Ask a Sober Oldster: Second-Year-Plus Highlight Reel

A look back at the latest in our "Sober Oldster" collaboration with The Small Bow. Here, tidbits from the most recent interviews in this popular monthly series.

This monthly interview series is a collaboration between Oldster Magazine and The Small Bow, A.J. Daulerio’s excellent newsletter about recovery and mental health, and will appear in both newsletters. Learn more about this collaboration in this Oldster podcast/videocast episode.

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Clockwise from top left: Laurie Woolever, Rick Moody, Katy Valentine, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Ana Marie Cox, Richard Rushfield, Elizabeth Gilbert, Nick Flynn. Center: Margaret Cho. All illustrations by Edith Zimmerman.

Readers,

A little over two years ago, The Small Bow’s A.J. Daulerio and I began collaborating on “Ask a Sober Oldster,” an interview series that means a lot to me, and which has grown to be quite popular. For this month’s edition we decided to pause and take stock of some of the most recent interviews in the series so far, and present you with a little highlight reel.

The Small Bow is one of my all-time favorite newsletters. It’s not only about addiction and recovery; it’s also about mental health, but more broadly, about being fallibly human and learning from life. (Although I don’t drink, I’m not an addict in recovery. Yet I’m always inspired and encouraged by what I read in The Small Bow, and sometimes moved to tears.)

Oldster Magazine and The Small Bow intersect in a couple of places. Both shed light on subjects—aging, addiction—around which there’s historically been shame and stigma, and a need for greater societal understanding and new perspectives. Both also deal with longevity—counting time on earth, counting time in sobriety. 

It’s been a fun, inspiring two-years-and-change of collaboration. I’m grateful to all of our contributors. We’ll resume our regular series with a new Q&A in November. Thanks, as always, for reading, and for all your support! - Sari

P.S. Check out my recent conversation with A.J. Daulerio on The Small Bow Podcast:

Here’s a look back at the several recent interviews…

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“It is said that alcoholics tend to be emotionally arrested at the level of maturity when they became serious problem drinkers. This was true for me; I had the emotional maturity of a young teenager when I got sober at 30. I had to learn how to be a grown-up—it didn’t help that I’d been a successful musician in a successful band throughout most of those years, which can be a very easy career to stay immature in. In sobriety I really had to grow up.” - Kathy Valentine.

Ask a Sober Oldster #15: Go-Go's Bassist and Memoirist Kathy Valentine

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“I walked into my first meeting in the days between Christmas and New Years in 1988. I was 28. That time of year used to be very hard for me, as it coincided with the anniversary of my mother’s suicide (I guess you could say that time of year was hard for her as well).” - nick flynn

Ask a Sober Oldster #17: Nick Flynn

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“Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for having spent so much time in supervised environments, chore charts and all. The structure was good, but the biggest gift might have been seeing so many people relapse—and go through a lot of trouble to relapse. One woman in my sober living house walked a mile in 100-degree Texas heat to a convenience store in order to buy liquor. Another drank Listerine. People ran away with nowhere to go. I saw the raw power of the disease.” - Ana Marie Cox

Ask a Sober Oldster #18: Ana Marie Cox

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“In the months leading up to the end of my drinking career, the signs that I had a problem with alcohol were getting messier and louder and harder to ignore. My behavior while drunk involved lots of sloppy bad decisions, things that hurt me and other people, putting my career and safety at risk. I was already deeply unhappy, and alcohol whipped my smoldering depression into a dangerous conflagration, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.” - Laurie Woolever

Ask a Sober Oldster #21: Laurie Woolever

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“When I think about what I’m most grateful for, I come back to the fact that I have a family—a wife and two children—who have never seen me not sober, who can’t really imagine what I would be like not sober. To have these people in my life who think of me just…as another person in the world living a life—very much not the way people thought of me before —I can’t imagine a gift greater than that, and that kind of puts a bow around everything I’m grateful for.” - Richard Rushfield

Ask a Sober Oldster #22: Richard Rushfield

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“My first reaction to almost everything is ‘Fuck you.’ I almost never stay there but I almost always start there. That hasn’t changed, which for a long time I found really disappointing. Like, how in the world do I still think such consistently horrible things after all these years of WORKING ON MYSELF. But in my case, progress doesn’t look like receiving a personality transplant. It looks like the fact that yeah, I still start with ‘Fuck you,’ I just very seldom STAY there. The time between my reaction (which is still pretty shitty) to my response has gotten real short. Progress is seen in the speed at which I move out of ‘Fuck you.’” - Nadia Bolz-Weber

Ask a Sober Oldster #23: Nadia Bolz-Weber

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“When I’m sober I feel like I’m super sensitive and somewhat psychic. I read Richard Rushfield’s palm and saw his wife and two kids. And now he has a wife and two kids! But what is most memorable is the peace I feel almost every day. Almost every moment. It’s pretty cool.” - Margaret Cho

Ask a Sober Oldster #24: Margaret Cho

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“At various points, it has been remarkably hard. For example, my sister died when I was about eight years clean and that overturned the apple cart completely. There was, then, a long journey through grief. And, accordingly, I had to retool my spiritual thinking such that ‘horrible bad news and loss’ could be part of the journey, no matter how sober I was. And, later, I lost jobs in sobriety, I got divorced, I lost a friendship here and there. It’s life, and if you live long enough, all the things that happen in a life will come to pass. Recovery gives us the tools for this, thank goodness.” - Rick Moody

Ask a Sober Oldster #25: Rick Moody

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“With recovery, it’s possible to transcend your genetic and cultural destiny, is what I’m saying. If a person with a mind and a history as chaotic as mine can have a good and peaceful day—and can then string a whole bunch of those good days together, one day at a time, into a better life—then truly, anyone can.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

Ask a Sober Oldster #27: Elizabeth Gilbert

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Check out an earlier roundup of these Q&A’s, from June 2024:

Ask a Sober Oldster: First-Year Highlight Reel

With thanks, as always, to A.J. Daulerio and illustrator Edith Zimmerman at The Small Bow for the collaboration. Check out the whole Sober Oldster series.