Heather King is an ex-alcoholic and her brother, Joe King, is in The Queers but shes also a converted catholic so Im just all confused about my like for her and her book Parched. Heather King is a prominent National Public Radio writer and commentator and Parched is the story of her 20 year slide into alcoholism and how her work and writing finally pulled her out.
Buy Parched
Daniel Robert Epstein: Obviously this book is very personal for you. What made you decide to put it all out there?
Heather King: Ive been sober a long time now and it was just kind of the central paradigm, of my life. This kind of bizarre death and resurrection story where I just got this 20 year hole blown out of my life and it took me this long to actually see the value of it and come to terms with it. I spent so much time thinking those years were wasted and feeling shame and guilt but now from this perspective it played a huge part in me becoming a writer. So many of us have this huge thing in our hearts that we just are passionate about and for me it was writing. I just longed to do it more than anything and just could not do it. I was so fucked up for all that time, I was so hung over every day I just couldnt even think of writing. The story is such a central part of my existence I just wanted to put a narrative on my life in a way.
DRE: When did you first start drinking?
HK: When I was 13. Its no accident that most people start drinking and doing drugs when they enter puberty, because the kids need a drink or two or a million to deal with the whole opposite sex thing.
DRE: Did it help back then with that specific problem?
HK: It did more than help. It kind of put me over to another whole realm. The very first time I drank I was with a couple of girlfriends but also some guys and in a twinkling of an eye the guys turned from these alien creatures whose judgment I feared and dreaded into companions who wanted nothing more than to be held, touched and kissed. I really do think all addictions are a search for love and my drinking was very much tied into that. I was a barfly and it was a lot of looking for guys and picking up guys and all of that.
DRE: How long did you drink for?
HK: I drank for 20 years and Ive been sober for 18 years. When I picked up the first drink and I was just gone. I didnt become a daily drinker right away, but the mental obsession, the craving, the scheming, how I can get more and there were lots of drugs in there too. Even though it was the sixties I was basically a hard core boozehound. In a kind of spiritual sense or the emotional sense I didnt draw a sober breath for the next 20 years. Obviously I wasnt drunk every single second, but I was under its sway in a sense, in complete bondage to it.
DRE: What did you do during that time?
HK: I was from this blue collar family. I was a straight A student and I was the first person in my family to go to college, which was a big deal. I got a degree in social service because I wanted to help people. I had this whole sense that there was something wrong with the world and that whole sixties thing of, we need to change the world. I think thats still true but my approach to that is very different now. I got the degree in social services and proceeded to move to Boston and I was waitressing with my college degree and then just drinking, drinking, drinking.
At some point, I decided to go to law school, because there was a law school up the street from my apartment. I knew Id be too hung over to commute, I was almost 30 at that point and I was really starting to panic because I realized I had a severe problem with alcohol. I thought; let me go to law school because I know taking tests is one thing Im good at. Ill go to law school, Ill spend three years there and I will just taper off on my drinking. Of course I had no idea of actually stopping, but I just figured I would miraculously become a normal drinker and then Id have my degree and Id be an ACLU lawyer and help the oppressed and the minorities and instead I got out of there and was a daily morning drinker. Drinking at like old mens bars at eight in the morning. But then I actually graduated from law school with honors.
DRE: Oh wow.
HK: I know, I was so proud of that. I just cant believe it. Then I passed the Massachusetts bar on the first try.
DRE: Was the intervention the first time that you felt you had a real problem?
HK: No I knew I had a big problem. I used to go to bars for these marathon sessions like eight to ten hour at a bar was nothing to me. During the course of it I would say to the bartender, Im an alcoholic trying to be funny or something and these people would roll their eyes at me and say no shit. I knew I had a problem but I dont think I attached the word alcoholic to it. I just had that stereotype of an alcoholic as an old man in a trenchcoat sitting on skid row. But part of the insanity of the alcoholic is that you just keep thinking that youre going to get it together. At the same time youre afraid to even think about stopping because it just constitutes your entire identity.
The intervention that my family had for me did a bunch of things. I was shocked that my supportive self sacrificing, but also whacked out in their own way family, got together to do this. I think a lot of families, especially in that era, didnt confront each other. It takes you aback when people say weve noticed this problem and its hurting us. Honesty is just this massive force. That was the beginning and it took me a long time. In fact its still a work in progress.
DRE: How long have you been going on NPR for?
HK: I think Im going on my fourth year. I worked as a lawyer for a while after I got sober and hated it. To work in the field of civil litigation and to see how quote normal people and people with power in the world operated just really shook me to my core. It just was not the world for me and I had a big conflict about it because I was making money for the first time in my life. But that was when I realized Ive got to start writing. So I quit my job as a lawyer, started writing, converted to Catholicism, which brought me into my own. The NPR stuff started about four years ago. I had written a piece about a monastery that I had stayed at for a week. It was not your typical monastery. I wrote this piece in this magazine called The Sun a quirky literary magazine out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After it got published I got home one day and there was this message on my machine, Hi, this is Sara Saracen from NPRs All Things Considered, and I just died. She had seen the piece and she really liked it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy Parched
Daniel Robert Epstein: Obviously this book is very personal for you. What made you decide to put it all out there?
Heather King: Ive been sober a long time now and it was just kind of the central paradigm, of my life. This kind of bizarre death and resurrection story where I just got this 20 year hole blown out of my life and it took me this long to actually see the value of it and come to terms with it. I spent so much time thinking those years were wasted and feeling shame and guilt but now from this perspective it played a huge part in me becoming a writer. So many of us have this huge thing in our hearts that we just are passionate about and for me it was writing. I just longed to do it more than anything and just could not do it. I was so fucked up for all that time, I was so hung over every day I just couldnt even think of writing. The story is such a central part of my existence I just wanted to put a narrative on my life in a way.
DRE: When did you first start drinking?
HK: When I was 13. Its no accident that most people start drinking and doing drugs when they enter puberty, because the kids need a drink or two or a million to deal with the whole opposite sex thing.
DRE: Did it help back then with that specific problem?
HK: It did more than help. It kind of put me over to another whole realm. The very first time I drank I was with a couple of girlfriends but also some guys and in a twinkling of an eye the guys turned from these alien creatures whose judgment I feared and dreaded into companions who wanted nothing more than to be held, touched and kissed. I really do think all addictions are a search for love and my drinking was very much tied into that. I was a barfly and it was a lot of looking for guys and picking up guys and all of that.
DRE: How long did you drink for?
HK: I drank for 20 years and Ive been sober for 18 years. When I picked up the first drink and I was just gone. I didnt become a daily drinker right away, but the mental obsession, the craving, the scheming, how I can get more and there were lots of drugs in there too. Even though it was the sixties I was basically a hard core boozehound. In a kind of spiritual sense or the emotional sense I didnt draw a sober breath for the next 20 years. Obviously I wasnt drunk every single second, but I was under its sway in a sense, in complete bondage to it.
DRE: What did you do during that time?
HK: I was from this blue collar family. I was a straight A student and I was the first person in my family to go to college, which was a big deal. I got a degree in social service because I wanted to help people. I had this whole sense that there was something wrong with the world and that whole sixties thing of, we need to change the world. I think thats still true but my approach to that is very different now. I got the degree in social services and proceeded to move to Boston and I was waitressing with my college degree and then just drinking, drinking, drinking.
At some point, I decided to go to law school, because there was a law school up the street from my apartment. I knew Id be too hung over to commute, I was almost 30 at that point and I was really starting to panic because I realized I had a severe problem with alcohol. I thought; let me go to law school because I know taking tests is one thing Im good at. Ill go to law school, Ill spend three years there and I will just taper off on my drinking. Of course I had no idea of actually stopping, but I just figured I would miraculously become a normal drinker and then Id have my degree and Id be an ACLU lawyer and help the oppressed and the minorities and instead I got out of there and was a daily morning drinker. Drinking at like old mens bars at eight in the morning. But then I actually graduated from law school with honors.
DRE: Oh wow.
HK: I know, I was so proud of that. I just cant believe it. Then I passed the Massachusetts bar on the first try.
DRE: Was the intervention the first time that you felt you had a real problem?
HK: No I knew I had a big problem. I used to go to bars for these marathon sessions like eight to ten hour at a bar was nothing to me. During the course of it I would say to the bartender, Im an alcoholic trying to be funny or something and these people would roll their eyes at me and say no shit. I knew I had a problem but I dont think I attached the word alcoholic to it. I just had that stereotype of an alcoholic as an old man in a trenchcoat sitting on skid row. But part of the insanity of the alcoholic is that you just keep thinking that youre going to get it together. At the same time youre afraid to even think about stopping because it just constitutes your entire identity.
The intervention that my family had for me did a bunch of things. I was shocked that my supportive self sacrificing, but also whacked out in their own way family, got together to do this. I think a lot of families, especially in that era, didnt confront each other. It takes you aback when people say weve noticed this problem and its hurting us. Honesty is just this massive force. That was the beginning and it took me a long time. In fact its still a work in progress.
DRE: How long have you been going on NPR for?
HK: I think Im going on my fourth year. I worked as a lawyer for a while after I got sober and hated it. To work in the field of civil litigation and to see how quote normal people and people with power in the world operated just really shook me to my core. It just was not the world for me and I had a big conflict about it because I was making money for the first time in my life. But that was when I realized Ive got to start writing. So I quit my job as a lawyer, started writing, converted to Catholicism, which brought me into my own. The NPR stuff started about four years ago. I had written a piece about a monastery that I had stayed at for a week. It was not your typical monastery. I wrote this piece in this magazine called The Sun a quirky literary magazine out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. After it got published I got home one day and there was this message on my machine, Hi, this is Sara Saracen from NPRs All Things Considered, and I just died. She had seen the piece and she really liked it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
might seem nit-picky of me to say this and i do not pretend to know this woman or her philosophy/ etc.
but the general gist is once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. and that you're never, really "cured."
</soapbox>