You are not alone

On recovery.

I wanted to have more time to think and write about all the noise over Pete Hegseth’s alleged drinking exploits, but that’s just not the way life works. I had the time I had and I made my best of it in a column for The Bulwark last week that explored how alcoholism and recovery work in light of Hegseth’s pledge to stop drinking if only the Senate will confirm him as secretary of defense.

I wrote the column because what I was seeing in news coverage of Hegseth’s promise did not reflect the reality of the disease of alcoholism. I hope you’ll read it. (My last piece for The Bulwark focused on a member of the Georgia State Election Board soliciting a job in the Trump administration while passing rules that benefited Trump during the election.) When I first got sober I had a bunch of big plans — still embroiled the grandiose thinking of an alcoholic. I still have those plans but, like the column I wrote last week and what you’re reading right now — they don’t always turn out exactly how I’d like, and that’s OK.

In sobriety I don’t need to dwell on the past, and instead can (mostly) accept life for exactly what it often is — busy, messy, complicated, and incomplete. Part of why I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted here at Doom in regards to Hegseth and the subject of alcoholism is because writing the Bulwark column was very uncomfortable. That discomfort came on top of the now-routine anxiety and discomfort that has come with finalizing my first book, a memoir about my dual addictions to alcohol and the news, and the madness and chaos I’ve witnessed and experienced both in my personal life and as an American reporting on the events of the last decade-plus.

As I mentioned last week, I’ll have more to share about the book, including some excerpts, as I get closer to finally putting it to bed. But for now, this will have to suffice: drinking made my book possible, but sobriety has made it a reality. And I’ll be getting back to a lot more hard news once more of this book is out of the way, so I ask for your patience in the interim. It won’t be long, because January brings the beginning of the Trump administration, and what I imagine will be complete chaos. I am ready.

A handful of you have reached out in the wake of the Bulwark column to express gratitude for someone in recovery writing about the issue in a way that wasn’t reflected in the news surrounding Hegseth’s drinking exploits. For that, I’m extremely grateful. I didn’t write what I did for myself, but instead for everyone out there in recovery who, like me, were reading coverage of the Hegseth ordeal and thinking how detached from reality it was. I knew I wasn’t alone when I finally decided to get sober, and last week’s column was another in the daily reminders of that fact. So, thank you.

-jg