Speaker 1: Pushkin. About a year ago, Heavyweight was canceled, and for
Speaker 1: the first time in my adult life, I was without
Speaker 1: a job. Luckily, I had a plan b drinking. Drinking
Speaker 1: has always been my safety net. It makes me feel
Speaker 1: bulletproof in a state of grace. Who needs a job
Speaker 1: when you're in a state of grace? So job or
Speaker 1: no job, Health insurance or no. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, there was still booze, just like there'd always been,
Speaker 1: which is to say that every night for twenty five
Speaker 1: years I have drank. But after getting laid off, something shifted.
Speaker 1: Along with losing my job, I lost my sense of identity,
Speaker 1: and booze only amplified the feeling night of drinking. I'd
Speaker 1: wake up at three am in a panic, not knowing
Speaker 1: who or what or why I was. I'd always turned
Speaker 1: to alcohol for solace, but now I found myself too
Speaker 1: scared to drink. Over the course of Heavyweights eight seasons,
Speaker 1: I've acted as an interlocutor between friends, family, and strangers.
Speaker 1: Now I needed to interlock you between me and me,
Speaker 1: the me that wanted to keep drinking and the me
Speaker 1: that didn't. So I started a journal to reflect on
Speaker 1: my relationship to drinking. How it all began, how much
Speaker 1: I have loved it, and whether it was time to stop.
Speaker 1: These are exerts. Day six without a drink, New Year's Eve,
Speaker 1: our new neighbors stop by, the wife sells pet supplies,
Speaker 1: and the husband does something with money. Even though I
Speaker 1: interview people for a living, after ten minutes, I run
Speaker 1: out of new things to ask. Since I'm not drinking,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. Emily has put out
Speaker 1: frozen pepperoni pizza, so I eat slice after slice. Rum
Speaker 1: Das says that at a certain point he cared less
Speaker 1: about getting high and more about getting free. The pepperoni
Speaker 1: pizza gets me neither high nor free. Week three without
Speaker 1: a drink. I remember when my friend Paul quit drinking.
Speaker 1: It was because he found himself thinking about drinking all
Speaker 1: day and looking forward to it too much. That's called
Speaker 1: being an adult, I had said, dismissively. Children have their
Speaker 1: sense of wonder, adults have booze. Week five. I don't
Speaker 1: think I drink the way other people do. I prefer
Speaker 1: to drink and the spaces in between on subway rides,
Speaker 1: while taking long walks in darkened movie theaters. And although
Speaker 1: I'll drink with others. My preference is to drink alone.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what constitutes alcoholism, so I've lately been googling.
Speaker 1: Is drinking alone alcoholism? Or does drinking every night make
Speaker 1: you an alcoholic? Even using the word alcoholic makes me
Speaker 1: feel disloyal, like I'm bad mouthing a friend behind their back.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you think of alcohol as a friend, you've
Speaker 1: got a problem. Maybe if you're asking Google, if you've
Speaker 1: got a problem, you've got a problem. Week eight. It
Speaker 1: might have all begun at the age of four, with
Speaker 1: the joy of spinning around and around until the living
Speaker 1: room ceiling became the floor, the chandelier a stalagmite. Life
Speaker 1: felt easier upside down. Or maybe it began at five,
Speaker 1: breathing in and out as fast as I could to
Speaker 1: make myself lightheaded. Before there was beer and whiskey, there
Speaker 1: were quick in talk xicating breaths. My drinking began in
Speaker 1: earnest during my teen years. I drank to be less shy,
Speaker 1: to make myself more comfortable, and as I grew older,
Speaker 1: I drank because it was what I did. My identity
Speaker 1: became so fused to whisky that at my fortieth birthday party,
Speaker 1: every one of my friends and family gifted me with
Speaker 1: a bottle of bourbon or Scotch. At the end of
Speaker 1: the night, I counted fourteen bottles. My friend Steve says
Speaker 1: that plain and simple human beings need to get fucked up.
Speaker 1: Week eleven, I'm on a flight to New York, and
Speaker 1: for the first time in twenty five years, I haven't
Speaker 1: packed small bottles of whiskey for each of my front pockets.
Speaker 1: I'm not a good flyer, and I keep the bottles
Speaker 1: with me in case the flight gets rough and I
Speaker 1: can't get booze from the flight attendant quick enough. But
Speaker 1: in all honesty, sometimes turbulence was a relief because it
Speaker 1: was permission to crack open a pocket whisky before noon.
Speaker 1: When you're in town. That's where we meet is at
Speaker 1: a bar that'll be our first up in New York.
Speaker 1: I visit my friend Sean. Sean is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite people to drink with. For him, it's simple. If
Speaker 1: you drink, you're a drinker, and a drinker drinks. Can
Speaker 1: you describe what it is about the feeling of drinking
Speaker 1: that you like? Getting a hug from the inside. Sean
Speaker 1: and I can talk and drink laid into the night.
Speaker 1: The drink and the talk run parallel to each other
Speaker 1: and make a good combination, but sometimes the drink will
Speaker 1: overtake the talk.
Speaker 2: I don't black out as much as I used to it.
Speaker 2: Everybody's gonna think I'm like a raging alcoholic, but like
Speaker 2: and we'd be at the bar and I'd have like
Speaker 2: one and another and another, and at a certain point
Speaker 2: during the evening it got to the point where I
Speaker 2: was I would be having a conversation with somebody and
Speaker 2: looking at their face and going to myself, Oh, this
Speaker 2: is the conversation that I'm not going to remember.
Speaker 1: And I was always right. As a drinker, you exchange
Speaker 1: memory for intensity. I ask Sean if my sobriety might
Speaker 1: threaten our friendship.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, I don't know. I don't think so, but
Speaker 2: I feel like you and I like it too much.
Speaker 2: I think you and I are cut from a certain
Speaker 2: cloth where we're just.
Speaker 1: Drinkers. So what do you call a drinker who doesn't drink?
Speaker 1: Week twenty one? Without drinking, everything isn't as weighted towards
Speaker 1: the night when the first drink is drunk. As a result,
Speaker 1: there's more evenness. The points of intensity are scattered throughout
Speaker 1: the day, a run in the morning, aggie walking through
Speaker 1: the door after school, the taste of dessert after dinner.
Speaker 1: Week twenty four. It's after several months without a drink
Speaker 1: when I begin to bargain with myself. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: enjoy a glass of wine with dinner once in a while.
Speaker 1: After all, it's been five months. Have I not demonstrated
Speaker 1: self mastery? The problem is, as the saying goes, that
Speaker 1: that first drink makes you feel like a new person,
Speaker 1: and that a new person needs a drink, and so
Speaker 1: on and so on. But somehow moderation always feels within
Speaker 1: my grasp? Is this for me? What passes for hope?
Speaker 3: The first times I got drunk, it was like, where
Speaker 3: has this been my whole life? Like this is what
Speaker 3: everything should feel like all the time.
Speaker 1: My friend Tony went into rehab for heroin addiction in
Speaker 1: his mid twenties, it meant having to give up all drugs,
Speaker 1: including alcohol. But recently, after twenty five years of sobriety,
Speaker 1: Tony started drinking again. Just a drink here and there
Speaker 1: is such a thing possible.
Speaker 3: I had just gotten out of a meditation retreat, actually,
Speaker 3: and I was sitting around on a Friday evening with
Speaker 3: a bunch of people at the retreat center, including the
Speaker 3: meditation teachers, and somebody offered me a shot, a very
Speaker 3: expensive scotch, but I said no. At first, I don't drink.
Speaker 3: And then as I was sitting there watching other people's
Speaker 3: shot glasses get filled and thinking about how I identified.
Speaker 3: After twenty five years, I still identified as a recovering addict,
Speaker 3: recovering alcoholic ex addict X or just plain old addict alcoholic.
Speaker 3: I still identified with that, and I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 3: am I still that? Like what It was a question
Speaker 3: that came up kind of naturally. It was like, why
Speaker 3: am I saying no? Is it because I really am
Speaker 3: afraid that something bad's gonna happen? Or am I just
Speaker 3: identified with it? And it's part of kind of like
Speaker 3: an ego structure where it's kind of like a notch
Speaker 3: in my belt and a pride thing. You know, I've
Speaker 3: been cleaned for this long. So I kind of had
Speaker 3: a shot and it was no big deal, and I
Speaker 3: thought I could do this once in a while, and
Speaker 3: I kind of gave myself permission to keep doing that.
Speaker 1: And how long now have you been doing that?
Speaker 3: Oh? God, it's been about three and a half years.
Speaker 1: Do you find, you know, drinking in front of friends
Speaker 1: and family that their shows of concern harsher buzz in
Speaker 1: a way?
Speaker 3: No, not really, nobody's actually. I mean a couple of
Speaker 3: people have asked, a few people have said, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: you're drinking now, and most people are like, oh good, huh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think most people have felt like I took it
Speaker 3: a bit too far. I think you're the only one
Speaker 3: who's actually expressed concern.
Speaker 1: Am I overthinking Tony's situation? Am I overthinking my own?
Speaker 1: To that question, my father would probably say absolutely. Is
Speaker 1: there Do you think there's any benefit to not drinking?
Speaker 5: Nope?
Speaker 1: After the break the man who raised me Week twenty eight,
Speaker 1: I suggest to my therapist that maybe I've quit drinking
Speaker 1: out of a kind of masochism and an ability to
Speaker 1: just allow myself pleasure. I have friends who have quit
Speaker 1: and feel better. They have more energy, their skin looks better.
Speaker 1: I experience none of that. My therapist says, I drink
Speaker 1: to avoid my feelings, which might be true, but I
Speaker 1: also think it's helped me to embrace my feelings, to
Speaker 1: love more freely. For one thing, drinking has helped me
Speaker 1: bond with my father. When I go home to visit,
Speaker 1: he leads me down to the basement, where in the
Speaker 1: storage space under the stairs, alongside his high school diploma
Speaker 1: and tax forms from the past thirty years, he keeps
Speaker 1: a plastic jug of vodka. You go first, he whispers.
Speaker 1: He whispers because he and my mother play a game
Speaker 1: in which he pretends to hide his drinking and she
Speaker 1: pretends not to know that he is hiding it. Since
Speaker 1: stopping drinking, every time I see my dad, I remind
Speaker 1: him that I've stopped drinking, but all the same, every
Speaker 1: time he offers me a drink.
Speaker 5: I'm beer. You don't drink beer at all?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I've found mind shift. I'm not drinking.
Speaker 1: Then beer is drinking. Okay, it's still an alcoholic beverage,
Speaker 1: right right right. My father is now ninety years old.
Speaker 1: Would you say that overall drinking has had a positive
Speaker 1: effect on your life or negative?
Speaker 5: I'd say, for me positive because you know, sometimes you
Speaker 5: get life gets a little boring. You got something a
Speaker 5: little to look forward to. I have my what you
Speaker 5: call my cocktail hour. Yeah, at night, when i know
Speaker 5: I'm not going anywhere, I have a couple of shots.
Speaker 1: Yes, and your shots, I mean I've seen your shots
Speaker 1: are they're they're very generous, like a half a glass.
Speaker 5: It's pretty far up above the bottom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one way of putting it, I guess.
Speaker 5: And I never get drunk, never, never, never get drunk.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you what do you call getting drunk?
Speaker 5: Drunk is when the room shots spinning, and your you
Speaker 5: feel like I want to throw up and you start whirling.
Speaker 1: Around, right, But I mean that's getting that's getting sick already,
Speaker 1: that's getting ill.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but no, I never get drunk where I'm stupid
Speaker 5: and I'm insulting or I'm this or that. No.
Speaker 1: The first time I ever got drunk was with my father.
Speaker 1: I was fourteen and we'd been invited to a rabbi's
Speaker 1: house for Sukkot. I sat beside an Israeli man in
Speaker 1: a paper yamulka who filled and refilled my plastic cup
Speaker 1: with vodka. We talked about deep things like God and creation.
Speaker 1: It felt like this kind of talk was fueled on vodka.
Speaker 1: That vodka allowed a person to see that the world
Speaker 1: was really all spirit. The rabbi explained how we were
Speaker 1: on the edge of the Messianic age and that at
Speaker 1: any time now the Messiah or Mashiah would appear. Slowly
Speaker 1: and with some effort. My father rose from his chair
Speaker 1: and quieted down the room. I remember it took a while,
Speaker 1: but my father was insistent. It was then that he
Speaker 1: pointed to the rabbi and made his great declaration. Oh
Speaker 1: that's right, you announced. He announced the rabbi as the Messiah.
Speaker 5: That. Yeah, I was. I was drunk. I mean that
Speaker 5: was that was too much?
Speaker 1: Do you remember the response that it got kind of stupid,
Speaker 1: just silent. Everyone was stunned.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was kind of stupid.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I awoke in our basement, on the
Speaker 1: floor and still dressed from the night before. My head hurt,
Speaker 1: but it felt adult a fair price to pay for
Speaker 1: the evening. Just as I drank with my father, My
Speaker 1: father drank with his father. Did he drink much?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'm sure he did. When I got older,
Speaker 5: I started joining. Um huh, kind of dreaded, you know.
Speaker 5: But he would get really stupid, and then he would
Speaker 5: throw up, and he gets sloppy. It was, you know, nisty.
Speaker 1: No, did he ever get violent when he was drinking.
Speaker 5: Not while he was drunk. No, No, he was only
Speaker 5: got violent when he was sober. Yeah, yeah, he was
Speaker 5: good nature when he was drunk.
Speaker 1: Week forty four. In the early days just after Oggie
Speaker 1: was born, I'd sit in our tiny Brooklyn kitchen sipping
Speaker 1: bourbon until all hours of the night. All day was
Speaker 1: spent with worries was our baby peeing enough, eating enough?
Speaker 1: But at night I drank. It evened me out and
Speaker 1: allowed for a feeling of bliss, perhaps the only bliss
Speaker 1: I've ever known. While other forms of joy were complicated
Speaker 1: by guilt or intrusive thoughts, drinking alone in that kitchen
Speaker 1: was always simple. There was a liquor store across the street,
Speaker 1: and seeing it through the window, luminous in the night,
Speaker 1: stalked with all those bottles representing the nights of drinking
Speaker 1: that lay ahead, made me feel like everything was going
Speaker 1: to be all right. Night after night in that small
Speaker 1: Brooklyn kitchen, I drank and watched YouTube videos of old
Speaker 1: Jerry Lewis appearances on talk shows, and kissed the top
Speaker 1: of our baby head. Each night was like biting into
Speaker 1: the first square of a mile long Hershey's chocolate bar.
Speaker 1: But as blissful as that time was, when I think
Speaker 1: back on it, I'm unable to recall very much. It's
Speaker 1: all a vague talgone bath. That is the exchange I made.
Speaker 1: What did you have for breakfast? Week fifty two?
Speaker 4: Yogurt with gia seeds and pumpkin seeds and apple sauce.
Speaker 1: You know what I find fun about gia seeds is
Speaker 1: like finding them in your teeth an hour after you
Speaker 1: ate and enjoying them.
Speaker 4: If you really like every want to kiss me ever again,
Speaker 4: I would suggest stopping this conversation right now.
Speaker 1: My wife, Emily and I are about to walk to
Speaker 1: Aggie school to pick him up. Aggie's now in the
Speaker 1: second grade. Before we set out, I asked Emily if
Speaker 1: we could talk for a minute. It's now been over
Speaker 1: a year that I have stopped drinking. Did you ever
Speaker 1: think i'd I get here?
Speaker 4: I'm sure there was specific incidents where I expected you
Speaker 4: to relapse. If we're going to call it that, I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna lie. I've missed it every once in a while.
Speaker 1: You knows missed my drinking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you weren't a stumbling drunk, You weren't a mean drunk.
Speaker 4: You weren't really a drunk. And I think that that
Speaker 4: was confusing to me in some ways because you drank
Speaker 4: every night, I mean kind of a lot. I can
Speaker 4: only remember a handful or fewer fewer than a handful
Speaker 4: of times where I ever looked at you and thought
Speaker 4: to myself, oh, he's drunk. There was one night, do
Speaker 4: you know what I'm going to say?
Speaker 1: Was this the oceans night?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Wait, I was roofed that night.
Speaker 4: You were not roofed. You were drunk drunk.
Speaker 1: I think we were targeted by thieves.
Speaker 4: I was sober. I mean I had probably had a
Speaker 4: drink or two. There weren't any roofies in my drink. No,
Speaker 4: you too. It was your birthday, right, Yeah, and it
Speaker 4: got incredibly excessive and I had to essentially carry you
Speaker 4: about six blocks home. I kind of want to take
Speaker 4: my glasses off so I can't really see your face
Speaker 4: at this moment. Is that okay? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Why? I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's a little hard to talk about. I mean, I
Speaker 4: want to say this, just like, very clearly. I'm very
Speaker 4: happy you stopped drinking. I do think that you are
Speaker 4: a significantly better parent than you were when you were drinking.
Speaker 4: I think you're just here with us in a different way.
Speaker 4: I think you're more present I think you're more consistent.
Speaker 4: I think you're more stable. It's just like you have
Speaker 4: access to a different part of yourself. It seems to
Speaker 4: me now. I even just want to say, you have
Speaker 4: access to yourself now in a way that you just didn't.
Speaker 4: And I think I feel that, but I think he
Speaker 4: feels it more. And I feel like he's proud of you.
Speaker 4: And I don't mean proud in the sense that he's like, oh,
Speaker 4: my dad doesn't drink. I think he's just more proud
Speaker 4: of and attracted to the person that you are sober
Speaker 4: than the person that you were before.
Speaker 1: Week fifty three. Today is the first real snowfall of
Speaker 1: the year, and I'm walking along a path in the
Speaker 1: woods nearer house. At a certain point, I can feel
Speaker 1: my pace begin to slow, and eventually I come to
Speaker 1: a standstill. It's serene, and a part of me just
Speaker 1: wants to melt into the scene. I don't mean I
Speaker 1: want to admire it or write a poem about it.
Speaker 1: A part of me just wants to wander off the path,
Speaker 1: curl up beside a tree, and let the snow cover me.
Speaker 1: I don't know that i'd call this feeling depressive or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just a feeling of wanting to hit the pause
Speaker 1: button on life. It's a feeling of wanting, if only
Speaker 1: for a while, the pleasure of complete surrender, of giving up,
Speaker 1: but instead I keep going. This episode of Heavyweight was
Speaker 1: produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along with senior producer Khalila Holt,
Speaker 1: Supervising producer Stevie Lane, and Phoebe Flanagain. Our production council
Speaker 1: is Jake Flanagin. Marcelo de Olivera mixed the episode with
Speaker 1: original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 1: and Bobby Lord. A special shout out to Howard Chakowitz,
Speaker 1: who Tony wanted it known also expressed concern. Follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Heavyweight, Instagram at Heavyweight podcast, or email
Speaker 1: us at Heavyweight at Pushkin dot Fm. We're still looking
Speaker 1: for your stories, so please keep them coming. We'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with an encore presentation of the Gregor episode,
Speaker 1: which will include an update from the titular Gregor, so
Speaker 1: tune in