Katie Herzog On Drinking To Get Sober

Katie is a journalist, podcaster, and longtime friend of the Dish. She’s a former staff writer at The Stranger, and she’s contributed to The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Free Press, and The Weekly Dish. She hosts the podcast “Blocked and Reported” alongside Jesse Singal, and she just wrote her first book, Drink Your Way Sober: The Science-Based Method to Break Free from Alcohol.

For two clips of our convo — how Katie’s drinking became a problem, and why naltrexone isn’t widely known — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: raised in western Carolina; Katie’s first drink; studying abroad in England for the lower drinking age; Churchill’s boozing; pub culture in the UK; being energized by alcohol vs sedated; chasing the buzz; the cycle of denial; the AA notion that one drink is too many; how rats react to alcohol; the parallels with Ozempic; why I started smoking weed; Ken Burns on Prohibition; the founder of AA; the belladonna and antabuse treatments; the Sinclair Method; why Mormons are so great; why Gen Z is drinking less; Covid alcoholism; the unsightly effects of booze; drinking in secret; the shame of addiction; PrEP; the meth crisis among gays; the high rates of lesbian divorce; Nancy Mace and Megyn Kelly going radical; the belief that recovery should be hard and medication is cheating; AA’s hold on the legal system; opioids; and the massive death toll of alcohol.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Michael Wolff on Epstein, Karen Hao on AI, Charles Murray on finding religion, Michel Paradis on Eisenhower, David Ignatius on the Trump effect globally, Mark Halperin on the domestic front, and Arthur Brooks on the science of happiness. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod with Wesley Yang:

Thank you, thank you! Wesley was great. I have two daughters who claim to be a “he,” so this episode helps me stay educated and sane during these wild times. As a parent, I can trust my heart in loving my children no matter what — but not indulging the gender ideology.

Another parent:

It’s a gem of an episode, and I thank you and Wesley for making it. I hope I’ll be able to introduce my 7-year-old son to it when he’s old enough.

Agreed. Another listener writes:

I appreciated Wesley’s impassioned discussion with you, and it helped me feel a little bit less alone and little more sane. Even in these days of “affirmation equals diagnosis,” I’m not convinced that too many self-proclaimed allies have much of a personal stake in trans topics. I do — but I’ve found myself needing to stay quiet.

I have a close (millennial) family member who identified as trans a couple years after high school. This was after a period of severe despondency during senior year that nearly postponed graduation. As far as I can tell, this was not preceded by “insistent, persistent, and consistent” declarations earlier in childhood. One of the parents told me that interactions with online acquaintances played a significant role in the realization/affirmation/identification.

The outcome for now is a much happier disposition and higher self-reported quality of life. We don’t know, and may never know, if this is something one could have grown out of with time or traditional talk therapy, nor do we know if the decision was the result of young adult impulsivity. And maybe this is a case of unambiguous gender dysphoria with no chance of second thoughts or a future desire for biological children. But I have very deep concerns that we may be witnessing a misperception on my relative’s part and a misdiagnosis on a medical provider’s part.

In all of this, there is absolutely nothing I can say to anyone in my family without appearing to be a transphobic monster. I am grateful to the Democratic politicians who are finally making room for the topic of “we can respect the rights and dignity of individuals and express compassion without giving over our language and societal practices to an ideological mob,” but seeing some of what can arise on a direct, personal level makes me feel as if we’re still a long way from being able to have conversations with those close to us.

Here’s another clip — on the overall paralysis of Dem leaders:

Another writes, “I’ve been following your work for so long I can’t remember when I started, but this is the first time I’ve ever written in”:

I thought your conversation with Wesley Yang was one of the most provocative — and maybe one of the most important — episodes you’ve ever done. I say this because of the piercing clarity with which he articulated the political question that trans rights poses and his answer. As he puts it:

The question is this: Can a person’s counterfactual assertion about their inner self confer a right of recognition making that claim, and does it impose a duty on others to agree with it? My answer to that question is not in any society that wishes to remain liberal, pluralistic, and free.

The question is about the impact of bringing trans rights to scale, which means using state power to mandate and enforce that biological males be treated as females and biological females treated as males (or I suppose as both or neither) — regardless of how they affect other people or whether they are supported by democratic majorities. This makes me think about a passage from Schopenhauer:

But sooner or later every error must do harm, and this harm is all the greater, the greater the error. He who cherishes the individual error must one day atone for it, and often pay dearly for it. The same thing will hold good on a large scale as regards the common errors of whole nations. Therefore it cannot be repeated too often that, wherever we come across any error, it is to be pursued and eradicated as an enemy of mankind, and there cannot be any privileged or even sanctioned errors. The thinker should attack them, even though mankind should cry aloud, like a sick person whose ulcer is touched by the physician.

Next up, a “‘centrist’ trans woman viewpoint”:

By trans standards, I am boringly typical. I’m 31 years old, have had a voice surgery and “the” surgery, have tentatively retired from the workplace thanks to making some not totally misguided crypto investments (something I once thought I would happily spend all on medical care). I am a guy who strangers and my loved ones understand to be something different than a guy — something that at this point I wish didn’t have to be, but that, physically, I will be forever. I am not ashamed of it, but I am often fearful of repeats of the employment discrimination I’ve experienced. I do feel shame over the acts and words of some in my community — that of trans women.

For my piece, I approve of most of what the right side of Western politics has proposed, but feel resentment building and see a few very real tail risks.

How strict would I be? No surgeries till 18 is fine — and it’s being codified across the country. I would even say that upper-age limits might make sense; perhaps people 55 and older should not be doing these sorts of surgeries, for their health, though they often do. Some of these clinics truly are more interested in making a buck than helping severely unwell patients. I would say to keep informed consent for hormones for those over 18. Further restrictions push more and more people to the grey market, and if that grey market were to be restricted intensively, you will see emigration of transsexuals at a significant level.

And about borders: the passport sex marker matching birth certificates I don’t mind, but as travelers and immigrants have found, that is not where it stops. They are at risk of being denied entry if their documents do not match their body. That begins to enter state discrimination on the basis of sex, and it’s truly needless harm on unsuspecting people — trans or intersex.

Not to get hysterical, but I do hope that we are a ways away from US citizens like me — who have a passport sex marker and body that do not match — having our freedom of movement restricted. If I am a risk to national security, why not just imprison people like me, y’know?

Sports and public spaces? Go ham conservatives; knock yourselves out. I don’t mind; I would just caution you not to upset too many well-muscled natal women in enforcing these laws. On bathrooms, I myself have used a women’s bathroom with discomfort. Some trans women do need to be more strongly encouraged to use the men’s room. It is not at all clear how to push that effectively, but I would support any effort that does not cause violence to people I love.

I have friends who would not like my beliefs on these issues, one who truly benefited from transitioning before 18. All laws have a cost and people will be hurt, so we can just do our best to minimize it. The bigger question involves this ascendent movement’s goals.

For the conservative men and angry young women running the anti-trans movement, where does it stop? Will they seek to reinstitute anti-crossdressing laws, like New York’s famous three-piece rule? If bathroom laws become national, do you truly think that will not lead to violence (usually in cases of mistaken identity)? I think the administration’s words matter in signaling future policy and stoking animosity, and right now the sky’s the limit. Only a blue-wave election could limit the pushback to trans activism to a happy medium.

I almost left this country in December of last year, but I am here to face whatever the next few years hold. I expect same-sex marriage to be struck down. Maybe that prompts Pete Buttigieg to run for president and he gains zero momentum, because the culture has changed. I expect the culture to further harden on people like me. But so be it: social pressure now is not so different from what I had growing up. Elementary school classmates whom I once saw as my friends pushing me around and calling me faggot, “lord of the gays”. People who start nice, but eventually reveal how they feel. Just how it goes.

Here’s a dissent:

It would be hard to listen to the Yang episode and not conclude that trans advocates and their Democrat supporters are whacked out of their minds. But as a supporter, let me try to convince you otherwise.