day drinker. And when you say that facetiously, like talk to the closest alcoholic next year,
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  how would you have articulated it? No, how would you have articulated it at the time though?
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  Because presumably that has, that is either facetious or it has the benefit of hindsight.
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  I would say that I was making friends. I would just, I talked to bartenders. I was much more
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  social when I was drinking. Who isn't? Right, right. That was one of the benefits.
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  And what town were you in? So I went to college in Asheville, North Carolina. And then after college,
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  I moved to Portland and continued that that trajectory. And I worked at the time I was working
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  at coffee shops, some morning jobs. And I would be off work by 2 p.m. And I would go to the bar.
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  And in Portland, Portland has, this is sort of odd for Portland. And it might not still be like this.
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  But Portland had big strip club culture. And some of the bars that open early were strip clubs.
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  So my friends and I would get off, and I'm talking like feminist and queers, we would get off
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  of work and go to the strip club, which now I don't think would probably happen.
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  It would certainly be an HR issue if it did.
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  Yes, yes. So I continued that trajectory for like 20 years, basically.
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  I drank a lot and drank COVID. And I went, my drinking game in waves, right? And I was never,
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  I was never homeless. I did do, I did do some stupid shit. Like at one point, I burned
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  on a porch. And I did end up in the hospital twice in my drinking career once for alcohol,
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  poisoning in college, once for a bike rack. And I got a lot of bike racks during this period.
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  I wasn't much of a drunk driver, but I did get a lot of bike racks in my 20s. A bike rack,
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  you mean, you would, you would drunkenly ride a bicycle and crash into things. Because I'm
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  responsible. I wasn't driving. Right. Very good. I like it. Hurt only myself. Yes.
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  And I did this for a really long time. And it's a very Portland thing to do, isn't it?
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  To get into a bicycle crash when you're like, no one in Texas has ever been drunk cycling.
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  They're, yeah, they're driving trucks. Yeah. Although I did do some of that too. I have to admit.
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  And then this was in various different cities. I didn't live in Portland that long. I bounced
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  around a lot. That was one thing that I think alcoholics do to try to get control is move.
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  You know, you sort of go and burn your bridges in one time and then move to the next. I did some of
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  that. And you know, I still despite just explain that to me. You go and embarrass yourself and
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  make decisions of people off and then you leave. Right. Okay. Give me the next down.
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  Because right. Okay. Yeah. I had kind of coded your alcohol use as happening within the context
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  of like a community of drinkers who were all kind of supporting each other's terrible habits
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  and terrible decisions. No, that's definitely true. And I always knew that this was a problem.
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  I haven't been in denial about my about my drinking since I was 24. I mean, it would come and go
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  in waves. You know, most drinkers, most people who even fit the DSM diagnosis for alcohol use disorder,
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  70% of people who fall somewhere on that spectrum. And it's a really wide spectrum from, you know,
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  the wine mom who every once in a while drinks too much to the wine mom who's lost her house.
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  It's so it's a huge of vast spectrum of problematic drinking behaviors. And for 70% of people who
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  fall on that spectrum, they just get better on their own. It's called natural recovery and it's
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  it's incredibly common. And there were different parts of my stages of my drinking where I had
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  could sort of convince myself that I was growing out of it because most people in fact do grow out
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  of drinking there. And when you say they get better on their own, do we know what active will
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  and volition is required? Because it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that just sort of
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  bleeds away naturally, is it? Or is it at some point? But for example, smoking, right? I mean,
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  you know, a majority of smokers quit, I think, still. But it doesn't just, that don't just drift
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  away from it. Like, there comes a point at which they wake up with a mouth that tastes like a
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  an ashtray. And they're like, screw this. I don't want to wake up one morning and cough up blood
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  and then realize that I'm going to die. And they do it. They manage to do it. Is that a similar?
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  Can we map that? Do we know onto the experience of people who drink too much or?
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  I don't know if that's, I don't know the answer to that. My guess is that for a significant
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  percentage of this population, life just gets in the way of your drinking. So it's different
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  from smoking in the sense that, you know, and with both addictions, you can wake up feeling like
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  shit, but drinking impacts your ability to take care of your kids, to get to work on time.
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  So things happen in your life. You decide that your career is more important than
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  parting with your friends. And you just mature. You just gradually grow out of that phase of life.
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  That's what happens to most people. I mean, most of the people I was drinking with in college
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  did not struggle to moderate their drinking. And most of them didn't quit. They just gradually
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  drank less because they were growing up. And I was sort of stuck in this place where it was all,
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  there was no moderation. And I had no interest in moderating. And my drinking came in waves. And
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  there were years that I drank more and years that I drank less. And it didn't, it got in the way
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  of my career in some sense. Like I didn't get serious about finding a job, finding a career until I was
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  30. And I'm still waiting. Do what? I'm still waiting to find a career. Well, you might find
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  it someday. You might need a corporate coach, a life coach. I'm good. I like not having a job.
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  Yeah, I do too. And podcasting is definitely the way to go. So in that sense, it took me a while
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  to figure out to start to get serious about finding a career. And once I decided what I wanted to do
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  and I had some goals, my drinking sort of naturally upped. I moved to different towns for different
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  jobs. I was more serious about not getting fired from my jobs. I got into different sorts of
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  relationships, more mature romantic relationships, things like that. So my drinking didn't come in
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  your own waves. But I think the thing that the alcoholic experience that I had, even even times
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  when I wasn't drinking as much. And I'm curious to see if this is your experience as well.
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  I always in the back of my head knew that I would drink again. So I went through, there were lots
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  of times when I said, like, I'm gonna quit. I am done. I am not doing this again. I knew I always
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  knew that I would start drinking again. And for me, the thing that was overwhelming about my
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  relationship with alcohol was this inner monologue, this constant obsession with drinking and with
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  quitting drinking. So the only thing, it was like this voice in the back of my head that never
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  went away. And the only thing that would quiet that voice was the act of drinking. And then of
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  course, that just starts the whole cycle over and over again. So I think a lot of when we talk
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  about addiction, oftentimes there's a focus on the physical effects, you know, the shakes,
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  what it does to your body, all of the various diseases that alcohol causes. But for me,
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  the mental obsession was by far the worst part, just not being able to really focus on anything
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  else because in the back of my mind, I was always thinking about when I was gonna drink next
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  or thinking about how I needed to quit. And so COVID, I got laid off from my job at COVID.
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  Can I just pause there and note something before I forget it because I think it's a really good
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  point that people who routinely consume addictive substances are unaware of that the stress
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  about drinking too much or quitting or like not getting your next fix of alcohol or you've
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  cigarette or whatever it is. When you're routinely consuming the substance, you assume that
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  if you were cold turkey, you would constantly be in that state of panic and anxious desire. And
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  that like you'd rather die than just live the rest of your life feeling that way. But you don't
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  realize that that state of mind is a function of the fact that you're habitually consuming that
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  substance. That's the addiction. Once you're exactly that's the addiction. Once you're no longer
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  habitually consuming the addictive substance, that kind of craving and like sense of itchy anxiety
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  goes away. It's like we all see it if you just turn the volume up on how severe the addictive
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  substance is and you talk about fentanyl or something like that. We all know that the person who's
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  smoking fentanyl who thinks that they're curing the problem that they feel through the fentanyl pipe
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  is obviously misguided. I mean the fentanyl pipe is what caused the feeling, the bad feeling that
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  they're trying to fix with the fentanyl. Like we can see that cycle from the outside. It's just
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  harder to understand when you're inside it and the drug is less pernicious and culturally accepted.
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  That's a really good way of putting it. And for me being in that mental place where the idea of
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  living in that state of craving, living in that state of desire, I thought that was going to be
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  the rest of my life. If I quit, if I quit right now, if I start going to AA or whatever, if I quit
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  right now, I'm going to be living in this state forever. And I could not conceptualize living like
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  that. And so I didn't and that kept me drinking much longer than I should have. And I think this is
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  one of the problems with the way that we talk about addiction now is that people think it's either
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  on or it's off. Either you have a problem or you go cold turkey in your apps and then only for
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  the rest of your life. And that's changing. But for the last 50 years longer in the US, that has
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  sort of been the at least popular conception of what your options are. You have alcoholic drinking,
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  you drink so much that eventually you lose your house, your spouse, your job, your career, your
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  life, you go to jail, all of the batch that happens or you go to AA, you go to rehab, you go to AA,
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  and abstinence is your only way forward. And so that's not actually true. And I've been learning a
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  lot about the history of addiction over the past couple of months. And this idea that there are
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  only two paths out of addiction is or really one path out of addiction is just totally false. And
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  over the history of so over the last really 100, 150 years, there have been many, many,
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  many different ways for people to try to either get sober or moderate their drinking. And a lot of
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  them we just don't know about. And some of them, you know, there's some of them are more effective
• 18:12
  than other other treatments. But there are lots of treatments. And so what I did is take now
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  trucks and I did this this medically assisted treatment. But I also learned in the course of
• 18:25
  of the last couple months that, you know, a version therapy can be really effective. And it has
• 18:30
  never been so there's different ways of going about it. But basically you make the consequences
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  for drinking really unpleasant. So there was a you get Jesse single to slap you across the face
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  every time you take a sip of one or you take some ibacax, something that makes you throw up
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  right. And you drink whiskey. And the association becomes really negative. I went on that
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  thing for a while as well while I was in New York. That's the interviews.
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  Interviews. Yeah, that's right. As an experiment. And found it quite unpleasant because I must be
• 19:05
  quite sensitive to it. They thought because you know, I would eat a Thai meal and I'd
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  I'd I'd get flushed and feel nauseous because there was just a tiny little bit of I don't know
• 19:13
  rice wine vinegar or something in the in the meal. And then it takes it takes like 28 days or 14
• 19:20
  days or something to clear out of your system completely. So because I only wanted to stop for a
• 19:24
  little while and then wanted to be able to drink, I could only just keep thinking about it.
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  It didn't resolve the pro the fundamental paradox, which is that you have to somehow yeah,
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  you have to say it's not that you want to not drink. It's that you want to not want to drink.
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  Exactly. And so you have to find some way of helping your brain to understand that all of the
• 19:43
  things that it thinks thinks that it's getting from alcohol are actually just out effects of the
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  addiction itself. This is what now what is so brilliant about Naltrexone. So Naltrexone is an
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  opioid blocker. And the way it works is it binds to the receptors in your brain, the opioid
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  receptors in your brain. And it essentially stops your brain from getting these good endorphins
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  and getting flooded with dopamine so that when you drink on Naltrexone and that's the key.
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  There's different ways to take Naltrexone. The way I did it is called the Sinclair method.
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  And you take the pill, you wait an hour until it's metabolized in your system and then you drink.
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  And you're supposed to drink like as you're cutting down on drinking the whole point is to drink.
• 20:24
  You don't try to try to not drink yet but have a drink. So there's different ways of doing it.
• 20:31
  The way that I did it the Sinclair method is very specific. You take the pill. It's very simple
• 20:35
  but it's it's almost deceptively simple. You take the pill one hour before you drink every time
• 20:41
  that you drink. You do not take the pill when you are not planning on drinking and on days when you
• 20:46
  don't when you don't drink. And so the idea is that on days when you're not drinking your opioid
• 20:51
  blockers are sorry your opioid receptors are not blocked and you do other things to sort of create
• 20:56
  a natural sense of well-being and create new new pathways in your brain to essentially enjoy
• 21:03
  things like conversation or exercise or good food or whatever. Okay yeah my in my trial it was just
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  one pill a day regardless and don't pay any attention to your drinking don't do anything else.
• 21:12
  Okay so did they did they tell you specifically not to drink or did they just not see anything about it?
• 21:16
  They just said nothing they just said live your life normally and just to just write down you know
• 21:20
  you're drinking and we'll just map whether or not there's any change without trying to do anything
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  just one cohort has the has the naltrexone the other cohort doesn't but also as I've learned
• 21:29
  from listening to you it matters when in the day you take the naltrexone I hadn't realized that
• 21:33
  the half-life was so quick so I was taking it in the morning. Well I think it depends that
• 21:39
  it's less clear to me now over the research I've done over the last couple months that that is
• 21:43
  important. Okay. Most like a clinician today who's well-versed on naltrexone would probably say
• 21:49
  take it in the afternoon. If you're drinking you know take it if you usually start drinking
• 21:54
  at 5 p.m. take it at 3 take it at the same time every day and there is some confusion here so
• 21:59
  this there's lots of different ways to take this drug. The Sinclair method is named after this
• 22:04
  guy David Sinclair who was a clinician from the US but he'd spent most of his career in Finland and
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  he was adamant that there's only one correct he was open-minded but but basically believes that
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  there's only one correct way to do this and this is to drink on the pill wait one take the pill
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  wait one hour then drink only do it on your on your drinking days this is called the targeted
• 22:23
  use of naltrexone and the goal from the goal according to his writings is to reach what's called
• 22:30
  pharmacological extinction and this is based on the principles of operand conditioning and you
• 22:37
  essentially drink yourself to a place over repeated exposure to naltrexone and naltrexone as
• 22:44
  you mentioned it it takes the how would you how would you describe it it makes you sort of forget
• 22:52
  what that you're drinking will tell you explain the first time you had it what did you talk to
• 22:57
  us about that so the first time I found out about this in probably 2018 when I read an article
• 23:04
  on the Atlantic about this by Gabrielle Glazer and I went and got a prescription and I took it
• 23:12
  and I felt horrible and just to clarify you got a prescription from where did you go to a clinic
• 23:17
  or was it just your family doctor or I went to my family doctor yeah this is the person who
• 23:21
  knows you the not really I mean this is the United States we have our doctor actually weeks before
• 23:26
  they move on and okay and she did she know about the drug no she knew she knew about naltrexone
• 23:33
  so naltrexone has been FDA approved for the treatment of alcohol abuse disorder or alcohol use
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  disorder since 1994 it was initially developed or it was initially developed to treat opioid addiction
• 23:44
  but FDA approved for over what years it 30 years now 30 years it's been FDA approved for alcohol use
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  disorder and she if I remember correctly she'd heard of naltrexone didn't have much experience
• 23:58
  prescribing it and she wasn't an addiction specialist she was just a family doctor but she agreed
• 24:02
  she'd never heard of the Sinclair method but she agreed go for it whatever and the first time I
• 24:08
  took it in 2018 I had a pretty negative reaction like nausea headache I just felt terrible and after
• 24:18
  that experience I like choked down half a beer and was like okay I thought this was going to be
• 24:21
  a miracle cure I'm never taking this again and I put it away for four years until COVID and then
• 24:27
  it was like oh I have to my drinking is getting really out of control I need to do something here
• 24:32
  and I started again and it just pulls what did out of control look like um so it didn't it looked
• 24:38
  very different than it did in my 20s like out of control in my 20s meant drinking three four
• 24:47
  locus and a bottle of wine and climbing a crane and walking out onto the onto the arm drinking
• 24:53
  you know out of control in my 20s was dancing topless with a horse head mask on on stage I did that
• 24:59
  quite a bit I really hope this video of this Katie there's not I've had it all day it's great
• 25:05
  from the internet you know drinking uh in my late 30s and early 40s during COVID very different
• 25:13
  style of drinking and what I would do and this is I was shameful part of it is that I did this
• 25:19
  totally in secret so nobody knew including my wife so what I would do is I would wait for her to
• 25:25
  go to work she was a nurse she is a nurse who was working in Seattle and uh you know when a craving
• 25:33
  hit I read which was usually around noon I would go down to the store and I would get a six pack of
• 25:39
  cheap shitty beer of tall boys and I would sit there I was like sit on my deck and sometimes work
• 25:47
  but mostly drink by myself and like like a Twitter I mean you make it sound like shameful and
• 25:55
  pathetic but it's quite amazing how many people I think will hear that and be like well from
• 26:01
  another perspective all you were doing was like chillin out I mean it's kicking back that's the
• 26:07
  way I rationalized it to myself like I was like you know that when when it got to a period where I
• 26:12
  realized that there was something that I was going to have to deal with I had I didn't have a
• 26:16
  day job I was doing the kind of itinerant you know I guess hustle the hustle of working in this
• 26:25
  business and you know looking for new gigs and pitching things to people and taking meetings and
• 26:29
  stuff and on days when I didn't have meetings we were living in Los Angeles and my husband would be
• 26:35
  at work and did it be like oh well you know I don't have any more calls this afternoon hey it's
• 26:40
  12 30 I mean it's lunchtime there's a bottle of wine in the fridge it's a nice you know the the
• 26:44
  French do it why wouldn't you you know it's all myself that you know all right you know like there's
• 26:49
  a bar nearby where I where they do a good pasta and they have like a lunch special so I'll go for
• 26:55
  the lunch special and sure you can have a martini before the pasta and yeah they're going to give me
• 27:00
  a second one because they know they know me here like it's very insidious it is and that it sounds
• 27:08
  fun when you put it that way but for me this had start being fun it was a compulsion
• 27:14
  and the thing was I couldn't stop so every day and I was doing this in secret right so I was hiding
• 27:19
  alcohol I didn't want my wife to know about this I was stashing the recycling you know the cans
• 27:25
  in the bottom of the recycling and if she found them blaming him on the neighbor oh you know
• 27:29
  might must be drinking again hiding it from his life so I was lying about it that's one thing yeah
• 27:34
  but it also it took up all my mental space this was all I could think about was satisfying this
• 27:42
  compulsion and then how the compulsion was killing me and I was drinking way less during this
• 27:48
  period than I did in my heaviest drinking days in my 20s but I was still drinking you know six tall
• 27:54
  boys a beer a day I'm 130 okay 135 pounds and that's how many out that's 16 times what's 16 times six
• 28:05
  I mean even if I did that 96 I think even if I did that maths I would have no idea what an
• 28:10
  ounce is I'm sorry no one knows what a fluid ounce is Katie it's a lot of liquid it's a lot of liquid
• 28:15
  it's probably like a half is a tall boy like a half liter I guess it'd be a large can it's a pint
• 28:22
  yeah half a liter yeah roughly more than half a liter yeah okay yeah so six pints of cheap
• 28:28
  beard day right yeah it's just a lot it it's a lot of liquid yeah you know and it's it's my health was
• 28:36
  my health wasn't great it was taking up the space like the time that I could have spent man you
• 28:41
  must have been pissing a lot I mean now I was thinking about visualizing that quantity because most
• 28:46
  people graduate to wine or liquor if you want to consume that much alcohol why are you drinking beer
• 28:52
  because beer is lower alcohol and what I liked is the act of drinking like it wasn't just about
• 28:58
  getting drunk it was the acts of drinking and so the lower the alcohol content the more I could
• 29:03
  consume of it I see and yes I was I mean I should have I should have been wearing a diaper I could
• 29:08
  have just done all my drinking on the toilet I was peeing so much I'm sure when I did your
• 29:13
  podcast last time I probably had to leave like four times and go I don't recall but it's
• 29:18
  entirely possible yeah yeah so it was just it was a really kind of shameful dark secret that I had
• 29:27
  and how did you rationalize the secrecy because I'm trying to think back
• 29:32
  rationalize it I knew it was bad I just did it anyway right that's the thing about about
• 29:38
  alcoholics and I'm comfortable calling myself that I don't really consider myself an alcoholic now
• 29:42
  because I cured myself but it's probably a controversial statement but I'm you know I was drinking
• 29:52
  alcoholically I struggled with this for 20 years there's a history of alcoholism in my family
• 29:58
  my extended family it's pretty clear that I had all from the very beginning it's pretty clear
• 30:03
  that I had all of the all the sort of risk factors you know I started I started drinking really young
• 30:09
  and I drank often and I had a genetic predisposition so exposure and genes I had I had both I
• 30:17
  didn't have the sort of trauma that a lot of people sort of assume that alcoholics I'll have I
• 30:21
  didn't have that I just really liked to drink and I did it so much I got addicted to it I think
• 30:26
  that's a really interesting point to just dwell on for a moment so that can land for people that
• 30:30
  like there is a belief culturally that when you're when you have an addiction you're trying to
• 30:35
  fill some deep hole and that until you address that hole until you spend years in therapy trying
• 30:42
  to do work yeah doing that you've got to do the work maybe then you're always gonna well maybe
• 30:49
  yeah or maybe you also just fell into a trap like a biological psychological you know psychiatric
• 30:58
  neurological trap yeah where like I think that was it's got its claws into your head and
• 31:04
  I think that was kind of the case for me as well now my grandfather was an alcoholic you know
• 31:11
  I come from a long line of Irish New Zealand you know you're not New Zealand in your case I
• 31:18
  remember it but yeah I mean thank God I come from a country where drinking is an incredibly
• 31:28
  intrinsic part of the culture in Australia I was living in a city which is a wash with booze in
• 31:33
  a community the gay community which was you know a wash with booze and you know grew up in a
• 31:39
  household where mom and dad would pour a glass of wine as soon as they got home and that was
• 31:43
  totally normal they weren't at all drunks but you know two or three glasses of wine and night
• 31:47
  was normal so it's very easy to just like rationalize that and then allow yourself to kind of slip
• 31:53
  down the slope that you don't that you're unaware of and it may be asking too much of us and maybe
• 31:59
  too daunting a task to expect that everybody to whom that happens has to suddenly spend years
• 32:03
  doing the work and trying to delve into what their relationship was with their father like maybe
• 32:08
  just don't drink I think that this idea that there's that we all have some sort of trauma or
• 32:14
  hold a fill or there's some underlying cause for our addiction besides exposure biology random
• 32:20
  chance the choices that you make I think it can be sort of insidious because that's the sort of
• 32:28
  thing that keeps people from from quitting you think I'm gonna have to it's gonna be work it's
• 32:33
  gonna be a lot of work I'm gonna have to do the fearless moral inventory I'm gonna have to go
• 32:38
  make amends to people I don't want to make amends and in fact I think that the people who I
• 32:45
  who I who like deserve for me to make amends to them I don't think they want to hear from me
• 32:49
  also my amends is not making amends so yeah that's right I mean in very clearly some people fall
• 32:57
  into that category very clearly but I don't think I fall into that category not everyone I mean
• 33:02
  I think it's also probably before we get back to your first experience with Naltrexone I mean
• 33:07
  when it worked I want to hear that but it's also just worth thinking about addiction and you
• 33:12
  use the word alcoholism but I really think there are probably four different types of drinkers
• 33:19
  at least there are the people like my husband for whom drinking is just not an issue like
• 33:25
  he'll drink and then he won't drink and like some he can either drink or not and like they might
• 33:29
  have two drinks a month or like three drinks a month or something and you know for it's like my
• 33:36
  relationship to cake like you know I can have cake if there's cake going around and we're going
• 33:42
  to get home and have cake no I don't want I don't want to come home and have a slice of cake like
• 33:46
  it doesn't have it hold any attraction to me this is this is my relationship with running
• 33:54
  I have a more austere relationship to running I will not run I decline your invitation to run
• 34:00
  Katie no natural highs here no that's right but yeah I mean I can take a leave cake and same with
• 34:07
  some people with alcohol and then at the other end of the spectrum there's just fully fledged
• 34:10
  alcoholics and like the moment they had alcohol the first time they knew that it was the best
• 34:14
  thing that's ever happened to them and they can't ever be expected to try some without tumbling
• 34:19
  immediately into self-loathing and you know blackouts and then in between there are probably like
• 34:25
  two spheres I think one of which is kind of maybe like the Katie one which is like alcoholic
• 34:35
  adjacent and like definitely having serious consequences but probably doesn't need a huge
• 34:42
  amount of interrogation beyond just addressing the physiological dependency and then closer into
• 34:49
  that is where I think probably a majority of my associates lie and where I probably lie
• 34:56
  which is you drink pretty much every day you drink more than you should you know like but it's so
• 35:07
  bound up in what it means to have a good time what it means to wind down what it means to
• 35:12
  socialize what it means to relax what it means to treat yourself that like the alcohol is piggybacking
• 35:20
  on almost every positive experience that you have and the idea of not having that is like
• 35:28
  just alien like why would you want to do that and yeah you know what doesn't land for this
• 35:32
  community of people myself included is that there are billions of Muslims and Hindus who have
• 35:38
  pretty fun lives yeah you know so I I follow this group of Mormon influencers on Instagram
• 35:49
  and this really this is you know a population of people who our lives are incredibly different most
• 35:56
  of them live in Hawaii they're very attractive they all get married when they're like 20 because
• 36:01
  they want to have sex they have kids when they're 22 start having them right their content they're
• 36:08
  like in their influencers the content creators I guess we have that in common I'm also the sales
• 36:12
  amazingly hot I want to find there's so like guys you're going to Maui and being with a bunch of
• 36:18
  20-year-old Mormons fabulous they don't cuss they don't drink coffee they don't drink alcohol
• 36:27
  and they have a good time and watching like they you know they surf they play party games they do
• 36:35
  all they go to concerts all of the stuff that I'm doing and they bang each other an incredible amount
• 36:41
  and they squirt out beautiful airy and Mormon babies and their lives look amazing to me and of
• 36:48
  course this is Instagram or whatever it's all filtered through it's all lies but these people
• 36:52
  do have a good time and I genuinely did not think until I actually quit drinking I did not think
• 36:58
  it was possible to have a good time to go to a party and have a good time sober yeah it did not
• 37:04
  seem possible to me and now I've done it plenty of times and guess what I was right it's terrible
• 37:10
  it's fine it's fun but there is I will acknowledge I will concede that there is one that that is
• 37:16
  actually one I think everything is better not drinking except for one thing which is it used to
• 37:24
  I used to think that it was a lot more fun being at the messy end of a party yeah and that was
• 37:30
  that I do miss that like I do miss the a loop because now I can see how not fun it is for people
• 37:37
  to be black out drunk and embarrassing themselves but when you're in that I do miss that I miss
• 37:43
  but there's nothing wrong with going to a party for three hours instead of ten hours yeah like the
• 37:49
  first three hours are fun and then I just leave now and I leave everyone else at the at the bar when
• 37:54
  they're getting to that point at which they kind of smelly and slurry and I do I must say I must
• 37:59
  confess that's the one thing that I miss about drinking that weird zone of like chaos yeah I mean
• 38:08
  I think it also helps you know okay so however you when you actually got sober 40 40 okay so me too
• 38:15
  and it really it was really helpful that like if I had been trying to do this at 25 I think it
• 38:21
  would have been really hard but oh you know when you're 40 you've aged into a different stage of
• 38:27
  life you're gay man so probably not no it's true I had kids I mean I got married and had kids
• 38:32
  and like bought a house and shit yeah totally and so when I go to parties now the party typically ends
• 38:39
  at 10 p.m you know it's just it's a lot easier to be the person who's drinking soda water when nobody's
• 38:46
  doing keg stands like the goal of the end of the night isn't to go isn't to like find a stranger
• 38:51
  and get laid which is also I think a huge part of what drinking was about for me in my younger
• 38:56
  years and for everybody was about pairing off and when that part of when that stage of life ends
• 39:04
  it's you know in some ways I miss it but there's no coming there's no that's true life has different
• 39:11
  phases I wouldn't want to be in I mean I drive past you know the clubs that I used to go to in my
• 39:18
  late teens and early 20s and I see the lines out the door and I'm like what did I why do I think
• 39:24
  that was so exciting like I used to be one of those kids like I was so excited about going in I
• 39:28
  look I peer inside and like it's all dark purple light and duff duff duff and I'm like I can't
• 39:33
  think about anything worse let me go to my cat it's so terrible which is good yeah because the people
• 39:39
  who don't grow out of that who don't enter who don't gracefully enter the next stage of life like
• 39:44
  we know those people you've seen those people it's a little pathetic and they tend to die on yeah
• 39:49
  and yeah so I think I think in COVID because COVID was so isolating you know a lot of people
• 39:57
  drank more but I think in some ways it was also a good time to quit because all of the social
• 40:02
  stuff the bars were closed I mean I think you guys weren't technically allowed to leave your
• 40:07
  houses at all Sydney was not nearly as bad as as Mel there was but there was a long period in which
• 40:16
  things were a lot more free which that never landed on a Tucker Carlson's show but there was
• 40:22
  there was a lot there was a lot after the after the initial lockdowns they managed to actually
• 40:29
  eliminate the you know the community spread of the virus completely for quite a long period of time
• 40:34
  so while everybody was you know huddled indoors in the in the northern winter of 2020 to 2021 as
• 40:40
  Delta was gone that was that Delta I think so anyway we were all out surfing and I'm gonna
• 40:48
  gonna bars but yes that ended when no I think that ended when Delta happened actually yeah that's
• 40:54
  right and then they couldn't contain this bread anymore but yes it was it it was a time where
• 41:00
  there was definitely an opportunity for everyone's worst instincts to come out and for pathologies
• 41:06
  to emerge right because it was incredibly emotionally intense and there was no social you know
• 41:12
  you couldn't lean on friends yeah and for people who were already involved in recovery communities
• 41:18
  you couldn't go to that third place so I'm assuming there was a lot of relapse also happening
• 41:23
  at that time and so your experience with recovery did you try 12 steps I tried it various times
• 41:32
  over the years so I went to my first 12 step meeting when I was 24 I think and that was a disaster
• 41:39
  there was one meeting one woman at the meeting and she was very large and she was wearing a t-shirt
• 41:45
  with a teddy bear that had googly eyes over her nipples and she creeped me out I love that you still
• 41:50
  remember this dick I remember because I remember because I wrote it down that's why I remember this
• 41:56
  and so I and and just to explain when you're 24 why do you think you're going to an alcoholic
• 42:00
  anonymous meeting because I'm very sick I'm going to have to get used to talking about this
• 42:11
  because I have a book coming out so this is good so this is this is good practice I'm honestly
• 42:16
  I honestly have to say I'm super proud of you and you have given me like permission to be more
• 42:20
  open about it myself because I've always I've kind of just thought oh you know it's probably
• 42:24
  useful for for some people but it's also a little bit like you know you don't need to bore
• 42:29
  everybody with it but I think it's really useful what you're doing to like okay well thank you all
• 42:34
  take that I'm very brave so I was in a I was in a relationship my first like live in relationship
• 42:40
  with my first serious girlfriend when I was 24 and she found out some let's say a cheated
• 42:48
  honor just just like hypothetically a cheat honor she found out about it she came to my job
• 42:54
  and she I had just started working at it this was in Portland and I had just started working
• 42:58
  at this coffee shop like two days before and she came in and she punched me in the face over the
• 43:02
  over the counter and then she went back to our house and threw all of my shit onto the it was like
• 43:08
  a movie like through all of my stuff yeah yeah onto the yard so I was quickly rendered both
• 43:14
  jobless and homeless did you tell her it was like a movie I mean if that happened I would be like
• 43:18
  come on be more original this is stupid what are you doing did you see this in a movie
• 43:24
  like no she I said whoops and so that was the first it was like my choices in that moment were
• 43:34
  like okay you're either a terrible person or you're an alcoholic and and at first I was like
• 43:40
  maybe I'm just a terrible person you don't have to quit drinking and I sort of waffled on
• 43:45
  that for a little while because I would have rather had been just a like a sociopath willing
• 43:51
  to hurt this person I deeply loved then an alcoholic because if I was an alcoholic that meant
• 43:56
  that I would have to quit drinking and I could not imagine that and in fact I didn't quit for another
• 44:00
  15 years but so that was the first okay so you go there thinking because on my first time I went
• 44:06
  to an AA meeting I was just like what I'm just curious like I want to see what these broken people
• 44:13
  are doing because I don't have a problem but I'm sure but they do so let's from a journalistic
• 44:18
  perspective that's good to take some yeah I think it was I think it was probably like that when
• 44:21
  I first went to a gay bar as well it was like I mean you know sure I'm into guys who isn't right
• 44:27
  I mean everybody is on some level so let's see what the fags are up to you know oh I happened
• 44:33
  to take one home and same with AA it's like you know there was a kind of you know curiosity
• 44:38
  component to it which was able to keep me at arms distance and I'm interested in the fact that
• 44:42
  you keep using the word alcoholic as well because I still I'm not crazy about that word because I
• 44:47
  think it's a way of I mean sure if you want to own it that's great but it's also it also gets
• 44:51
  used as a way of kind of othering and like pathologizing patterns of behavior that are really quite
• 44:58
  widespread and yeah yeah and clinicians don't use the term anymore I like it because I think it
• 45:03
  has sort of a nice ring and it's better than like I don't like the person first language like
• 45:06
  person suffering from alcohol no sure it's too it's too wordy I like that I like drunk I like
• 45:14
  an ebriot that sort of old school yeah yeah so that was my first my first sort of like aha moment
• 45:21
  was after I'd gotten caught doing something terrible right and AA seemed like what I mean once
• 45:28
  you were there when you walked out of the meeting what were you thinking I went to a bar right
• 45:32
  away yeah it just seemed I mean and there was literally one other this one creepy woman was the
• 45:36
  only person at the meeting it wasn't a true oh I see a experience and then I kept going
• 45:40
  and went back a few times to different meetings where there was more people and when I would leave
• 45:44
  these meetings I felt what I mostly felt was resentment because people in these meetings would talk
• 45:49
  about how much better their lives were and I I thought they were lying it just it was inconceivable
• 45:55
  to me that your life could be better without alcohol I could not I was like imagining life without
• 46:01
  oxygen I couldn't imagine it or their lives must have really sucked in some other way I remember
• 46:06
  that as well like I mean yeah of course your life is better because you were a fucking horrible
• 46:10
  drunk like you went to a fun in control drunk like me right and so I went to meetings often on over
• 46:17
  the years sort of depending on which friend was experimenting with sobriety at which time and I
• 46:24
  would go along with meetings but I was very resistant to AA I would never I never followed the steps
• 46:31
  I never got a sponsor and I didn't and frankly I didn't want to quit drinking and I was incredibly
• 46:38
  persistent and maintaining that I could at some point continue to drink normally I just
• 46:44
  I never could I found the whole narrative of the thing completely topsy turvy yeah I mean I'm
• 46:49
  sure it clearly works for some people and I went to a bunch of different meetings with at
• 46:54
  different places and like some were better than others and a good friend of mine who was a work
• 46:58
  colleague um she was sober and she invited me along and her meetings were were perfectly fun
• 47:04
  and perfectly fine but there were others that I would just that I just went to out of interest that
• 47:10
  like the amount of self-indulgent pain and suffering and brokenness I was like these aren't my
• 47:17
  people like I'm a pretty chipper guy like I'm kind of I don't think that I'm I struck me as
• 47:24
  weird that you would want to confess your own powerlessness when you're in a context of wanting
• 47:29
  to assert power and self-control and like giving yourself up to a higher power and like it just seemed
• 47:39
  so like come join me in the gutter and let's all mope no thanks yeah I felt the same way about
• 47:47
  this idea that you had to admit that you were powerless which is I actually was powerless like
• 47:52
  and I met that now but I but I want to be clean power powerless about a whole bunch of things
• 47:57
  I mean I'm powerless about my ability to not overeat but I'm not totally powerless because
• 48:05
  obviously I'm not a massively fat man and like I'm powerless not to not want to go to the gym
• 48:12
  sometimes but I have the power to surmount the powerlessness because I do go to the gym even
• 48:18
  when I don't want to right and like I do resist the occasional craving to have a cigarette
• 48:24
  even though I was powerless over the fact of the addiction it's like it to me it all just seemed
• 48:30
  like word games it's like yeah powerless if you say you powerless and then when you stop doing
• 48:35
  the thing guess what you're not you're not powerless anymore yeah yeah I never I never stuck for me
• 48:42
  but I can see the value in it and I've come to believe that so reading about the history of
• 48:50
  the history of treatments for addiction the same thing shows up over and over again throughout
• 48:55
  the history which is this idea of peer support and mutual aid that didn't start with Bill Wilson
• 49:01
  an A that started decades before but this idea that people experiencing some sort of unique
• 49:08
  maybe it's addiction maybe it's anorexia something like that although anorexia maybe
• 49:13
  what you don't want is anorexia is actually getting together and like competing
• 49:16
  it's gonna be this gonna be yeah maybe not that one but yeah people experiencing at least
• 49:21
  this particular addiction coming together and talking about it does work for a lot of people
• 49:28
  and it's not something that I benefited from or it's not something that I think I needed really
• 49:34
  because I don't want to do the fear of moral inventory I'm not a particularly introspective person
• 49:39
  uh but for some people it obviously saves their lives you know and there's been a lot of debate
• 49:45
  over the effectiveness of AA but I think it's hard to put a number up like a quantity on the number
• 49:51
  of people who walk into a room and are still sober 10 years later it's it's hard to do that
• 49:57
  and it's also extraordinary that the medical establishment is still so confused and under trained
• 50:03
  and reliant on the mythologies about AA and that you know any solution to that is not just
• 50:12
  accept the powerlessness and pursue sobriety without actually addressing the high that the uh
• 50:20
  that you think that the drug is giving you like seems to be there's just a capturing of the uh
• 50:26
  like my doctors didn't know anything about right any of this they told me to go to a therapist
• 50:32
  and then the therapist like told me to um I think they were you know count the number of
• 50:37
  glasses of wine that I was having and like be more mindful about my drinking.
• 50:41
  Drink a glass of water but drink a glass of water I mean thanks a lot as long as you still think
• 50:45
  that the thing is an elixir of happiness all of that is window dressing yeah so I think this is
• 50:52
  changing so medical education at least in the US and probably in Australia because everything we do
• 50:57
  you do slightly worse except sunshine so medical for decades medical education if your general
• 51:06
  like family practitioner would have had zero hours of training on addiction zero hours and like
• 51:13
  you had to be a specialist a psychiatric specialist to know anything about about addiction
• 51:18
  and that's changing so now most med students will go through a psychiatric rotation or clerkship
• 51:26
  and within those clerkships they do learn about diagnosing preventing assessing for things
• 51:32
  like alcohol use disorder and for what is now called MAT which is medication assisted treatment
• 51:38
  things like naltrexin and this has been changing gradually over decades but the thing that has really
• 51:44
  I think the thing that has really uh force this evolution to become a little bit more rapid
• 51:53
  is the opioid crisis because now the opioid opioids kill a lot fewer people than alcohol does
• 52:00
  and have for decades alcohol oh yes alcohol is still much more deadly than then opioids are
• 52:07
  but it has forced medicine to rethink who should be doing assessing who should be there needs
• 52:12
  to be first line treatment and that should be the family doctor yeah so so the next generation of
• 52:17
  doctors coming up are going to have way better training than the doctor I saw in 2018 or the doctors
• 52:22
  that you saw more more recently so when you when you went back to naltrexin how did that happen
• 52:28
  and what did you feel I still had that same the same like 29 and a half pills in my in my bathroom
• 52:35
  that I've been keeping for four years so I didn't have to go get a new prescription and so I was
• 52:41
  really mindful about it and I had joins Facebook groups for the Sinclair Method specifically for
• 52:48
  the Sinclair Method and in general I would not say that people should be getting medical advice from
• 52:53
  Facebook except it's about vaccines that's fine but they should be going to Gerard and spot counts
• 53:01
  but these Facebook groups were way the people in these groups are way more knowledgeable than my own
• 53:06
  clinician and I did eventually go tell my doctor get another prescription for naltrexin my doctor
• 53:11
  had never heard of it she was willing to prescribe naltrexin though but this was a new doctor and
• 53:16
  they revolved into it yeah this is like my 10th doctor from the first one okay a different
• 53:23
  insurance every year different doctor of course the American healthcare system it's fabulous yeah
• 53:29
  and so I was getting a lot of information from Facebook and from different different YouTube's
• 53:35
  Reddit there's the the most well-known content piece of content I hate these that word but the
• 53:42
  was well-known content about the Sinclair Method is a video a TEDx talk that an actress named
• 53:47
  Claudia Christian did in London in 2016 I believe and Claudia is the patron saint of the Sinclair Method
• 53:55
  she runs a foundation now called the C3 foundation she was a down-and-out drunk and she
• 54:01
  found sobriety through eventual sobriety through the Sinclair Method and so she did this TED talk
• 54:06
  in 2016 and this is how most people find out about the Sinclair Method because if you're googling
• 54:11
  you know how to get sober or how to get sober without quit like quitting drinking or whatever how to
• 54:16
  moderate this is what comes up so I had a lot of information because I did a lot of research
• 54:20
  but I wasn't getting it from my doctor or any doctor I was getting it online not generally a
• 54:26
  recipe for success but I knew because of this and I was reading just people's anecdotes about
• 54:33
  what they had done I knew that I needed to start it with a really low dose so this time I started
• 54:38
  with a quarter pill I ate a full meal before I took the pill I drank a lot of water with it
• 54:45
  and so I was more prepared for the side effects and I had fewer side effects they were still there
• 54:50
  but I had a little bit of nausea a headache and that first time I I drank probably not six
• 54:57
  drinks but I probably had five I didn't it wasn't an immediate effect but I was really committed
• 55:02
  to it so I was like I need to get through these and I don't want to call you a quitter
• 55:08
  no did you did they taste any different or did they feel any different or what they were?
• 55:12
  they didn't taste different it did feel different so yeah even on a quarter of a pill yes so there's
• 55:18
  broadly speaking there's two and this gets confusing because there's a lot of overlap between
• 55:22
  the groups what broadly speaking there's two types of problematic drinkers there are people who
• 55:29
  get the euphoria from alcohol which is what I got so when I drank I would feel energized I would
• 55:37
  feel excited you know these are the sort of people who are gonna like have four drinks and go
• 55:43
  saying karaoke or whatever that there's that sort of drinker which is what I was and then there
• 55:48
  are people who drink for the sedating effect those people tend to not have to not respond well
• 55:54
  to naltrexone because naltrexone blocks the euphoric effect and it makes euphoric drinkers
• 56:01
  like me and I'm guessing like you too it makes you experience drinking as though you're getting
• 56:07
  only the sedating effect so it makes you sleepy and it makes you after you have one drink it makes
• 56:14
  you just sort of for a lot of problem drinkers the first drink makes you want to drink a second
• 56:20
  drink and the second drink makes you want to drink a third drink and on and on and on and on and
• 56:24
  so when they say an AA once too many in a thousand's not enough that's that's that's describing a
• 56:29
  real experience and certainly one that I had and so naltrexone basically short circuits that
• 56:35
  it makes alcohol it cuts out the euphoric response you still get drunk but you don't get buzzed
• 56:41
  if that makes any sense so you feel the sort of the physical effects manifestations of alcohol
• 56:48
  sluggish lethargy fuzziness but you don't feel the high the euphoria that kind of balances that
• 56:58
  all out and the physical effects of drinking aren't actually that pleasant so I've heard it described
• 57:04
  as like eating eating cake on day four or writing a bite with a flat tire or I've heard it described
• 57:13
  as drinking with a condom on so you're still drinking you're you can even get drunk but it's not as
• 57:21
  much fun was that was that your experience yes yes but it also I think it I think I thought that it
• 57:29
  tasted a bit different in a lot of people say that yeah like if people the closest analogy would be
• 57:37
  when you've got a cold or like when you were just getting covered uh you know that kind of
• 57:43
  metallic taste in your mouth that you have um where things just taste a little bit funny they
• 57:49
  tasted a bit off yeah like you've got rust in your mouth or something or if you if you've ever been
• 57:54
  a smoker and you've had a a cold and you've tried to have a cigarette where you've got a chest
• 57:59
  infection or something there's like this mildly unpleasant sort of tannic quality and that I found
• 58:05
  the alcohol I had that had a little hint of that and then there wasn't much bars beyond that I
• 58:12
  mean it's interesting that what you say about the physiological effects of alcohol not necessarily
• 58:15
  being that pleasing that kind of sluggishness and so on because when I was drinking I wouldn't want
• 58:22
  to have one drink or two drinks not just because I like I actually would would prefer to have zero
• 58:29
  I've often said like if I if you gave me the choice of having like one drink five drinks or zero
• 58:38
  drinks my preference would be five and then zero and then one because I'm not actually a huge fan
• 58:45
  of like I've never understood people who are like oh you know I just want to have one glass of wine
• 58:49
  with dinner why I always experienced that as well first there's all there is of course the why which
• 58:56
  I think people understand from an alcoholics perspective of like you know okay you have one you
• 59:00
  want to have a thousand and you're gonna spend the rest of the night feeling bad about the fact
• 59:05
  that you can't have more than the one but even set that aside just the actual feeling of having had
• 59:10
  one drink I find to be quite clammy and sort of sweaty and like fidgety and kind of slow like
• 59:19
  because I what I enjoyed about drinking was the euphoria like you you need to get three or four
• 59:25
  only a belt before you get to the point at which you've got that buzz and that energy and that kind
• 59:29
  of drive the one or the two is sort of sedating and clumsy making whereas like eight you're not
• 59:38
  clumsy anymore that is the best time to go for a drive is after eight drinks trying to read your
• 59:45
  latest cigarette fabulous and so a couple of the reason a couple of the moments I wonder what
• 59:51
  your experience was of sort of the moments where you notice that when you really pay attention to
• 59:57
  what the experience of being buzzed is like it's not actually that fun were like that part of my
• 1:00:07
  getting enough motivation to want to quit was a succession of incidents where I was drawn to I
• 1:00:15
  mean with the encouragement I went to I went to a seminar and I read a book by the the British
• 1:00:20
  addiction expert Alan car who writes the quit smoking I read that didn't work but I read it yeah
• 1:00:26
  so I he runs they run cement drinking seminars as well yeah and I went to one in the in the UK
• 1:00:32
  and that was what finally did it for me that was super super helpful to me I think it is fabulous
• 1:00:37
  yes it really got me off cigarettes and it got me off booze yeah so I tried that with cigarettes
• 1:00:44
  and I you know I read the books smoking the whole time and by the end of it I was like to people
• 1:00:51
  who fall for this are at the dumbest people yeah I mean I get it but it's a bit like it's a bit like
• 1:00:56
  therapy or it's a bit like the landmark forum or like any anything which is like a sort of self-help
• 1:01:02
  well yeah I don't think it's bad I don't mean it in a bad way no no it's a weird word it's yeah well
• 1:01:08
  no the the analogy that I'm drawing is it takes a while for critical-minded resistance cynics
• 1:01:14
  like us to get yeah you can't read the book and then have it done you're right that there's a
• 1:01:18
  certain personality type who can read the book and be like oh light bulb on but when your light bulb
• 1:01:23
  goes on you have the personality type and so do I which is like hang on a second who's behind the
• 1:01:27
  light bulb that's not a real light bulb let me climb into the ceiling and see what's really going on
• 1:01:32
  so it took a battering ram of many many occasions of reading the book then I did like there's a video
• 1:01:38
  seminar that you can do and that worked for three weeks and then it didn't work anymore and then
• 1:01:43
  I'd I've done the smoking seminar three times over the course of 20 years and each time it worked
• 1:01:49
  for a couple of years and then I would just forget but for me it's like riding a bike and falling
• 1:01:54
  off and you know just over the over the course of your life human brains are weird and they're
• 1:01:59
  complicated and they're full of they're fucked up in many ways and you just have to sort of keep
• 1:02:04
  you know working with whatever works and I found that that so for people who don't know it the
• 1:02:09
  basic philosophy of Alan Carr is we spend way too much time thinking about why we shouldn't be doing
• 1:02:15
  addictive things and not nearly enough time actually identifying what it is that we like about
• 1:02:20
  them and questioning whether on an interrogation truly interrogating and noticing what we think
• 1:02:24
  that we like about them because once you notice that all of the things you think you like about
• 1:02:28
  smoking are just created by the fact that you're a smoker right and that non-smokers don't feel any
• 1:02:34
  of those deprivations that you do then you can have the psychological space in which to only
• 1:02:38
  address the physiological craving rather than having to worry about all the other bullshit that
• 1:02:43
  you believe cigarettes give you which they actually don't which you only think because you're addicted
• 1:02:47
  to nicotine right yeah do you think you would have so you did a six-week nail track zone trial
• 1:02:52
  afterwards did you how did you drink your drinking change or it just drifted yeah I think it was
• 1:02:59
  12 it just drifted back to normal but over the course of the 12 weeks and did you take it and you
• 1:03:05
  took a daily took a daily drank noticeably less gradually built back up and while on the
• 1:03:14
  I think so that's very normal I think so yeah and by the end of the trial I think I was just
• 1:03:22
  back to normal and I was like okay good that was interesting that's over I can have my life back
• 1:03:26
  again that's a really normal trajectory and it takes so it takes anecdotally I think it takes most
• 1:03:34
  people like eight or nine months to reach this state of extinction pharmacological extinction which
• 1:03:40
  is an indifference alcohol it's that you know the quieting of that voice in your head that tells
• 1:03:46
  you that you want to keep and keep drinking and keep drinking and one integral facet of the
• 1:03:52
  singular method protocol is that you track your drinks so you have a chart you track them daily
• 1:03:57
  and you have a chart and you can see you over time the trends move down but most people's charts
• 1:04:01
  are their spikes and there's valleys and the reason for this according to you know the TSM
• 1:04:07
  coaches and people who promote this method is that your brain it's your brain's way of fighting
• 1:04:12
  back and trying to recapture that old magic by drinking more and more and more but over time for
• 1:04:17
  most people not for everybody but for most people the line trends down right and a lot of people
• 1:04:22
  start out the singular method or start taking naltrexone in different ways like the daily
• 1:04:27
  medication or there's a shot called habitual they start out they tell themselves I want to be I
• 1:04:32
  just want to be a moderate drinker you know I want to have an off switch I want to be able to have
• 1:04:36
  a glass of wine with dinner and not the whole bottle and they find themselves after eight
• 1:04:41
  months nine months a year two years they find that they have just lost all interest in alcohol
• 1:04:45
  and they go sober which was sort of my experience I wanted to I didn't from the very beginning I was
• 1:04:52
  like I don't really want to be a normal monitor drinker because I don't why that's the point
• 1:04:58
  that sounds lame did you ever have the dread of a friend of mine who lives in L.I.
• 1:05:06
  got sober before I did and like he used AA successfully but his he was saying to his sponsor like
• 1:05:14
  what about just that one drink like on my birthday like on Christmas day can I just have like a drink
• 1:05:22
  on my birthday or on Christmas day and his sponsor was like sure and he was like is this a trick
• 1:05:29
  he was like no just get to your birthday or Christmas day and then make the decision on that
• 1:05:35
  day like don't worry now about whether you're going to be able to have a glass of champagne on
• 1:05:39
  your birthday give yourself permission to do that now and deal with what's in front of you and then
• 1:05:44
  see whether you want it that's the trick they play because then you get to that day and it's one day
• 1:05:48
  at a time yeah exactly that's right yeah yeah I mean but it seems it seemed to work and that the idea
• 1:05:54
  of there being like this one moment which is the one that you really really want again is an
• 1:06:00
  artifact of the fact that you're habitually consuming this thing because honestly if you haven't
• 1:06:04
  had a drink in nine months right you're not you're not really wanting it because if you've been
• 1:06:09
  white knuckling it for nine months you will have paved in before and anyway you know you have to
• 1:06:13
  have found some sustainable way of thinking about yes I mean from the perspective of a couple years
• 1:06:19
  of of total abstinence I cannot think of any occasion in which I would want to have a drink if I
• 1:06:24
  did I would take the pill and I would do it but again I've never want to have one drink I still
• 1:06:32
  don't like you it's five or it's it's zero those are the options there was one of the moments that I
• 1:06:40
  was kind of pointing to earlier where I noticed what it's like to actually be drunk without the buzz was
• 1:06:48
  I was working on half post live and we would have segments that we would have to host throughout
• 1:06:53
  the day and I would host like three or four half hour essentially television shows scattered
• 1:06:57
  throughout the day and sometimes they'd be clustered in the morning and I'd take off and I'd go to
• 1:07:02
  the bar around the corner and I'd have the prefix three-course meal and three or four martinis and
• 1:07:09
  then you're living like it's 1950 it was great it was it was madman it was great and halfway through
• 1:07:17
  my meal my phone rings and it's the executive producer and she's saying one of the other hosts is sick
• 1:07:24
  would you are you nearby enough to be able to pop back and quickly just you know host it was some
• 1:07:30
  big celebrity I can't remember who it was and I like instantly in a heartbeat went from
• 1:07:37
  coding the inebriation as relaxation and letting my hair down to it suddenly being coded as me trying
• 1:07:46
  to do an internal infantry of my capacity to perform and suddenly my brain felt like a you know
• 1:07:55
  just a car that's in sand that trying to plow through I felt like clammy I felt sweaty I felt
• 1:08:03
  panicky and I just felt incapable and like a massive loser and under performer and knew that it
• 1:08:10
  would be an embarrassment to try to do it and made some other excuse yeah and it was like
• 1:08:15
  okay so how much of it is the how much of the pleasure of this lifestyle is the alcohol
• 1:08:20
  and how much of it is all of the interpretation that I'm imposing on top of the experience like
• 1:08:27
  the experience is kind of the the valence is neutral actually you know when I'm celebrating the
• 1:08:35
  fact that it's the end of the day the claminess codes as fun right when all of a sudden it's not
• 1:08:41
  the end of the day anymore and I need to perform the claminess codes as terror right it can go either
• 1:08:47
  way and that was when I kind of that was one of its several occasions where I thought okay well
• 1:08:53
  just pay attention towards actually happening and then create a space in which you can contemplate
• 1:08:59
  that there might be just as much upside and downside and fun and grief and the full range of life
• 1:09:06
  experiences without that so it sounds like you did do some introspection during your sobriety
• 1:09:14
  journey I tried to do as little as possible I wouldn't call an introspection I mean it was
• 1:09:19
  no it wasn't introspection about me about my flaws and needs as a human being it was introspection
• 1:09:24
  about like what is this thing that I think is so important to me the substance what's it actually
• 1:09:31
  doing did you quit smoking at the same time that you quit drinking no that was separate that was
• 1:09:36
  earlier and then back and forth and back and forth a little bit more yeah what about you and tobacco
• 1:09:43
  I quit at the same I quit for good at the same time and I quit drinking and part of the reason
• 1:09:49
  I was able to really hide my or at least I was able to compartmentalize my drinking
• 1:10:00
  because and the part of the reason I've never wanted to have one drink is because for me from
• 1:10:04
  the very beginning of drinking my drinking was so tied with smoking and you know being growing
• 1:10:13
  up like like the years that I started I started drinking were also years that you could smoke in
• 1:10:18
  bars and smoking was so integral to to my alcohol consumption that I didn't I never wanted to do
• 1:10:29
  one without the other and so this idea of like today if I like wanting to have a drink today I
• 1:10:34
  don't want to have a drink today because I can't I can't smoke I never want to smoke again I mean I
• 1:10:39
  want to but I'll hopefully never smoke again and so and so quitting those two at the same time was
• 1:10:45
  I think the only way that I can do right that's interesting yeah I mean I find them very very
• 1:10:50
  different because to me smoking is just hilarious I think it's like I get a real kick I really
• 1:10:56
  missed it is it's it's it's so obviously appalling that I kind of I'm such a contrarian that I
• 1:11:05
  relish how totally stupid it is and how totally stupid and pointless and like hedonistic it is
• 1:11:12
  with no payoff no actual payoff I think you're wrong about that I think there's immense payoff
• 1:11:18
  with smoking what is it anymore it's so social so when I was when I was a bar fly or I would go to
• 1:11:25
  shows or whatever go to a concert the place I wanted to be was outback with the smokers sort of
• 1:11:30
  away from the main crowd that was what smoking about was about was smoking was about this it was
• 1:11:36
  incredibly social it you know that's how I made friends at work it's how I made friends in public
• 1:11:40
  was asking people for a lighter and that is over now we're gonna like go up and ask somebody for
• 1:11:44
  like a hit off their vape no you're gonna get monkeypox that way so I think that I think that we
• 1:11:51
  actually have lost something yeah by by the the end of smoking as a as a worldwide phenomenon yeah
• 1:11:57
  yeah and and and our cigarettes like $50 a pack in Australia literally literally $55 so you're
• 1:12:04
  not gonna like nobody's gonna bomb a cigarette in Australia somebody asked me for a cigarette I
• 1:12:09
  would ask them for $25 yeah yeah yeah no it is no people don't really smoke anymore there is now
• 1:12:16
  but you know believe it or not Katie this is incredible but there's an underground massive
• 1:12:21
  underground trade no way you wouldn't have thought that that that the prohibition create a criminal
• 1:12:27
  market but you can go into most tobaccos in Sydney and if they are pretty sure that you're not
• 1:12:33
  under cover cop then you can ask for foreign you can like there are coded ways of saying like can
• 1:12:38
  I have a I don't want an Australian pack and they'll go out back and they'll give you a $20 pack
• 1:12:44
  of what tastes like just rope it's like you know it's from Indonesia it's smuggled and it's like you
• 1:12:50
  know Asian standards of quality not that I'm gonna be a stickless for quality about the for the
• 1:12:56
  quality of the tobacco that's burning my lungs up but yeah no I agree with you but what I meant that
• 1:13:02
  when saying that cigarettes are totally pointless is that there's nothing intrinsic to the experience
• 1:13:07
  unlike you know unlike alcohol which at least has an anaesthetic and kind of you know it's like
• 1:13:12
  it doesn't have the euphoric effects you know exactly that's why cigarettes have a soft spot for me
• 1:13:17
  and I think vaping is absolutely ludicrous like just smoke people just smoke just go and smoke just
• 1:13:23
  be get the real thing get the real deal get your Marlboro Reds and go and kill yourself stop with
• 1:13:29
  this fucking pineapple steam I mean it is it does look very dorky but I will say I do think that
• 1:13:37
  you know harm reduction I believe in harm reduction including when it comes to alcohol and
• 1:13:41
  they're it is very clear that vaping is not as terrible for you as smoking sure just quit then
• 1:13:47
  okay anything else to be said about naltrexone or or grandmathally advice to people who
• 1:13:56
  probably think they should at some point reckon with so there's a lot of resources about this online
• 1:14:04
  this is one of the thing one of the things about this specifically the Sinclair Method you're
• 1:14:08
  gonna get better information online than you will from your own family position that said
• 1:14:15
  there are addiction experts there are psychiatrists and therapists who focus on addiction who can
• 1:14:20
  probably give you good information but she don't from I mean from my experience like that
• 1:14:25
  wasn't required I could go about it a lot cheaper free by just getting reading about it online
• 1:14:33
  so my advice to people who are interested in this is to join Facebook groups and start reading
• 1:14:41
  there's a book called the cure for alcoholism by Royes Scapa a new edition of that is coming out
• 1:14:46
  in the spring and my book will also be published in conjunction with that we have the same publisher
• 1:14:51
  so there are ways to get good information about this that don't require you to have a knowledgeable
• 1:14:57
  physician on your side and there's and it's deceptively simple so like I said you take the pill
• 1:15:04
  you wait an hour and then you drink but there's all sorts of kind of habit change and things to
• 1:15:11
  prepare yourself things to know about before you do this so and it's not a miracle pill so if you
• 1:15:16
  I think people who go into it thinking that this is going to be a miracle for them end up being
• 1:15:21
  disappointed so temper your expectations but in my experience it was after you know 20 years of
• 1:15:29
  of fighting addiction in various different ways this was sort of a really long slow off ramp
• 1:15:35
  and I am shocked to report that those old-timers in AA who said that life was better sober we're
• 1:15:42
  not actually lying it somehow is yeah it is and and one thing that is hard to articulate to
• 1:15:48
  people who are still in you know the habit of consuming something that that is habit forming
• 1:15:55
  is like have you replaced it with anything because like I would have thought I remember I remember
• 1:16:00
  I went to Egypt with a mate of mine on a like a backpacking trip and obviously you know that
• 1:16:06
  drink a terrible amount of booze in a maturity Muslim country and I was asking one of the locals
• 1:16:13
  like what do you do when you go out with friends and he was trying to explain to me and I was like
• 1:16:19
  I honestly don't really understand how you socialize yeah like I don't get it yeah so you go
• 1:16:25
  to a coffee lounge you have some hookers the hookers I kind of get but like you just gather around
• 1:16:32
  and drink tea and talk like you take booze out of the equation for me and it was like what do you
• 1:16:36
  even done and same cigarettes like how do you punctuate time how do you find a way of like
• 1:16:42
  having those kind of tent pole moments throughout the day where you go you know what it's been a few
• 1:16:47
  hours I'm gonna step outside and take a deep breath and look at the clouds with and have a cigarette
• 1:16:53
  do you replace those in any way I have it and well I guess like watching Mormon influencers on
• 1:17:00
  Instagram but it was that's one of the things you know I was worried about that life would just feel
• 1:17:06
  empty without these substances but you know you said earlier in the conversation there are millions of
• 1:17:11
  people all over the world who don't do these things they still manage to socialize to spend time
• 1:17:17
  with their friends and I still manage to do that as well and one of the things I realized through
• 1:17:24
  this process was that you know when I used to go out to bars and drink yes part of it was a big part
• 1:17:29
  of it was about the alcohol but a bigger part of it was just about being around people and you know
• 1:17:36
  in the very beginning I did have a little bit of sort of social anxiety about being around people
• 1:17:43
  without alcohol but the reality is we're around people without alcohol every day I wasn't drunk when
• 1:17:49
  I would go to work I wasn't anxious about that and you know you just you just do it and it turns out
• 1:17:56
  for I think for me at least it's just not as scarier as hard as it seems and if I had realized this
• 1:18:02
  years before I wouldn't have wasted as many years as I did you know hooked up to a PBR bottle
• 1:18:07
  yeah do you feel like that was a waste yes yeah right okay I like there's many years of my life
• 1:18:14
  that I don't remember and part of that I think it's other like memory issues but I I don't
• 1:18:20
  remember large chunks of my life and I think I you know I had to do what I I had to do go through
• 1:18:27
  all of those things to get where I am now and I'm happy with my life now but I do think a lot of
• 1:18:32
  it was a waste yeah that's interesting if you could flick a switch and never have drunk would would
• 1:18:38
  you oh that's really tough because my life is really good right now because my life is so good
• 1:18:48
  and I you know you change one little thing the bird or the butterfly flaps its wings and all
• 1:18:52
  of a sudden I'm a mother with seven kids and I don't want that I don't think that I would flip a
• 1:18:58
  switch and never drink again I would probably flip the switch and say I'd never smoke again never
• 1:19:04
  have smoked yes yes I think that's right I wouldn't want to have had my twenties be anything
• 1:19:14
  other than they were I think I think drinking a tremendous amount in my twenties was good and this
• 1:19:21
  and you know you and I were just like we're I mean you're obviously much much older than I am but
• 1:19:29
  but we came of age in and time when people drank a lot more than they do now yeah I just I don't
• 1:19:37
  know that I don't know that kids are as boozey kids are boring kids are boring these days
• 1:19:42
  do you have 10 minutes to reflect on kids and social justice and the state of like
• 1:19:50
  I don't know how much everyone will know about your history and how much we need to get into it now
• 1:19:56
  they know a lot but no I mean I mean you're a professional history and your history with cancel
• 1:20:02
  culture and obviously being a transphobic bigot and the there's something happening at the moment
• 1:20:08
  which is like I can sort of feel a reckoning at the final waves of the final throws of whatever
• 1:20:14
  moment we went through over the past like four to eight years and there's a lot of rewriting of
• 1:20:21
  history that I feel is happening I've only just realized of course it's not that they're gonna
• 1:20:26
  it's not that the people who are the most extreme social justice sensorious mob participants
• 1:20:35
  they're not saying sorry yes not that they're gonna say exactly it's not that they're gonna say
• 1:20:40
  sorry and it's not that they're gonna keep on fighting until they get defeated it's that they're
• 1:20:44
  gonna turn around and pretend that they were always on the side of reason yeah all along and
• 1:20:49
  that there never was a and that what happened didn't really happen I think that's inevitable yeah
• 1:20:56
  yeah there's not gonna be there's not gonna there's not gonna be a reckoning about the racial
• 1:21:00
  reckoning the double reckoning is not happening no but the backlash is certainly happening
• 1:21:05
  and what about the gender wars how how are things in the sights from your perspective
• 1:21:11
  I think the gender wars in some ways we have reached a sort of stasis you know
• 1:21:20
  the US is unique in that we have this very powerful religious right wing and maybe not unique
• 1:21:30
  but maybe unique among western nations at least and because of that there's this
• 1:21:38
  very fearful response on the part of trans activists when they see states like Oklahoma or
• 1:21:45
  Tennessee or Texas outlying things like use transition basically taking guidance from countries
• 1:21:52
  like Nordic countries that are limiting access Nordic countries or the UK places that are limiting
• 1:21:58
  access to the Australia as well as yeah so these countries that normally lefties would look at
• 1:22:06
  and be like those are that's the ideal uh right wingers were looking at and saying like hey so
• 1:22:11
  so they looked at the at the evidence on youth puberty blockers for gender disorder and the evidence
• 1:22:17
  is lacking so we're gonna we're gonna outlaw puberty blockers in the state of Tennessee or whatever
• 1:22:23
  and of course the left response to this by like an organ or california or washington state where I
• 1:22:29
  live they'll enact sort of parallel laws declaring it a sanctuary state so if 13-year-old wants to
• 1:22:36
  run away from home and get puberty blockers oh oh god you know so we're in this in this state of
• 1:22:42
  this basically a tug of war where one state and acts a conservative law in the left and then
• 1:22:49
  another state responds by enacting an equally draconian or bizarre or sometimes more so
• 1:22:56
  law law enabling access to puberty blockers or one state will you know penalize criminalize
• 1:23:03
  parents for not letting their kids transition and the other state will take kids away from their
• 1:23:09
  from their parent or threatening to take kids away from their parents who do let them transition so
• 1:23:13
  we're in that state of polar extremes so and that hasn't really changed over the last years but
• 1:23:18
  what has changed is that the media the mainstream media is now talking about this in a way that they
• 1:23:25
  weren't even two years ago where the New York Times will report on on studies showing that puberty
• 1:23:34
  blockers are not that beneficial to kids or that the access or that the the data is lacking so that's
• 1:23:42
  what's changed I think the media landscape has changed but and politically I think it you know I
• 1:23:49
  think what happens in the next election it will matter it will matter a whole lot if Donald
• 1:23:53
  Trump wins the left is gonna double down and I don't really like talking about this like there's
• 1:23:58
  two sides because there's obviously not but if Donald Trump wins I think that liberals will go
• 1:24:04
  crazy again which will be fantastic for me because I like my subscribers
• 1:24:12
  skyrocket so I will not be voting for Donald Trump but not publicly yeah I live in Washington state
• 1:24:22
  but so I think the what happens with the election will be consequential on that front as well
• 1:24:27
  but I think things are opening up and it's just it's a much more mainstream conversation now
• 1:24:32
  yeah yeah it's interesting I was on a panel a few weeks ago in Melbourne about sort of free speech
• 1:24:39
  and the media and journalism with a woman who was fired from Melbourne's biggest broadsheet newspaper
• 1:24:46
  after having been one of its most popular columnists for decades because she dared to touch
• 1:24:52
  the to question you know basically just to report on I mean this will not sound unfamiliar to you
• 1:24:58
  the controversy around pediatric trans care in like 2022 and yeah there was an internal backlash
• 1:25:06
  against her in this sort of center-left leaning broadsheet newspaper and she lost her job
• 1:25:12
  and now when you talk about you know the the threats to journalists for freely and bravely
• 1:25:20
  pursuing stories regardless of whether or not they contravene some sort of norms and taboos
• 1:25:25
  of their elite social circles people say yeah but Emily Baselon's publishing in the New York
• 1:25:30
  Times about trans people and she's not getting fired so yes yes yes one she's Emily Baselon
• 1:25:36
  and two it's 2024 and right right and not that her colleagues didn't try to get her fired
• 1:25:43
  that's true but the difference is that when after Emily Baselon wrote her great piece I believe in
• 1:25:48
  the spring of about this this issue and some other reporters at the New York time as you can
• 1:25:53
  garess she's one of them their colleagues started this idiotic petition to get them fired or
• 1:26:00
  I don't I don't know if it was to get them fired but started this idiotic petition glad the
• 1:26:05
  ridiculous gay and lesbian alliance against defamation which it turns out is basically an organization
• 1:26:09
  that is just funneling money to the CEO you know they get out their truck with like a billboard
• 1:26:16
  on the side and circle the building just wasting fossil fuels trying to shame the New York Times
• 1:26:22
  and it didn't work this time the New York Times I think because they've learned lessons over the
• 1:26:26
  past few years about about acquiescing to activist demands and I've done with that you know I don't
• 1:26:33
  think that cancel culture has ended I think it shifted some it's more about Israel Palestine now
• 1:26:39
  you see a lot more cancellation campaigns on the right I think part of that is because Elon Musk
• 1:26:44
  changing buying Twitter and tweaking the algorithm or just who is there it's really hard to to
• 1:26:50
  rile up a left wing mob on Twitter these days but you can rile up a right wing mob very easily yeah
• 1:26:56
  I mean and this is precisely the thing that I've always been worried about and all of these people
• 1:27:00
  are like why are you banging on about workness you're just playing into the hands of the right I'm
• 1:27:04
  like no you're fucking playing into the hands of the right by being dickwards you know stop it
• 1:27:08
  because everyone's going to play that game and you're only going to embolden right which is
• 1:27:11
  exactly what has happened and you know Twitter has become the thing that woke schools used to say
• 1:27:19
  that it was it has become that yeah incredibly bigoted it is incredibly racist and anti-Semitic I
• 1:27:26
  mean I'm I fully support free speech it's Elon's platform he can do what he wants but I find myself
• 1:27:31
  spending much less time there because I totally I don't actually want every time I look at Twitter
• 1:27:36
  I don't actually want every tweet to be about Jewish noses I don't find it that interesting it's not
• 1:27:41
  I mean also I mean it's not to frame it as a question of free speech I think it's is kind of we
• 1:27:51
  can go yeah I've had many a conversation about this lately but I think it's sort of the wrong
• 1:27:56
  target when you're talking about algorithms that are selecting for content that is going to
• 1:28:02
  you know outrage in game you know he's feeding it around you it's not just like he's not
• 1:28:08
  banning it he's feeding it that's right exactly I mean if it was a neutral like reverse chronological
• 1:28:13
  feed of everything that everyone who you follow is posting then we would be having this conversation
• 1:28:18
  yeah Katie great to talk to you thanks for your time I'd love it to see you again I just wish
• 1:28:25
  you lived in somewhere relevant so that when I'm in the States we could get a coffee yeah not a drink
• 1:28:30
  a coffee not a drink or a non-atholic beer do you drink non-alcoholic beer no I think when I was
• 1:28:35
  at the tail end of my TSM journey I would but I was drinking them sort of alcoholically
• 1:28:44
  yeah no I like them I have the occasional beer yeah they just haven't been able to nail wine or
• 1:28:50
  that man I had a I tried a non-alcoholic Moscow mule at a wedding recently it was sort of shocking
• 1:28:57
  because it really I mean it really felt like I was drinking alcohol for a moment and I had to
• 1:29:02
  this moment of being like I'm doing something wrong and then I just put it down because it turns
• 1:29:06
  at it you know a Moscow meal without booze tastes like rancid ginger ale exactly what we want thanks Katie