Ask a Sober Oldster: Year in Review

Highlights from the first six interviews in this monthly series, a collaboration between Oldster Magazine and The Small Bow.

Clockwise from top left: Dionne Ford, Martha Frankel, Kevin Teare, Elizabeth Crane, Ray Cocks, Meredith Maran. All illustrations by Edith Zimmerman

Readers,

There are many more of you here than there were last June, when

The Small Bow

’s A.J. Daulerio and I began collaborating on a monthly Q&A series that I love, called Ask a Sober Odlster. So this month, instead of publishing a new Q&A in the midst of the holiday whirlwind, it seemed like a good moment to pause and introduce the series to all the newcomers. It’s also a time of year when many people contemplate making personal changes, so it seems like a good moment to re-share this.

The Small Bow has been a favorite newsletter of mine for some time. 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 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. And both have been recognized by readers for spotlighting otherwise ignored aspects of humanity.

It’s been a fun half-year of this collaboration. We’ll resume with new Q&As› in the new year. - Sari

Here’s a look back at the first six interviews…

“I have been addicted to something—drugs, sex, gambling, you name it—from the day my father died in 1965. I was 15.” - Martha Frankel

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“My sober sisters especially helped me raise my kids, go back to school, be the best spouse I was capable of being, and they are now walking me through divorce. I am never alone.” -

Dionne Ford

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“I loved everything about drinking, starting with making my own syrups and growing my own cocktail herbs and inventing my own cocktails, and ending with escaping my egomaniacal self.” -

meredith maran

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“Like a lot of alcoholics, I have that degree of obsessive compulsiveness that is like a heat-seeking missile for whatever the darkest part of what's going on in my life is.” - Kevin Teare

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“My daughter wrote me off when she was 14. She was 19 when I finally admitted defeat and went to detox and rehab. When she got married, she asked me to give her away.” - Ray Cocks

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“I hope that I am less reactive, more open-minded, less likely to make most of the poor choices I made earlier in my life; even if I still have the impulse to do so, I’m no longer likely to, say, move across the country on a whim when I’m uncomfortable about… pretty much anything.” -

Elizabeth Crane

.

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Check out the whole Sober Oldster series. All illustrations by

Edith Zimmerman

.