As one more step toward my childhood dream of becoming a famous alcoholic, I sat down with the wonderful guys from the Since Right Now podcast to talk about lots of stuff, including drinking, sobriety, writing, running, and the impossibility of thinking your way out of addiction.
Also about buying chicken in Italy, what A.A. has in common with Aussie psychedelic pop band the Hoodoo Gurus, and what airports are closest to Marfa, TX. Oh, and also Barry Manilow.
So, clearly this podcast contains a LOT of useful information for you. You should probably listen to it as soon as possible.
- Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/klen-and-sobr/1617-kristi-coulter-off-dry
- Listen on Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/klen-sobr/since-right-now?refid=stpr
- Listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/since-right-now./id891316209?mt=2
You can even listen on ALL THREE if you want. But I don’t have a link for that.
Love, Kristi
Off-Dry 
I listened to it yesterday so that is sooner than possible, I think? Very much enjoyed hearing you. At the age of maybe 8 my school report said something along the lines of “we will be reading books by Primrose one day” – no pressure there, then… Forty or so years later that turned out to be sober blogging, for me – hurrah!
Ha! Yep, sounds like we had the same early life. 🙂
Looking forward to this.
…and was not disappointed Great interview. I loved Trip to Echo Springs, and it helped me work through some of my hang-ups in early sobriety (and it added dimension to the lit classes I teach, since I use Carver, Cheever, and a little John Berryman). My own writing improved dramatically when I got sober, and even better was my ability to follow through with sending poems out for publication which is time-consuming but ultimately more simple than, say, getting a book proposal together and shopping around a manuscript). Keep up the great work.
Of all the writers she covered, Berryman was the one I’d read least, and also the story that broke my heart the most. I don’t remember that many of the details anymore, but it seemed like he was just constantly spinning out of control and unable to help himself. Just so sad. I’d be really interested in a similar work on alcoholism and female writers–we have a certain mythos about male writers and booze that doesn’t quite translate to women, and their stories also haven’t been told as often (as much as I love Cheever there was a part of me that thought ‘oh Jesus, hasn’t *enough* been written about his drinking?’). Laing did write an article for the Guardian about Dorothy Parker, Patricia Highsmith et al, and I’d love to see a deeper/longer treatment.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/13/alcoholic-female-women-writers-marguerite-duras-jean-rhys
Thanks for the link to the article; I haven’t seen it before. Oh, Mr. Berryman…that one broke my heart, too, and still does. He shows up quite often in my poetry after reading that book.
I, too, would love to read a book about women alcoholic writers. I remember in grad school, when one of my teachers mentioned casually that Elizabeth Bishop was a “closet alcoholic”–I remember that phrase in particular–I went cold inside. That’s me, I thought. I was 23, years before I supposedly crossed the line. Good lord. The line was probably crossed when I drank for the first time at seventeen.
Loved it!