During the resistance movement of 2016, a friends book about feminism got dropped in part because her feminism wasnt the right kind for the Trump era. But there would be no lunch after the show. Maybe it would get me intoThe New Yorker! Its projection. The #MeToo movement, which felt like a necessary corrective when it began, was starting to feel like an arrow pointed at our own agency. A couple of years ago, I was asked to conduct an interview at the Texas Book Festival with Malcolm Gladwell. My college boyfriend introduced me to Joan Didion. Sarah Hepola can be an celebrity, known for Rurni Kenshin: Ishin shishi e zero Requiem . Im 40 years old, and during all these years that Im getting wasted to the point of blackout, that Im falling down stairs, that Im having one night stands with guys, I cannot remember -- and Im not saying this never happened, but I cannot remember -- a friend, a person around me, or anyone saying, Were you too drunk to consent to this? I just dont remember that conversation ever happening. He skillfully reframed a rape culture narrative as a tragic misunderstanding fueled by the distortion of booze. TWIN CITIES, MN Camille Williams, who co-anchored with her husband Cory Hepola for KARE 11 on weekends surprised her fans Tuesday night when she announced her departure from the station . The next day, your brain will have no imprint of [your] activities, almost as if they didn't happen." Id choose a lot of gnarly punishments before Id choose to lose the status and career Ive built over more than two decades. By Sarah Hepola Ms. Hepola is the author of the best-selling memoir "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget." One of the trickiest things about blackouts is that you don't . Are you kidding? Im not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting in a lather because the topics were so rich. She is also survived by her grandchildren: Sarah, Brady, Matt, JJ, Jennifer, Greg, Joe, Danny, and Shane, along with her great-grandchildren Runa, Hans, Asher, Bear, and Autumn. I spoke to Hepola, a former colleague of mine, about drinking, body image, the politics of consent and what to do if you think you know someone who has a problem. My husband broke up with me, but I didn't drink! One of the reasons that I drank so much when I was drinking and involved with men is that I felt deeply uncomfortable with my own body. Last year marked a low point for me. Not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career Ive chosen, and if Im not doing that, thenwhat are we doing here? A story about sex workers during the pandemic written by a nonsex worker who didnt even frequent strip clubs? Hepola stopped drinking five years ago. But in my professional life, I wrote about apolitical subjects such as dating and travel, and on Instagram, I mostly posted about my cat and whatever seltzer I was currently enjoying. Sometimes, when money was tight, I ate this big jar of peanut butter . Perhaps I had internalized my own misogyny, whatever that means. Can you actually support yourself as an Uber driver? Oh I cant, I said, and its hard to read Malcolm Gladwell, but his body language expressed something like:Then what are we doing here? What might happen if she got a dragon? by Sarah Hepola (Author) 2,944 ratings Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs See all formats and editions Kindle $10.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook $0.00 Free with your Audible trial Hardcover $22.45 85 Used from $1.49 25 New from $10.50 5 Collectible from $6.00 Paperback But it was like that for me.". ), I sympathized deeply with Miller. Sarah Hepola is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget," now out in paperback. Sally and Don had many good years together. Silent, fearful, aching to be heard, petrified of being misunderstood. What if I had to substitute strawberries for raspberries and the customer didnt like strawberries? Sarah Hepola is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, "Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget."MORE FROM Sarah Hepola In Blackout, Hepola likens sobriety to a "plot twist" and shows the anguish that befell her when she was finally forced to face a version of herself, sans alcohol, head-on. Not because anyone asked for it, but because this is the career Ive chosen, and if Im not doing that, then what are we doing here? All I know is that I hated it, and for five years, I kept very quiet about it. What if I picked up the groceries and I got the wrong ones? I think Im gonna find out the answer to that question over the next few months. . A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure -- the sober life she never wanted. She was a very positive person, had an independent spirit, was high energy, and was incredibly welcoming and caring. Often called the Stanford rape (although the ghastly episode was, under California law at the time, considered a sexual assault butnot a rape) it became famous after the young woman at the center wrote ablisteringvictims statementthat was published onBuzzFeedand went supernova. Lets get blackout has been a college rallying cry for many years. Do you have any advice for someone who is thinking about broaching the subject of drinking problems with a friend? I toyed with the idea of writing about Brock Turner. The selfie with Malcolm Gladwell I posted to Instagram did get a ton of likes, though. Were missing the chance to learn. Public shaming is the worst kind of shaming. In the end, I did what I have done for the past 25 years whenever I hit some crisis in my career. But I think that when youre in that place, you do feel dramatic. This interview has been edited and condensed. Fewer open bars, more closed DMs. I have a million things to say, but well talk about it after the event.. Atlantic. We wanted the premium Scotch and the bragging rights of being an outsider. Im not gonna deal with that person because that person brings chaos -- and I understand that. Maybe Ill meet the love of my life, and maybe come April, Ill be picking up groceries for the good people of North Texas who need those seven items, pronto. We need to understand these terms -- "blackout" and "passing out -- a little bit better, so that we can have a better conversation. Nobody wants the bad guys to get away with it. The reasons were simple, at least for me. One evening, I sat on the brown-leather couch of a younger man who admired me for my writing, and maybe other things, if the salty text messages were true. Thats when I first found out what blacking out was. Like me, the younger man had fallen in love with art because it was the place where people told the truth. All Content 2023 Sarah Hepola. As jobs in the industry diminished, journalism had become even more cutthroat. And a lot of us are trapped in that sorry place. As she tells it, Sarah Hepola's romance with alcohol began in her childhood (yes, childhood), when she would sneak sips of beer from her mother's half-drunk can in the fridge. There are some crucial details missing from Sarah Hepola's new memoir, Blackout -- but that's the whole point. Everyone drank to get drunk in college, in their 20s and even into their 30s. I didnt have ears for that. What was trauma, really? Sally is survived by her children: John (Tracy), Bemidji, MN; Paul, Menahga, MN; jean Gibbs (Mark), Waconia, MN, Sue Umhoefer (Mark),Hartland, Wl, and Dale, Bemidji, MN. Maybe it would get me into The New Yorker! But the way I was doing business had become a prison of my own making. And a lot of us are trapped in that sorry place. Every once in a while, Id get a head of steam about some scandal, and Id start a big-swing essay only to bench myself a few days later. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Atlantic, Salon, and Elle. I understood such moral panics to be the product of generational hand-wringing and the religious right, which was then gaining ground. He gave me his dog-eared paperback of Slouching Toward Bethlehem. A couple of years ago, I was asked to conduct an interview at the Texas Book Festival with Malcolm Gladwell. Not that project, not that story, not that controversy. He had a book coming out,Talking to Strangers, which included a well-researched chapter on alcohol and blackouts in the context of a college scandal I knew better than most, having met some of the people involved with the legal case. The reasons were simple, at least for me. BLACKOUT: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure the sober life she never wanted. You mention that you were able to write off educational materials about excessive drinking -- like a student health center pamphlet, in college -- because they just didnt seem that realistic to you. You can call it cancel culture. I wanted people to love me without really knowing me, which isnt love. Artists were the weirdos and the scoundrels, the square pegs who never fit the round hole of society, and the result was typically a bucket of addictions, perversions, and bizarre predilections born of life on the outskirts. The unsavory truth is that I sympathized with many of these men: Johnny Depp, Ryan Adams, Brett Kavanaugh, every booze-soaked dumbass who has been accused of doing or saying things he may or may not remember, may or may not regret, may or may not have done while under the influence. Joining Tracy in conversation is New York Ti. John Ford. Sarah Hepola tells me how in the 1990s while she was at the University of Texas it was important for her to "drink, dress, and fuck like a man". The notion that men were the ones who needed to changenot a bad idea, in my opinionhad a stubborn way of relinquishing women from the burden of their own choices and behavior. If I had to pick, I think I'd honestly say I miss smoking more - although it is nice being able to go up a flight of stairs and not feel like I'm dying! 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. But admitting what I really thought, what I really believed about these complicated issues, I feared a similar exile. I couldnt always tell the difference between activism and protectionism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. But there would be no lunch after the show. Yeah. Sarah Hepola writes a long rambling pointless essay titled The . Also, Id fantasized about having lunch with him, and then later being able to say that Malcolm Gladwell and I were friends. The selfie with Malcolm Gladwell I posted to Instagram did get a ton of likes, though. Hepola A lonely, attention-starved child, Hepola started stealing sips of her parents' beer at age seven. A single womans life, also precarious. I didnt deserve to be there, or at least thats how I felt as guests exchanged war stories about the scolds on social media, where I mostly posted upcoming appearances, like a bot run by a PR firm. Obviously, I dont think that there will be a one-size-fits-all answer here, but I do think many of us know people who we think might have a problem -- and we honestly dont know what to say. Its a bad situation, to be relying on alcohol for your acceptance, because then you start doing things that are unacceptable. Millers account is searing. I have that line in the book: Activism may defy nuance, but sex demands it." Id think those would be the most interesting things to write about., I gave him an exasperated look. We see Hepola scan an AA room for a potential boyfriend, gain fifty pounds by . But I thought thats what writers do.. Its a shame the Internet hates him, I messaged. And though the area of expertise Id staked out as a writer was the complications of womens independence and the nuances of sex, and my own personal brand was blunt honesty, I could not bring myself to say word one about these episodes in public. First scientifically described in 1946 by E.M. Jelliinek, an alcohol-induced blackout is an amnestic event during a drinking episode without loss of consciousness. By now the name Sarah Hepola should be familiar to you. All Rights Reserved. I was not writing much about this stuff, except in the journals where I always stowed my secrets. I would thump the kitchen table. Oprah had him on to talk about the book, and exactly two weeks later, she sat down with Chanel Miller, whose own memoir, Know My Name, had become a sensation. But central to Millers despair is this: She could not remember what happened. Sarah Hepola is the personal essays editor at Salon.com. Sarah Hepola is the author of the bestselling memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, and the host/creator of America's Girls, a Texas Monthly podcast about the lost history and cultural impact of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. If so, can they please tell me, so I can choose my stance accordingly? We are all unreliable narrators. "This is a point worth underscoring, since the most common misperception about blacking out is confusing it with passing out, losing consciousness after too much booze. Perhaps my thinking, steeped in the classic liberalism of 90s slacker culture,wasunevolved. And the unsavory truth is that, as someone who has done Very Stupid Things while drinking, I also sympathized with Turner. That shook me. Maybe thats why I held so fast to the younger man Id met on Tinder, of all places. My writer friends and I huddled backstage at panels in green rooms filled with chocolate-chip cookies and veggie platters, whispering about everything we couldnt say out there, in the scary beyond. I grew up reading Edgar Allan Poe (alcoholic, married his 13-year-old cousin), dancing to James Brown (domestic abuse, alleged rape), watching Woody Allen movies (is Woody Allen). Back in 2015, I was putting out my first book, and then I was promoting that book, and then I was struggling to write a second book, and I could not risk the personal and professional blowback that might accompany stepping into the wrong lane. She writes of waking up in a hospital with no idea how she got there and only a handful of cluesa grim scenario that is nonetheless a familiar one for blackout drinkers like me. My book opens with an episode in Paris where I came out of a blackout in the middle of having sex with a man I did not recognize. Blackout by Sarah Hepola | Summary & Analysis Preview: In her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, Sarah Hepola examines how she drank, why she drank, how others responded to her, and the misfortunes that occurred during her journey to sobriety. For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was "the gasoline of all adventure." She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she . And thats why, midway through a career built on speaking out, I shut up. But the conversation didnt go as Id planned. But such was the fierce community forged by booze that I feared exile. My friends and I at thealternative paper inAustin, Texas,sat around long communal tables at dive bars arguing about pop culture, trying to one-up one another with off-color jokes as we downed pint after pint. I felt betrayed. Oh yeah, that was me. You start to see the ways that their stories sync up with you. ANew York Timescolumnist who would eventually be publicly excommunicated. I grew so deeply uncomfortable, so roiled with shame, that I began plotting new careers. Blackouts can be either partial or complete. During the resistance movement of 2016, a friends book about feminism got dropped in part because her feminism wasnt the right kind for the Trump era. Something else might work for you, but just thought I'd share. . And I was broke, but I had no idea what to do about it. ThisNew York Times bestseller will resonate with anyone who has been forced to reinvent or struggled in the face of necessary change. Big in Finland. But I seem to be enjoying it. Blackouts might be the freakiest neurological occurrence that also happens to be casually categorized as another Friday night. I just thought this was how it was donewe said one thing in public, and backstage we said what we really thought. Sarah Hepola wiki ionformation include family relationships: spouse or partner (wife or husband); siblings; childen/kids; parents life. Terms of Use | by Sarah Hepola. Blackouts might be the freakiest neurological occurrence that also happens to be casually categorized as another Friday night. And so I watched from afar as the person whose memory had not recorded the incident came to control the narrative. No jail time. All I know is that I hated it, and for five years, I kept very quiet about it. I was so proud of this small, private act of civil disobedience that I brought it home to Texas to show it to the younger man like a prized pelt. Some kind of moral monster? I'm posting this for two compelling reasons. What if I had to substitute strawberries for raspberries and the customer didnt like strawberries? The Internet hates Franzen? He was not an online creature, despite being 29. I hadnt gossiped so enthusiastically since middle school. This was 2018, and the party was an informal gathering at the sumptuous Brooklyn brownstone of a writer deemed problematic, even before that word went mainstream. I thought that my friendships were over, because alcohol had been such a point of bonding for us. But central to Millers despair is this: She could not remember what happened. Burial service for victims of the SS Atlantic shipwreck, April 1873. Deeply uncomfortable. Its projection. Yes, exactly! Or I would pause the recording to offer my own opposing view, like I was part of this conversation, and not the passive listener. I list some blood-alcohol content numbers in the book, which are average BACs: a fragmentary [partial] blackout happens at 0.20, and en bloc [complete] blackouts are, on average, at about 0.30. Id long considered myself a liberal and a feminist, but Id grown terrified of being banished for views I considered reasonable, or at least worth discussingbut maybe,but what about,but actually. It started early (she first stole sips of beer at age 7), and blazed a destructive path through several decades of her life. Going against the online outrage machine could be career suicide. I suspect I will lose followers (I dont have that many), but perhaps I will gain self-respect, which Ive been sorely lacking lately. Rags to Riches: How US Higher Ed Went from Pitiful to Powerful, podcast about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Follow David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing on WordPress.com, Paul Fussell Thank God for the Atom Bomb, The Winning Ways of a Losing Strategy: Educationalizing Social Problems in the US. At what point does an AirBNB just become a hotel? Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods: Internet speech will never go back to normal. When I quit drinking in 2010, bringing to an end a dark history of blackouts and tumbles down staircases, I thought I might lose my writing career. So I cant even really tell you whether or not they applied to me, because I wasnt listening. When I quit drinking in 2010, bringing to an end a dark history of blackouts and tumbles down staircases, I thought I might lose my writing career. Given your experience, do you think there is a better way to educate people about these issues? It was also, as Miller acknowledged and like every story ever told, incomplete. Sarah Hepolais the author of the bestsellingBlackoutand whatever she writes next. We will miss her deeply. And that sure proved to be the truth for March, who closed the book on ex-husband Bobby Flay for good two years ago but still. I thought that my dating life was over, because there was no way in hell that I was gonna be able to be intimate with somebody without drinking. So theres a little bit of TBD on that answer. Phone dates with writer friends in other parts of the country stretched to two and three hours as we worked out essays we would never write, toggling between outrage, despair, and armchair cultural analysis of the latest dustup. I didn't do AA or anything like that, just lurked here and became a devout fan of Sarah Hepola and her musings. To listen. Sally and Don had many good years together. She lives in East Dallas, where she enjoys listening to the Xanadu soundtrack and puttering in her garden, when she remembers she has one. But my cohort and I had grown up wanting it both ways: a safe career, and an artistic one. There were the pressing matters of rent, exorbitant insurance, and the occasional glitter heels. I couldnt always tell the difference between activism and protectionism, valid critique and frivolous complaint. A bigot? But the social and moral and criminal consequences can be grave. Sarah Hepolais the author of the bestselling memoir,Blackout. I was galled by the PMRC, a group of concerned mothers led by the then-wife of Al Gore, Tipper Gore, fighting the cultural rot of songs about masturbation, virginity, BDSM, all the topics a curious girl might find irresistible. She has worked as a music critic, travel writer, film reviewer, sex blogger, beauty columnist, and high school English teacher. We will miss her deeply. Gender, sex, morality. Into someone else's life. She went to St. As jobs in the industry diminished, journalism had become even more cutthroat. IWNDWYT. She lives in East Dallas, where she enjoys playing her guitar poorly and listening to the "Xanadu" soundtrack. Fear of professional exile has kept me from taking on certain topics. Its very unusual for sexual assaults involving a blackout to get a conviction, partly for this reason. One of the common arguments made, at least about #MeToo scandals, is that the men (and women) behaving badly rarely face legal punishment. I toyed with the idea of writing about Brock Turner. If only I could write this well. The reviews were mixed, but the hits didnt really come, maybe because by the time his book came out, during the cresting wave of Black Lives Matter, the culture had moved away from #MeToo discussions, or maybe because nobody felt like tangling with Malcolm Gladwell. That she sympathizes with accused rapists, for one thing . I just decided, I get to be however I want, and you need to accept me. Were missing the chance to learn. Im not going to die in that ditch today, I often said to a like-minded friend when we spoke about these scandals, which was daily, both of us getting in a lather because the topics were so rich.