Bridget Phetasy details her journey from alcoholism and trauma to sobriety, critiquing modern culture wars where digital mob law silences nuance. She argues that labeling biological sex differences as a "purity test" fuels extremism on both sides, driving average citizens toward a center valuing free speech and reason. By highlighting self-censorship's psychological roots and the opioid crisis over political noise, Phetasy concludes that conserving decency and logic against totalitarianism requires honest dialogue rather than ideological exile. [Automatically generated summary]
Today's podcast guest is somebody who is going to make you, I think, belly laugh, made me belly laugh.
She's naturally funny.
She's naturally warm and she is uncommonly frank.
She has not had an easy life, but her perspective is phenomenal.
I don't think we agree on very much.
She has always been a liberal, but now she finds herself outside of the liberal circle because she sobered up.
She was like, yeah, now that I see things clearly, I'm not so sure, but she doesn't know she's a conservative either.
What she is, is real and real funny.
I saw you on the Rubin Report.
Oh, okay.
I love Dave.
I love Dave too.
And you said that a friend of yours wigged out because you were coming here.
Oh, yeah.
Wigged out.
Like, what does that mean?
I mean, do you really want to know all the things I've been told?
Yeah.
You've been told by more than one person.
Well, I just, I didn't really, I don't, I've stopped telling people that I'm what I'm doing in advance because the pre-backlash, and Dave and I talked about this on the podcast about how I'm doing this article about self-censorship.
And then everybody tried to tell me not to do the article.
So I just don't even need to hear everyone's opinions.
I feel comfortable in my path and what I'm doing.
And I love having conversations with anyone.
And yeah, somebody the other night, I did a podcast and we were chatting afterwards.
And they're like, why are you going to Dallas?
And I said, oh, I'm going to do Unboxed podcast.
And he said, you realize that you are talking to somebody who's the epitome of evil, right?
Like, this is a fact.
Wow.
Not as if it's like up for debate.
It was a dead fact that, and it's hard for me to even take anyone seriously who views the world like that because you're flattening everything and everyone.
And all the shades of gray are gone.
Now it's just good.
And I was just talking to one of your producers before this about the night being in LA and the election and the night before.
I was in a yoga class and my yoga instructor was like, I can't teach.
She was walking around.
I can't relax.
I can't teach.
And she said, I feel like this is the battle between good against evil.
I'm like, just teach a yoga class, lady.
Like, isn't yoga supposed to be against, you know, like, help us with this?
Help us in this.
Yoga should help you.
Yeah, it should.
Well, here I am.
I am thrilled to have you.
I've read your writing and I think you're brilliant.
Thank you.
Brilliant writer.
I have a hard time accepting compliments, but it's going to be a good thing.
I think you're an Ernest Hemingway.
Okay.
Thank you.
No, seriously, because you have a lot in common with him in some ways.
You are brutally honest.
I think that's what makes you refreshing.
It's not your writing.
Your writing is beautiful.
Thank you.
But your attitude is like, oh, thank God.
It's like you're in a desert and it's a drink of water.
You know what I mean?
It's just a big glass of water with a sign that says, there's more here.
Yeah.
But you are, you're just willing to put literally everything out.
Yeah.
I mean, what's the point of going through any of it if I can't help other people or help?
That was something I learned even writing at Playboy.
But what's interesting, again, is that when I was speaking to somebody about this just yesterday, I've become a firebrand for being like saying what people think or being reasonable.
That seems, that's not, it shouldn't be controversial.
I said this on Dave.
It shouldn't be controversial that somebody is looking at both sides, evaluating them and saying, okay, here's where you're crazy.
Here's where you're crazy.
I agree with some of what you're saying.
That's the way this is supposed to work.
It's not supposed to be Game of Thrones.
So conservatives, what do you think a conservative is?
Well, this is something that's interesting because I don't know.
I don't either.
I mean, I really don't either.
I don't know anymore.
And I don't know when I kind of stumbled.
And this is the book I'd like to write is how I ended up going from basically getting sober.
And they say when you get sober, you aren't going to recognize who you are.
And I'm like, I'm a conservative.
Now I really need to drink.
I didn't see that one coming light years away.
And writing for Playboy.
And then here, you know, if there's, and I was joking today with my friend, if there's any evidence of a simulation, it is this interaction right now, this moment is evident.
You would never have, you would have never pictured yourself.
No, if someone had told me five and a half years ago, like, you're going to get sober and in five and a half years, you're going to be on Glenn Beck.
I'm like, give me whatever drugs you're on.
I need them now.
It's just not, it wasn't, and it wasn't like, what I've realized is really how ignorant I am.
And I've been kind of joking about how I'm the moron majority.
And I mean that lovingly, but most I was working and just trying to get by and waitressing and wanted to be a writer.
By the way, maybe like drunk for 20 years and had my head down.
And then suddenly I started, I got sober, started writing, which was always my dream.
And then the election happened.
And suddenly I'm in the, like, caught in the crossfire of these culture wars.
I'm like, did I even know what it meant to be a Democrat?
Did I even know what it meant to do?
I don't know anything about.
Right.
I just know that I sobered up at 30.
Yeah.
And I realized, I'm a moron.
That's a moron.
That's really the moment you're catching me at.
And it's around that time, I think they say too, around five years where you pull your head out of your bomb.
And so I definitely don't feel, I feel out of my depth most of the time.
I feel.
You will remember this as the best time of your life because you are at such a steep learning curve where you're just questioning everything, where you're like, because I took everything out of me because I was like, I don't know anything.
I know what people told me, but I didn't learn any of this on my own.
So I took everything out of me and I couldn't afford to go to college.
I went one semester.
Embracing Being Wrong00:05:02
That's me.
So I went to the library and to the bookstore and I got all the books of the people I think would hate each other.
This is what I'm doing right now.
Is that what you're doing?
And you're like, if I could just get these two to argue, you know, and see if there's any intersection because where it intersects, that's universal truth.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Where they agree, okay, we know that's true because these guys don't agree on anything.
Right.
And I started putting it all back in, and it's hard.
Right.
It's hard because you're like, I remember so many times going, no, I don't want to be.
I'm, right?
I'm a Mormon.
Right.
I didn't grow up a Mormon.
I chose to be a Morm.
Nobody chooses that.
Nobody's like, hey, I want to be a pariah and a weirdo.
I did not.
That's the last thing.
And I remember going, oh my God.
Yeah.
And, but that's good.
It is.
It is.
It's being, I said yesterday, I feel like I'm playing a giant high-stakes game of improv where it's like, yes, and I will go on Glenn Beck.
And yes, and why not?
I mean, it's, it, and, but it's invigorating.
But you're not just, you know, there's a part of Ernest Hemingway that is reckless.
And I don't, I don't think you're reckless.
I don't think you're just like, I'll get into the world.
No, no.
Yeah.
I, because I deeply care about humanity.
And so I think the fear is when I get the nonstop backlash of how much water I'm carrying for Nazis, there is the, you know, self, the self-reflection.
It's a lot of water.
I know, I know, I know.
I got the Defender of Israel award from Benjamin Netanyahu.
Okay.
He presents it.
At the same time, I'm being called a Nazi.
This happens.
A lot.
This happens a lot.
I find myself too, just being in that space taking hits on behalf of no one, really, but I'll be getting called a Nazi on the left and getting attacked by the alt-right.
And that's always a weird thing where I'm like, can you tell the alt-right that?
Right.
So they stop talking to me.
I'd appreciate that if they had that memo.
Aren't they, in some ways, I think?
It's like two sides of the same coin.
They're both big statist, my way or the highway, you know, bullies.
Bullies.
And the, again, the openness to have your mind change, to change.
I think that that's it.
I've had to reinvent myself so many times in my life.
It doesn't scare me to be open to the fact that I don't know anything.
I don't know anything, anything.
And it is embarrassing.
Part of it is embarrassing at how ignorant I am.
It's so embarrassing.
I mean, no, no, it's not.
It's very humbling.
Yes.
You know, that is the point.
We are, you know, most of my problems.
When I was at Fox, almost every mistake I ever made was because I was certain.
The one thing I'm certain of now, I'm not certain of anything.
Right.
I don't know anything.
And the more you realize, I don't really know, the more humble you get and the more willing you're able to.
If I don't sit with somebody I vehemently disagree with, and I think is an honest broker, there's a difference between there's those people who are not honest brokers.
Right.
But people who are honest brokers, people who are, I am absolutely willing to change my mind if you can present the facts, you know, and you show me, okay, look, this and this and this, this is what it's saying.
Now, we don't know for sure, great.
But you show me the facts.
I'll debate and I'm willing to change if I'm wrong.
I want to be a lot of times I want to be wrong.
Right.
Although it's sometimes hard to prove a negative.
So that is where I have to watch myself because I'm bad at a lot of this, you know.
Being proven negative.
coming from a place of well we're not sure you can speculate but then there's what I see too is sometimes it's like speculating and then it drifts into like conspiracy theorizing and again I see this see this like on everywhere essentially so I I and I have to watch myself that I'm I'm very easily I always come from a place of like, well, I don't know.
Anything could be true.
Owning Your Space00:07:44
Yeah, no, I don't mean that.
I mean, because look, I'm willing to look for answers.
Right.
And if there is an answer and you can show it to me and I have a different opinion, okay, well, there's the answer and I see it.
I see how it works.
Okay, got it.
Now I'm a denier if I, if I deny that.
Right.
However, when there isn't an answer, then we both have to agree, you have an opinion.
Right.
I have an opinion.
Right.
And we're going to have to work through that.
Right.
I shouldn't shut you up and you shouldn't shut me up.
Right.
Because it could go either way.
We don't know.
I just, it's so interesting to me that people don't want to talk.
There are people who are untouchables.
You may be one of them.
Where, for instance, you know, welcome to my college.
It is this kind of idea that you just, if you go, the guilt by association.
And this is what I personally, what happens when you're in this space of, I don't know.
Okay.
Well, what do, what are my values?
This is what are my values?
You know, I feel like somebody like Ben Shapiro actually has been very inspirational to me and someone who, although we may not agree on everything, he is very value-based.
And he has made me kind of step back and say, what are my values?
I don't, I, I really value free speech.
I was saying this to Dave Rubin, you know, when I went off Twitter for 40 days, it gave me the ability to step back and look at all these little micro arguments that we get into and the little, and it's hard.
I mean, I, I, I engage, I partake.
I can't help it.
The trickster in me, the, the comedian in me, the part of me that likes to get a rise out of people is.
See, we're not, we're not supposed to know so many people.
No, we're not.
Just not.
We're not capable.
We're supposed to know, you know, Bob, the neighbor on the street who I wave to as I'm driving by and he's watering his lawn.
That's all I know about Bob.
That's all I need to know about Bob.
And we can all get along.
We are just, we, we, we're being exposed to all of these people.
Right.
And some of them are dumb as a box of rocks.
Some of them are, you know, it's immersion therapy, you know?
We would dismiss them.
We would know, we would have two conversations with them, one in the convenience store, and we would be like, okay, honey, I just saw Bob in the convenience store.
I talked to him for two minutes.
Don't wave at him anymore.
And then it would be over.
We're engaging with these people all the time.
Like it matters.
And it doesn't.
It doesn't.
It doesn't.
And yet, here we are.
It's the culture wars are so weird because I, again, and this was something that I was saying on Ruben, and that I have to ask myself: what is, you know, what, how am I, how am I maybe making this worse?
There is a part of me that, and it again, it's the part of me that is like South Parkian in my philosophy.
I can't help but think everything is hilarious.
It's another one of my values is comedy.
It just is a value of mine.
I've realized that.
And free speech and comedy are so, you know, they're yeah, they're necessary and they're necessary for people.
You need to be able to laugh at your pain.
You need to be able to laugh at things that are taboo.
You, you have to.
You need that release.
It's why dictators don't allow laughter about them.
Yeah.
Because you can belittle it and you can move past it.
Right.
I mean, one of the things that I've noticed, and I was just saying this, is you have to kind of own people in my space, whatever space that is.
I would say James Lindsay is a good example.
The IDW or whatever.
Anyone who's willing to have conversations with the Axis of Evil, the new Axis of Evil.
We are often labeled as grifters, which I feel like is a very convenient way to try and demonize people who are willing to have conversations with people that they might not see eye to eye on every single issue with.
And I just kind of embrace it.
I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm a grifter now.
You're a grifter.
I just had Peter and James here.
Oh, I love them.
Yeah, I love them.
They're brilliant.
Yeah.
James is on my podcast.
I love these guys.
Love them.
Peter's sitting there and he says, about 40 minutes in, I have been trying to find things I disagree with you with, and I can't.
And it's, we are so close to each other.
Right.
We've let these lies or these little slivers of us on the edge allow them to be our entire character.
It's the flattening.
That's what I call it.
It's like everything is just flat.
We were just flattening people.
We're flattening words.
Words are losing meaning.
Like Nazis, for example, were laughing about.
We probably should be laughing, but we shouldn't.
It's one of those things.
Kate Smith did a song and the Yankees and the, what was it, the Flyers, take her statue down.
She's Kate Smith.
You know, God Bless America.
Right, right.
She's been dead for like 50 years.
She did a song in 1931 that is called Why Darkies Are Born.
Okay.
And you hear that and you're like, right?
Oh my gosh.
I can't believe.
Why are we canceling dead people?
They're already canceling.
But here's the crazy thing.
That song was written for a Broadway show mocking white supremacist.
So it was a song.
It was springtime for Hitler.
Mel Brooks is in trouble, man.
Oh, man.
He's in trouble.
He's in trouble.
Everyone's in trouble.
Everyone is in danger of getting canceled.
And that is the interesting thing that I feel like, you know, when it is serious to me, when I do say, well, what is my role in this?
How can I help in the conversation?
And how am I hurting it?
It's a fine line.
It is a fine line.
Because I feel like I have to push the edge in order to get people to feel liberated to talk about things.
I love you.
I love you.
They wouldn't normally talk about.
Even with the, I feel like we've been living under mob law since like 2013.
And I mean that by social media mob.
And people always say, well, free speech, you can, you know, they're not going to come arrest you.
No.
But when you take someone in America's livelihood away, you might as well break their kneecaps.
I will tell you that mob law has been around longer than that.
Well, no, no, no.
But I mean, in terms of that, the mobbing, I feel like where we're seeing, I say 2013 just because that was when I really, that was the Justine Sacco, the girl who got on the plane, made the joke and landed and her life was ruined.
And I was like, this is really bad, guys.
Yes.
Yes.
This behavior is terrifying.
What's horrible is we're entering a new phase.
I mean, you know, the mobs have been destroying and smearing people forever.
I mean, both sides forever.
Living Under Mob Law00:07:19
Of course.
Of course.
I just only noticed it in 2013.
Yeah, no, I know.
But when it turns like it did starting in 2013 to where it's anyone, like I, when I was at Fox, oh my gosh, it's crazy.
But it's part of my job.
Right.
And I was just like you.
I have to do comedy and I have to shake the tree to get people to listen to an hour monologue about Woodrow Wilson.
Right.
How do you make that number one on television at five o'clock in the afternoon?
Right.
You don't.
So you have to, you have to, you shake the tree.
And so there's that balance.
And you'll always get some of it wrong.
You always will get some of it wrong.
However, when they start coming after you and they're not just coming after you and destroying you.
They are now coming after you, destroying you and erasing you.
Right, right.
You're being erased.
Right.
If they can't, if they don't need to replace your image with that cartoon of a propaganda monster, then what they do is they just erase you.
Your stuff.
Try to find your writing from Playboy.
It's gone.
It's gone.
And it's gone.
And that is apparently, you know, because they switched servers and perhaps they were trying to rebrand or pivot and they just wipe the slate clean, which I can, because it's not just me.
I mean, Kevin Williamson, yeah.
What a surprise.
But I think even my friend, my friend Zarin, he's a great writer.
I believe his stuff is down.
So I don't want to say it's only.
So let's not talk about Playboy.
Let's just.
You are.
But it is gone.
It is gone.
And I did get unceremoniously dumped with no advance notice.
That is the truth.
We are developing a world of we're book burning.
We're not even book burning, though.
What's interesting is the recent thing of going after the girl who they canceled and then they had her retract her book before it even got published.
Can't burn a book if it's never been published.
Right.
It's like pre-book burning.
Right.
And it's just removing books and things and ideas and people just gone.
Right.
But then also we're building ghetto walls.
They're digital ghettos.
You can talk all you want, say whatever you want, but that digital wall is here.
We're not going to let anybody hear you.
So you're still there.
You're still doing your thing, but you can't make any money.
You can't make any impact.
You can't do anything because they've just said, no, you Jews are fine.
You can just live here in this little area and we're just going to put a big wall around you.
And it's frightening because people, if we were building actual walls, people would say no.
If we were actually removing people from society, we would say no.
If we would actually burn books, they'd say no.
It's all virtual.
But it's all virtual.
Interesting.
Interesting.
It is.
It's a weird, that is the weird part of being in the space that I see that it gives the people more attention.
So the people that they're maybe building walls around, they still have platforms.
But yeah, what do you do when they're the stuff that worries me is like the demonetizations.
And recently I'm on Patreon and recently, I think MasterCard, I could be wrong.
Somebody got one of the, I think it was MasterCard, but they said, we're not going to accept payment.
Now, when you're talking about the financial backing, I mean, that is terrifying because that's terrifying to me.
I don't know any way to look at that.
I don't know any, I know that people can justify that, but that is, again, where I'm like, okay, in this middle, like trying to find myself on this journey.
And there are lines where it's like free speech.
You should be able to make, you know, payment centers shouldn't be deciding who they will and won't take money based on what they're saying.
That is, that's.
I can guarantee you this on YouTube.
We'll be demonetized.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you don't, you, you'll never watch any of these interviews that are interrupted with a, you know, just a inserted commercial.
I'll try to.
I did it to Ruben too.
I told him I was having a dream, you know, the night before I was nervous and I had a dream.
And I said, you know, I can say anything.
I'm not on Twitter.
I can say boys and girls are different.
And he was like, no, don't say that.
And then I told him that dream and he's like, thanks a lot, Bridget.
We just got demonetized.
Yeah, we're demonetized on everything, always in advance.
It doesn't matter what I say.
Yeah, it's weird.
It's so, it's so, that stuff is because, you know, and this is something that's always been really interesting.
And again, I don't know the answers.
I've always been, as I've watched technology, really interested about free markets, technology, and freedom of speech and where they're going to intersect because those are, it's a wild west.
We don't know.
It's all brand new.
We don't, we have never had so much, like you said, connection and access and so many people relying on it for their livelihood.
And it's where everybody is.
My nephews, I just spent a week with my nephews.
They don't look at the TV.
TV's done.
No, done.
Done.
This generation, whatever it is, the millennials, last generation that will watch TV.
Oh, yeah.
It's done.
And they were on their phones and YouTube.
They live on YouTube.
And so to act like YouTube demonetizing people is not really deeply problematic.
And that it's.
But the problem is, is we're funding hate.
And it depends on what the definition of hate is.
And this is the thing that really bothered me.
You know, Google and YouTube and Facebook are working on algorithms to search for hate.
Right.
Well, wait, hold it.
I don't think we're who determines that.
Yeah, you keep using that word.
I didn't think it means what you think it means.
Who determines that?
Right.
And how do you apply the terms of service equally?
If you're going to apply them equally and say, hey, the people who are, I call it the approved message.
If you're speaking the approved message and you're saying whatever you want to say and demonizing people in whatever way you want to say, and you're not getting away with it, okay, I will accept that you can apply these terms of service equally, but you're not.
You're applying them only to one, the people who aren't in the approved message.
Quitting School for Rehab00:15:33
Let me go to someplace, maybe possibly sensitive.
Okay.
Okay.
It's a trap.
It's a trap.
All of a sudden, I turn to that fish head guy.
I know it.
I want to talk about, you deflect a lot with comedy.
Yeah.
Yes.
And so I want to take you back to the experiences that you had that really kind of started you on this track of alcoholism.
I assume.
Can you, are you willing to go there on?
Yeah.
I mean, as much as I can.
Yeah.
Okay.
Where do we begin?
I think I, I think I was born an alcoholic.
I really do.
And even just my, there are examples I can think of from my childhood.
I'll give you a very simple one.
My God, he was my godfather.
He gave me two pounds of gummy bears for my 10th birthday.
Haribo.
And the only kind.
And then I locked myself, I'm the oldest of five.
I locked myself in my dad's office, ate all of them because I didn't want to share, and spent my 10th birthday throwing up.
And that, and I was addicted to sugar, and I lied about it, and I was sneaky about it.
And books, too.
I would read books obsessively.
I always feel like I've been trying to escape and get high.
Those are two things that since I was before I even found alcohol.
My parents got divorced and I found alcohol.
And I moved every year and a half.
And I never felt like I fit in anywhere.
And people were horrible to me.
This is why I'm very sensitive to mobs.
I was always the girl on the outside.
And always, I'm deeply distrustful of groups because I was bullied by everyone and all, and all the time.
I went to three eighth grades.
That's a lot.
And two ninth grades.
And those are bullying.
No, because my parents are insane.
And it's my mom and my step.
Well, my mom got remarried.
And that was a lot.
And so we moved a lot.
And they didn't really know what to do with me being the oldest or where to put me.
And so they kept trying.
They just were trying to figure out where to put me in school.
And then I just started drinking and smoking weed when I was 12, 13.
And then we have very similar stories.
Yeah, but it was, I didn't have to try and fit in in schools anymore because everywhere you go, there's a group of people that party.
So it was, I just took all of my, and I was that girl that wanted to go to Harvard.
And it's, I might cry if I talk about this, but because it's those things that I feel like I've had to forgive myself for is and my parents and in talking about having resentments and things that I work a program, a 12-step program.
So I look at things like resentments and that feeling like I got derailed off of like my potential was somehow derailed by all of the stuff that was going on in our household, which was, I don't ever really talk about this publicly.
It was, it was insane.
My, there was a lot of mental illness.
And so, you know, my mom killed herself.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, I'm, I'm down with mental illness.
My folks got a divorce.
Yeah.
I started drinking and smoking pot, same age.
Yeah, I was trying to escape a pretty nutty home life.
And then it just continued.
I mean, I just kept on.
I was so lost.
I was lost.
I was, I, I was in rehab at 19.
And you would think that that would have kind of put me back on the path.
So I basically started drinking at 12 and then it progressed pretty steadily.
And by the time I was 17, I was just full blown.
And I finished high school.
And that barely, my senior year was my second half of my senior year.
I almost failed out.
And then I went, I was working in a restaurant and we were down.
I had a fake ID and we were downtown and a guy roofing me.
And then I woke, I got drugged and raped.
And after that, everything escalated.
I went, I started going to college, but I was pretty much full-blown alcoholic at that point and was running from a lot of pain and then even more pain.
And then I was, I escalated to hard drugs.
Were you angry?
An angry drunk person?
No, no, I wasn't like that.
I was not, it didn't manifest that way for me at all.
I hear a lot of stories of people like getting in fights and stuff.
And I was pretty happy-go-lucky, actually.
And I always thought I was a better person when I was drugging.
Yeah, I might have been.
I mean, a lot of people would argue, I probably am sitting here.
So they're like, start drinking again, Bridge.
Start smoking weed.
Yeah, that's like, how much weed was I smoking?
And I ended up in rehab at 19 for heroin.
And weirdly, can you tell me the experience of heroin?
Yeah, it's great.
It was, it's not good.
We've just been monetized again.
We're making, we're, we're making the money now by a cartel.
No, it's, it's, it was the relief I always sought.
So my brain is loud.
People who are listening to this might realize that by now.
I have, it races all the time.
I have, it takes a village now for me to keep my, I'm very concerned with, you know, mental, mental health and addiction.
These are things that I could talk for hours about because I have so much experience with it.
And I just think, I see what it takes now to keep me kind of even keel.
And it's, it's a lot.
And so I, and I had no coping tools.
I had nothing.
No, no one gives you those coping tools when you're young, which we should be giving kids, like how to regulate themselves emotionally and how to talk about something that maybe traumatic happened to them or whatever.
And when the first time I smoked heroin primarily until right before I quit.
And I just remember the first time it was like nirvana.
Like it was just quiet.
And I can get there now with meditation and yoga.
Unless it's the day before the election.
I was actually thinking, it was funny because I was doing this crying in a garage, as I call it, but it's breath work.
And I was, this was like last week.
And I was sitting there doing my breathing and crying.
And I was like, God, if Glenn could see me now, does he know who he's having on this program?
And then I started thinking, I want to do that with yo.
I'm like, can we do it?
Can we do a series where it's me and Glenn doing hippie stuff together?
That would be amazing.
I would love that.
Goat yoga, breath work.
I took yoga for a while.
Oh, yeah.
It's the most, it's one of the hardest workouts.
Oh, yeah.
And in the middle, it'd be like, I can't.
I'd fall right dead to sleep.
It's the hardest and the most relaxing at the same time.
I'm worried that maybe you were passing out.
You wasn't sleeping.
You were just passing out.
So I definitely was in rehab, but it was quiet.
My brain was quiet.
And it was a quick race to the bottom for me.
I don't do anything really.
And I just was essentially within a year was in rehab.
It took me down.
I was 89 pounds.
I was in the hospital.
And then I put myself in rehab.
It was, I knew I had totally one of those like cliche independent film moments where I come back.
I was out in LA with my boyfriend and I reached for something in my bathtub.
And then I caught a glimpse in the mirror and I could see every rib.
And I looked in the mirror and I was just nothing.
There was no, no one was home.
It was that soulless, dead eye, you know, and I was like, what have I become?
This week's lifetime.
I mean, I am like an after-school special cliche.
Like every single one.
And so I always joke about that.
I'm like, I'm just the cliche after-school special girl.
Like, take all of those, and that's me.
Well, the cult thing too.
The cult weight, the cult thing.
Well, there's the whole, I accidentally ended up in a sex cult.
It's a whole long story.
I wrote about it.
So.
It's usually not something you just like and the cult thing.
Sex cult thing.
Well, I'm just saying the after school special.
Yeah, that might be for HBO.
You'd have an ABC after-school special.
So I, yeah, I went to rehab, and these women saved my life.
That was the first time my life was saved.
I was there.
I stayed in a halfway house for seven months and I learned coping tools, but I was also really young.
And I decided that as long as I never did heroin again, I was good, you know, good to go because I still wasn't ready to stop.
And honestly, it is a miracle.
I got sober at 35.
I'm 40.
It is a miracle that I made it to 35.
It truly is.
And then it was like what I call the dark years.
Then I basically was in the program and in a 12-step program.
And then I blamed everything on the program.
And I read all the books and I litigated.
You know, I read like how AA failed me.
And I built up my case so that I could successfully leave and not have that head full of all that knowledge and a belly full of booze.
I was talking to Tony Robbins recently and he said.
I love him.
I do too.
He's a great guy.
I love him so much.
He saved me, honestly.
He doesn't know it.
He's a great guy.
But he has.
But he was saying that there was a guy that came up to him.
He quit smoking.
He helped, this is early on in his career.
He helped him quit smoking.
And the guy came up to him five years, no, like 10 years later and said, you failed me.
And he said, what?
He said, do you remember me?
And it was early in his career.
And he actually did remember.
He said, yeah, you were a guy who stopped smoking.
He said, well, how long did it last?
He said, five years.
He said, five years.
Then my wife left me and I just went out and smoked.
He's like, no, dude, I didn't fail you.
You failed me.
Yeah.
And people, a lot of people have a lot of perceptions about 12 steps and whatnot.
And I don't think there's one solution for everybody, especially because when you start taking apart what leads somebody to addiction, you'll find there's either sometimes someone will get sober and it's like, oh, you're bipolar and you really just need medication.
You know, you were self-medicating.
And sometimes it's, in my instance, it was just a series of maybe genetics and also then life piled on top of it.
And I just spent most of my 20s not even being like, hey, to each their own.
I was like, anti-I was one of those people that was like, oh, those idiots in their fear-based program doing something better for their lives and helping other people.
How dare they?
I just was, I had to be against it because I knew, I think, and it is amazing the lengths I went to to avoid going back in.
I mean, yoga.
I learned, I became a yoga instructor.
I did a lot of therapy, you know, hallucinogenics, anything that I could try to manage.
And eventually I just, I ended up, and it's been, I used to hate when everybody said, like, everything in my life should be stamped with property of.
And now I'm like, yeah, that's me.
So, so what was it that you were avoiding?
Inventory?
The inventory, the shame.
So I think for me, I feel what's, you know, it really came up when I quit Twitter again.
I said, I've been joking.
I said, I have been sober five and a half years and I've had Twitter the whole time.
And I quit.
I didn't go on.
I was, and I realized how much of an escape mechanism it was for me and how much I was using it.
And the feelings, a lot of the shame I've dealt with, I would say the first round of onion peeling that I did in terms of what is going on was just shame, shame about feeling like I had failed myself, feeling like I had failed my parents.
Yeah, things like that, stupid things.
But that was my one and only dream.
And so then I had to, again, at 19, really reinvent myself.
And that's when I realized at 19 that I wanted to be a writer and that I didn't necessarily need college for that.
So all of this kind of happened at the same time, realizing that that was my path.
This most recent round, as uncomfortable as it is for me to admit publicly, is just feelings of worthlessness, like really deep, deep, I might cry.
It's like right here.
Deep feelings of worthlessness.
And that has kind of, I've run from that, I think, my whole life.
And that, you know, it's interesting to see how I, all of the ways in which I react to rejecting myself, the ways that I did, the ways I reacted to shame, the promiscuity, the, it's like those reactions that I had to these feelings that I didn't know how to cope with.
After getting raped, I was so, I don't know how to explain it.
You just feel like broken.
And I think I spent a long time running from that.
And it's a miracle I lived.
Like I lived through it.
Because a lot of people don't.
And I've seen a lot of people come in.
Facing Trauma Honestly00:09:18
And that's what happens.
That's a hard thing about getting sober is facing yourself honestly.
And so that inventory, the looking at what my part is, even in something that I was truly a victim, even in looking at how I had abandoned myself long before even that, looking at how I reacted to it.
So it's not even in those instances, it's not necessarily even what happens to me that I have to take responsibility for, but how I reacted to that event in my life and the wreckage that I cause in response to it is that's on me.
You know, it's, I, I have to take responsibility for it.
I, I, I forgive the fact that I didn't have many coping mechanisms or tools, or.
You know, it's funny and I'm sitting here thinking one of the things that's hard about being online and being open online is like, sometimes the trolls are right, you know, sometimes in the alt right and I've read these articles that they write about me from the alt right of like, and the men's rights activists and they say, you know like oh, and her stepdaddy issues and her and her um,
and like she probably got raped and all this stuff, and it's like yeah yeah, they're right.
And that is when uh, that hurt, that hurts because they're right.
And then i'm like, am I just reacting, like a massive reaction to, am I just projecting a reaction?
I don't know, I don't want to be doing that.
Um, it's amazing if you are um, this is really honest.
If you're a thinking and feeling human being how, how good it is, and yet we don't talk about it, how good it is to look at those comments and ask yourself gosh, am I just that and and and that's?
You know that's.
I think part of the problem with the society today is we're pain is awful, pain is good what, what happens?
I think you know, I can separate myself and say that's not just me when i'm in a good place, for instance.
Um, what is you know?
My therapist said, I worry about you on twitter because you already feel like you're worthless and you already feel like you're garbage.
Go back to that.
First, take me to the difference, if there is any, between feeling worthless and feeling broken.
And if there is a difference, what is it and how are they connected?
I don't know, that's a really good question.
I feel like the worthlessness.
I don't know what i've really.
I mean, it sounds so I, because I was joking that I went off twitter and for lent and found god and I really wasn't joking.
I really feel like the antidote to worthlessness is god.
It's the only thing that really i've been able.
It's that idea of the god size whole, the thing that i've been trying to fill with men, no pun intended.
Um, like all the substances, hopefully money, just kidding, we'll see if that fills it.
Um, I don't predict a lot but that, but not least.
But I need to know.
I need to know for myself That I, the feeling broken, was more of a reaction to an event that happened to me.
Feeling worthless, I feel like that was something I brought to the table.
I felt that way.
And again, I don't know, so much happened.
I don't know if it was from moving.
I don't know if it was always feeling isolated.
I don't know if it's part of, you know, being the kind of addict mentality, which I feel like I see a lot of addicts struggle with that feeling of worthlessness or uselessness.
And that, or if it was parenting, as much as I hate to say that publicly, because I love my parents and feel that they really did the best that they could, which is what people always say when they're like, no, they didn't do the best thing.
They didn't do a great job.
No, I'm just kidding.
They did.
They did.
And they did instill morals in me.
And I do think forgiveness and compassion is something that I really in all areas of my life and gratitude.
These are things that they help me to heal that part of me that feels worthless.
It just, but it creeps up.
And then when I'm getting mobbed online and I put on a good front and I can, I can, I do deflect your right a lot with humor and got good on you for seeing right through that.
But I think there's a disintegration that occurs and probably from trauma.
And this is the weird thing about trauma.
And I've learned a lot more about trauma is that when that filter kind of takes over, when I'm in a place where that's been triggered, which is a word that's been co-opted, but it does happen, I feel like that's the only lens I can see myself through.
So suddenly I am a grifter.
I am a hack.
I am carrying water for Nazis.
I am worthless.
I am garbage.
I am a slut.
I am a whore.
I am all of the, I mean, the horrible things that get lobbed at you anonymously.
And I do a pretty good job of not really paying attention to it or seeing it, but you see it.
It comes through.
And so then I have a hard time remembering that I'm not that, that I'm, I'm, you know, Bridget, who has a dog that she rescued and she's cleaning up its poop in her backyard.
Like, come, I have to come into the real life, I think, helps when you're in that.
The internal shame spiral is virtual, you know, that it's a, it's, and the virtual world is a weird, perfect kind of mirror of that internal.
I mean, I was walking in LA and I don't want to swear, but this guy, he was a homeless man and he was screaming.
He was like, shut the up, he's like, I can't think too loud.
Shut up.
And he was screaming at me.
And I was like, brain?
Did you?
Did you come out of my dude?
I didn't.
I've been trying to divorce this part of me.
I didn't realize you were homeless now.
I'm sorry.
But that is, you know, I listen.
That's how, that's how I know when I'm doing well.
How?
I know you can relate.
When I can be alone with no music, no distractions, no TV on in the background, because there are times, I just did it this morning.
I was reading something and it triggered something, a memory of me, and like a bad memory of me that years ago.
And I went, you know what I mean?
Where you're just like, make noise, make noise.
It used to happen all the time.
And when you're, when you're, when you've truly let go of it and you've truly dealt with it and made the amends and accepted the forgiveness for yourself, you that goes away.
But when you are constantly being picked at, constantly being pointed to and saying you're a bad person, it's dangerous.
And I think that's.
And why do you do it?
You know what?
That's the question I ask myself.
Why do you, what is the bigger thing that drives you to continue to take the hits and to keep going forward?
Because by all accounts, somebody like me probably shouldn't be doing what I'm doing because I'm not a victim.
I'm choosing to take, we're putting ourselves in this position.
We're saying what we're saying and there are consequences of our speech.
But what drives you, you know, there's, I'm still at the point where I'm like, yeah, I could check out and like still move to shoot.
I mean, you, you're more at the point than me.
Yeah, I'm still at the point.
There are, there are several times a year I look to my wife and go, you realize we could just pack everything up.
Fighting for Decency00:14:22
We already have a house in the mountains.
We'll never have to talk to anybody again and we'll be happy.
Why are we doing this?
So what motivates you?
God.
History.
When I grew up at Beck And, you know, all guys are fascinated by World War II documentaries, but Beck is a German name.
And I know there were Becks there.
My family wasn't, but I know my relatives had to be over there.
Which side were they on?
What did they do?
What did they say?
And the more I read about history, there are these epic moments in history.
And I want my grandchildren to be able to stand up and say, you know, when that time came, here's what my grandma and grandpa did.
And not have to just, you know, hang their head and go, I don't know.
We really never talked about that.
You know?
yeah this is the interesting don't you want to be somebody we're going through mccarthy era right now And I think it's going to get worse, but we're going through McCarthy era right now.
Don't you want your kids to be the one that said, you know, my mom, she stood up.
My mom went to jail for it because she knew it was wrong.
So, yeah, and it's funny being in the middle, seeing both of the hearing both of the sides now that I've woken up.
And the other side would say that we are on the wrong side of history.
You know, that's what's interesting to me in terms of everyone feeling like they're on the right side of history.
But let me ask you this.
You give me faith, and so do so many others, that, and I don't ever want to paint a broad brush that there's the right side of history and everybody on this side is on the right side because I know a lot of people on the conservative side, I think they suck.
Okay.
And I think they're off target.
And if I would define a conservative, what I am is I am trying to conserve those things of value that have helped us be a great people.
There's a lot of crap that we've done that's bad.
But let's conserve the Bill of Rights.
Let's conserve the Constitution as written, not the way we're doing it.
Let's conserve decency.
Let's conserve reason and logic and science.
You know, not just I'm going to make up a word and tell you what it is.
The due process.
I think we need to conserve those things.
Beyond that, you know what?
We can fight all day long, but those things are being lost right now.
That's where I feel.
I mean, that was what I was saying to someone the other day.
If I can't say boys and girls are different, you know, I guess that makes me a conservative.
If I'm defending, if I feel like that, that saying that people, if I feel like I should be able to say that, and now people are saying, well, you know, you're out.
You're out.
It's the period.
That is like one of the purity tests.
Right.
And, you know, but you know what?
That's how you know you're on the right side.
If, look, if, if I'm on, I will have anybody. on the show as long as you're an honest broker.
If you're willing to change your mind, and I'm not saying I'm going to change your mind, but if you're willing, if you're open to go, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
If you're willing to be an open, honest person, broker, no matter how much we disagree, I want to have a conversation because I'm going to learn something from you, you know?
And I know I'm on the right side when I'm saying, I'm open.
Let's talk.
Let's talk because it only makes us better.
We have to have each other.
And we have to talk.
And if the other side is saying, shut up or you're ostracized, I know you are, I've seen the movies.
You're usually dressed in a black uniform.
That is the danger.
I think that's, I mean, that's why, this is why I'm here.
Right.
And that's why I have hope because you're not alone.
There are so many people who I don't even know.
Right.
We might disagree on a ton of really big things.
Right.
But you and I could live next door to each other.
Right.
We could be friends.
We'd be fine forever.
Yeah.
We would have strong disagreements probably.
Right.
But we'd be friends.
That gives me hope.
How many people on the conservative side do you see going over to the left and joining the left and saying, you know what?
I'm with you guys.
I still believe the things that I believe.
I still believe that the border is out of control or whatever, but I'm with you guys because you guys will at least talk common sense.
You're not seeing an intellectual, deep intellectual discovery on the conservative side moving over because the other side is shutting down all intellectual variations.
Right.
It's interesting because I have seen a lot of people come from the right.
There seems to be a migration into the center from both camps.
And that is one area where even the people coming from the right, they're like, okay, yeah, I can see how maybe I was blind in some respects and whatever.
May I just clarify?
Cause I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing.
I'm not saying, I'm saying the center is not the center as people always identify it.
I see totalitarianism.
I don't care if it's right or left, European right or left.
I see that over here.
Okay.
I see freedom lovers in this general area.
Okay.
They can disagree on everything, but they agree with you should have a right to say it.
You should write to live your life your own way.
You should be able to marry whoever you want.
These people cannot tell you one way or another anything.
So I see those who are those early 20th century dictator kind of progressive kind of thought before dictator was a bad word.
I see those people over here.
And I see average people moving away from that and coming here and going, look, I don't agree with you on anything, but those people are nuts.
Yeah.
Is that the same?
Yeah.
I think that what you see from people coming from the right is that they're seeing elements of it from that side too.
So that's what you hear from the refugees from the right.
So from my perspective, I see elements.
I'm like, it's encroaching.
It's the, there's the extremists have kind of hijacked the parties.
And most people are afraid to speak out against the approved message just because the approved message is so strong.
And in that battle in the middle, where you're kind of trying to find your way, you're like, well, I don't want to like, I don't want to agree with, I don't agree with this, but this is, this is terrifying.
And that's where I think a lot of people are bumping around in the middle.
And they just are instead of because they have jobs and kids and they I have and I was saying this on Ruben, you know, I've seen mommies get shamed out of mommy groups.
I've seen people, it's so, it's so radicalized.
It's, it's created this binary.
And again, it's the flattening.
But there's a lot of people who aren't flat.
They're humans like me who I'm not, I don't think a bad person.
I try to be of service.
I try to help people.
I really care about the more evergreen topics like addiction and mental health and sex and relationships and free speech.
And that is the hill I feel like I'm dying on.
That's the fight where I started and I started noticing it in LA.
I started noticing it in editorial ways pre-election.
So this was already kind of happening.
And I noticed that I started self-censoring.
And it has been interesting getting all these emails from people all across the political spectrum, people from the right, people from the left, people.
There's a certain amount of polite self-censoring that we all do to maintain civility and decency and just being human.
But when people are afraid that they'll lose their job because they are speaking an opinion, or I can't tell you How many people have come out to me as libertarians in LA where they were like, they're basically like, I'll never work.
I'll never work again if it even comes out that I listen to Ben Shapiro or, you know, people will recognize me and say, oh, I saw you on the Rubin report.
And I'm like, oh, I see you.
And I see you.
So that to me is dangerous.
That happens on the right, too.
I mean, I went from the hero of the right to Donald Trump scares the hell out of me.
Yeah.
And ostracized.
I mean, it's just, it is, it is, you must play for the team.
Right, right.
My team is common sense, facts, and reason.
Right.
And you don't have a record here of doing any of those things or being for any of those things.
And the rhetoric surrounding it is really frightening.
You know, now that he has a track record, I can separate the rhetoric and him, which I still feel the same way about, and some of his policies compared to the policies of over here.
But you can't, all subtlety is lost now.
It's good to push back.
You know, I think people who push back, especially in particular about even, I guess in your instance, I didn't realize that you kind of came out against Trump.
I would say I was probably enemy number one in Trump's world.
Okay.
See, I just woke up in 2019.
Hi.
That's all right.
I just woke up in 2013.
2018 was after, or 2016 was after 2013.
I know, but I didn't really have to start caring about anything.
Okay.
I was blissfully ignorant with my privilege, just floating through life, drunk and high.
And even sober, I was just like trying to get sober.
Holy cow.
Those two years were, yeah.
So I think the reaction, the natural reaction of like, ooh, this is not a decent person is a normal reaction to have.
That is a, it's an okay reaction to have.
And I see people on the right get absolutely crucified for this.
And it is, and I, and this is really where I stand.
It's not really any the politics I'm, you know, learning about.
But I'm just like, can we return to decency?
Because I see the demonization of people.
And it's, I see it on both sides.
I know that everybody hates that term, both sides, but I do see it's not just there's there hasn't been a lack of decency.
You can do you can end it with Donald Trump.
If you don't like Donald Trump or don't support Donald Trump and you're on the right, you are from hell because these people are after us.
People are afraid to, and I am too, about what some of these socialists want to do to the right.
Right, right.
And some of them are the people around them are crazy, radically scary.
However, I can judge myself what I like and what I don't like.
Same thing, though.
If you wear a Trump hat, you're a racist.
I mean, that's crazy.
I mean, we've gone from don't judge me by the character of my skin to don't judge me by the color of my hat.
Yeah, it's so there's no subtlety.
There's no reason.
Look, I don't.
I don't like everything that this person does, but I don't hate everything this person does.
And we used to be great because we had differing opinions and we would push back and meet kind of hopefully somewhere in the middle.
And it was this swing.
And now it just feels like no one is listening to each other.
And it seems to be increasing as we approach 2020.
My hope for people is that they, I understand the urge to retreat into a tribe because it's scary.
And it's natural.
It's natural.
It's also terrifying when you're out there just alone in the middle trying to be nuanced.
God forbid.
You get battered by everyone.
And so I feel really alone.
Yeah.
There will be people who will read you and will support you.
But they won't share me.
Will not share it.
I've had people reach out to me and say, I love that article.
I can never share it.
And so then it is that isolating.
You know, being in LA, I think without Twitter, I would have gone crazy because I felt so ideologically isolated.
I thought I was losing my mind when I started pushing back a little bit and feeling, and so much of it is insidious.
That is what I always say about censorship.
You know, people, when they say, they'll push back and say, well, they're not knocking on your door and they're not locking you up for saying, yet it starts in the mind, self-censorship.
Censorship starts here.
It starts when you start being quiet and putting your head down and not saying this because you're afraid.
I was in Poland and I was with the chief rabbi of Poland.
Censorship Starts in the Mind00:09:12
And he said proudly, there are 7,000 righteous among the nations here.
Now, you know what the righteous of them is.
Righteous among the nations are those who stood up and saved a Jew.
Okay.
He said there was like 6,600, something like that.
And I was like, you're happy about that?
How many millions of people lived here?
And he looked at me and I had a totally different perspective.
And I didn't understand it at the time.
I do now.
He's like, do you realize what those people risked?
He said, most people would not even come to the window because if you came to the window and you opened the curtains, you got whatever punishment they were getting.
Okay.
So they were trained.
Don't just look down.
Look down, look down, look away.
We're being trained.
Look down and look away.
Yeah.
When we see something, it's such, it's so, I feel so, you know, I see elements of this kind of when marginalized have been repressed or oppressed or, you know, That to act like that doesn't happen either is where I get, I. Get upset when because this is what I mean about the flattening the flattening is like you're in in this camp or in that camp.
You either believe and then we're not.
I think you know it's like conservatives, just don't care about anyone.
That when you asked me what I thought a conservative was, my gut instinct is like, well you, you like money and you don't care about anyone.
That's what I was raised with right, that's the factory settings.
And I have learned and talked with many conservatives now and had many conversations.
And maybe it is that getting older, because there's that old joke of you know like you're a liberal in your 20s and if you're, or whatever it is, so you don't have a heart, if you're liberal in your 20s, you don't have a head, if you're not conservative exactly um, maybe it's just the natural, the circle of life?
I don't think so.
I think conservatives, I think it is strangely finally being understood that a lot not all a lot of conservatives are for the bill of rights.
Yeah, and so we don't disagree with the bill of rights.
Freedom of speech, and um, the left has always gotten that label of we're for freedom of speech?
Well no no, you're not.
You're not for freedom of speech.
You're for freedom of speech and put a cross, you know, in a jar of urine.
You can do that all your day.
But if I put a statue of Obama in a jar of urine, you know, no funding for me.
But so so there's this place to where good people on the right and the left are saying, I don't care what either of you do right right, I don't care, right.
It is the flattening because most people, one of the interesting things that was being exposed to conservative circles.
So suddenly I was being exposed online and i'd been exposed to kind of getting the, the left draggings or whatever um pile ons.
I hadn't.
And then I, because conservatives were sharing my work, I suddenly was getting, and then some of the, the underbelly there it I hadn't seen that where i'd be like hey, you know, we need to be for free speech, and they'd be like yeah, and then something super racist and i'm like no no no no, that's, that's not what i'm saying.
Guys like not going there, so i'm gonna say the n-word, No, no, no.
That's done.
We're not on the same team.
Yeah, you have a right to say it, but I'm not with you.
Yeah, and you should be in the kitchen pregnant.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
So to act like there isn't, you know, and by the way, misogyny is the underbelly.
That's something like I to act like I'm only exposed to it on the right is not true.
I am exposed to it.
I get it from all sides.
Because it's people.
Because it's people.
And but it was interesting to see, like, okay, to turn a blind eye to the race to racism anywhere is not, you know, that's not okay either.
No, it's, it's, it's like something.
Look, I don't think I don't know those people.
And if I do know those people, I'm like, okay, I don't think we're friends anymore.
I mean, it's, it's, it exists and it's real.
Sometimes I'll tweet something and then someone like who has a large following like that will retweet me with that kind of underbelly.
And then I'll immediately tweet something that just sheds all of it.
I'm like, I'm not who you think I am.
Just like a hashtag, whatever I can say to get rid of like this, this group that just came in and thinks something.
It's just been, it's wild.
You know, it is wild online and out there and staying centered.
And I appreciate you having me on and having the guts to have this conversation with me.
I've had more conversations.
I went to Los Angeles and I stood in a room of about a thousand people and I said, how many people here think they hate my guts?
95% of the room raised their hands.
Okay.
How many did you convert?
I had the exact opposite.
In fact, my family didn't change their mind.
They were like, you know, I still hate you.
But I have had so many conversations with, I mean, I've had conversations with communists, communists.
They call themselves liberal, but they openly admit you'd call me a communist.
They're like, yes, yes, I would.
But it's amazing how close we are in opinions when it comes to the big principles.
You know?
And the people are just afraid.
I had dinner with 20 people in Los Angeles, and they were the heads of big groups.
And none of them, the deal was you can't have a team.
You're going to have dinner.
You can't have a team.
And nobody's talking about this.
Nobody's sharing who's who.
I was the only conservative at the table.
Wow.
And We were all in agreement on the big principles, all in agreement.
People are sick of it.
Yeah.
They're sick of it.
They're just afraid.
They are.
They are.
I was kind of noticing this recently.
There was that whole thing about the, and I might be going down a crazy rabbit hole with you right now, but with the Easter worshipers where everybody, and there seemed to be this kind of bad faith argument.
And I don't know what your take was on this.
So forgive me, whatever it was.
But I heard a lot of like, they're trying to destroy Christianity, blah, blah, blah.
And my take on that was I looked at it.
I'm like, no, these people are petrified of their own party.
They're so afraid of their own party.
They can't say Christians.
Like, that is how I see that I view it differently.
I see it as them being terrified of their own.
That's even worse.
Right.
It's worse.
I see it as worse.
I think that the easy explanation is the lazy one.
I think really it's like they're so afraid of angering the kind of radical base that has emerged that they're like, yeah, it's like the most awkward thing to say.
And so again, being in the middle, I kind of have this perspective where I'm like, no, guys, I don't think, I think it's way worse than you actually think.
That's terrifying.
It is.
Do you believe that?
No, I believe.
I mean, that's where.
That's terrifying.
I know, but it's, I don't, I think it makes more sense than like everyone wants to destroy.
No one wants to just, that, that is a very flattening.
That's a flattening.
Yeah, but they do, but, but if you are afraid to say Christian, then somebody along the line is like Christian bad.
Okay, that's fair.
Yeah, I guess if you like ideologically follow that thread, I just see it as, again, a kind of example of like that, the, um, the approved message.
That's frightening.
Do you know who Michael Rechtenwald is?
But yeah, you're right.
If I keep following that thread, it does mean something.
Somebody along the line up at the top.
They're not like, no, you guys can write Christians.
Bridget fettered me.
Do you know who Michael Rechtenwald is?
No.
The Approved Message Problem00:02:14
Michael is a guy who was at NYU.
He used to write white papers for communists.
Okay.
He always considered himself a communist.
But as I said to him, I said, because then he bailed.
He just bailed like two years ago and came out and is like, okay, I'm not with these people.
And I'm like, Michael, what happened?
I mean, you've been a communist your whole life.
You've been writing white papers for them.
And he said, Clenn, it was theory.
He said it was theory.
He said, I think communism in theory is good.
He said, it always goes bad.
He said, and these people who actually believe it are terrifying.
Yeah, I mean, I was married.
My ex-husband is from Belarus.
And he's like, I did not come to this country for all of you to become communists.
He's so mad.
I get stopped in the streets by people from Eastern, you know, the Eastern bloc, and they'll stop me and they'll be yelling at me about Americans who don't get it.
How come you Americans don't get it?
I'm like, I know, I get it.
I know, but why can't you cut through and tell them?
I'm like, I don't know.
I'm trying.
I'm trying.
It is interesting because I was telling Kay when she was doing my makeup.
She, about a story about my ex and how we were watching The Simpsons.
He was really smart and he had, he understood satire, even though he came with barely any English.
And then he didn't understand the toilet paper reference that they were making.
They were throwing toilet paper in the trees, which if you're American, you're like, homecoming, ha ha, hilarious.
And he's like, Brigid, what is this toilet paper?
I'm bad at accents.
What is this toilet paper in the trees thing?
And I was like, oh, you know, we just did it.
It was a homecoming thing.
And he's like, so when I was standing in line for toilet paper, you were throwing it in trees.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, actually.
Yeah, you picked the wrong side of the wall, dude.
But that's what people don't understand.
I mean, he, it's like, this is, this is, that's not fake.
He lived through that.
How can people, I mean, I really want to talk to Hollywood and say, remember when you were for Venezuela?
I don't know.
I'm talking about their position on it.
Feeding the Beasts00:06:29
Yeah, but how does this happen?
We have, how are we so happy about socialism when you've got all of history, but then you have one here that they all touted and they're starving to death.
They're starving.
It doesn't work.
It's weird too, because I do think that a lot of America's problem in general from everyone is that they don't leave America enough.
And not just like going to Italy abroad.
I mean, for your semester abroad or whatever.
I mean, go to countries that don't have India.
Go.
I was in Sri Lanka for two months.
I was in India for a month.
I mean, go to countries where Bill Burr does a great stand-up routine about how he, you know, lucky we are in America, but just how there was a little Indian kid.
And he said, I was in India recently and this kid just came out and he was buck naked and he like took a poo right in between two cards and then just disappeared into the crowd like Jeffrey Dahmer at the end.
And he said it was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.
And that is something you see everywhere.
And I feel like the answer to so many of our issues is gratitude.
Just coming back into gratitude for what we have.
All this talk about privilege, the height of privilege is sitting around online bitching about privilege all day.
Thank you.
If this is your, if a statue left and have you been left your couch in five years.
If a statue is keeping you down, you got a pretty great life.
Oh, it's the height of magazine cover, whatever the outrage du jour is.
It's so, it is privileged to be able to just be like, online.
And it's mind-boggling to me because it just seems, I'm like, you guys don't see the irony of this.
This is also something I always saw during the whole election cycle is all these women being like, hashtag the bachelor.
And then they'd be like, a reality show president.
I'm like, ladies.
No sense of self-earned.
No self-awareness at all.
None.
They're not going to see how we might have contributed to this culture.
Not at all.
Okay.
I'll go back to being annoying online.
I've said since probably 2005, alcoholics are going to save the world.
Ironically.
Yeah.
Because if we all just did a 12-step program.
Oh, I know.
I say that all the time.
Everyone needs a, everyone needs a program.
The country needs a program.
We got a problem.
We've got a problem.
Can we just do the first step?
We've got a problem that's way beyond our control.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, and this is something that in the book, if I ever get to write it, it's, you know, the outrage economy.
And so again, this is where I have to look at my role and I look at the space and there's, there's a whole economy that's been built around this.
Just sit here in my studio.
Yeah.
I mean, this has been built on the very same thing and I'm trying to do good.
And I'm like, how, how do I get outside of it?
How do I do the good and be in this business?
Because if you do good, you should just shut up and be Tony Robbins.
Yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
I was wondering about that.
I was going to ask you, too, how you handle, I mean, I can't remember who it was.
I think maybe it was Cernovich.
He was doing one of those like, ask me anythings.
And I feel like he had some, he said something about the realizing that you have this audience and then you kind of have to feed the beasts.
And I wonder, you know, how, and I see it on, again, it's like the whole economy of it.
When you dare to step outside of maybe what your target demographic is and then they turn on you.
I mean, I think recently even like this happened to Rogan.
We had Jack Dorsey on his whole audience turned on him.
And it was fascinating because you kind of think he's like untouchable.
And I wonder, you know, how do you, how do you, if you're part of it, how do you get outside of it?
Can you?
Yes.
You're like, yes, I'm having you on my trip.
No, no.
I read a phrase when I first sobered up that puzzled me so much.
I couldn't imagine, you know, talk about privilege, living in a world where the phrase, there are many things that I believe that I shall never say, but I shall never say the things I do not believe.
That I read that from a philosopher, scientist in the Enlightenment period.
And I read that and I thought, what kind of world do you live in?
Where you're afraid to say the things that you believe.
That was in the 90s.
Okay.
We're in that world.
And there are many things that I believe that I shall never say.
But I shall never say the things I do not believe.
Okay.
And if you, if you, I shouldn't emphasize many things because there's not.
There's just a few things that I just like that won't, that won't do any good because it will be misunderstood.
And we don't live in a culture that can parse things out.
You know what I mean?
But you, because I'm an alcoholic, this goes back to Alcoholics Who Save the World, I've already lost everything.
Right.
So I know what's important.
Right.
You know, all this can go away.
Right.
It means nothing.
Right.
I mean, it's great.
It's sweet.
Only thing changes your life, private air travel.
That changes your life.
You know, it's funny as I was saying that on the way here.
My only goal in life is to get out of coach.
Silence Over Noise00:07:11
I only get flying anxiety when I'm in coach.
It's like the best.
Okay, so do yourself.
So get out.
Next time you come.
This person's going to use me as a flirtation device for sure.
But in front, you're like, oh, everybody cares about me.
This thing can't possibly go down.
I know.
And you know what?
It's totally different.
When you sit in first class and they close the curtain, it just creates class envy.
It's just like, we're not going to look at you people.
No, no, you can always tell the people that got the upgrades versus the people who belong in first class because they're looking up.
And the people who are like first class, they're just down.
I don't even look at the people schlepping in the back of the plane.
First time I was upgraded, I was upgraded.
I was in the back by the curtain, and I looked back to somebody who was flying with me.
I just kind of peeked to the curtain.
I'm like, they're taking selfies.
That's how you have to recognize them.
You're like, everything can go away except my private jet.
I'll be homeless, but don't take my jet.
Capitalism always wins.
But the thing that, and I think it's what you do, you've lost everything.
And so you know what has true value.
And so you won't lose that again.
No.
And you can lose that through action, but you can also lose that through inaction.
I mean, I return to my giant game of yes and.
It's just been.
I said when I got sober, I know what my life looks like when I'm drinking and smoking weed.
And it wasn't, people always ask me why I got sober this time.
They think that it's some answer, like, oh, I got a DUI or I, you know, whatever.
Just at your bottom.
I felt dead inside.
I felt dead inside.
I felt like I was rotting.
And some of my aunt and uncle's friends asked me this on the beach one day.
And they're like, wow, tell us how you really feel.
You guys asked me.
This is the truth.
I felt like I was, and that has gone away.
And I knew where my life would kind of go.
But it is, it is, I never knew where it would take me when I got sober, clearly.
And it is.
Welcome to hell.
Apparently, as my dad goes at the dark side, I just never knew.
And it's been, it's just exciting and terrifying.
But like you said, I've already more terrifying to me is relapsing or losing.
I feel comfortable in my own skin now.
I did not ever feel that way.
I don't, I, I feel like the shame has, I don't have that shame that I came into the program with the shame of things I had done to myself, been allowed.
Just all of the shame that I came in with into sobriety, I feel like is gone.
You know, that doesn't mean that there aren't massive blind spots that are going to pop up and say, here's your lesson.
Best advice I ever got from an alcoholic was when you least expect it.
Expect it.
Because you're, you know, you better than anybody else.
And so you've prepared all these defenses.
And all of a sudden, one day you'll find yourself.
And this happened to me about five years in.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, if he hadn't have told me this, I would have failed when you least expected, expected.
Because your brain will find a way, a pathway, and it will come to you as completely reasonable.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you're like, whoa.
You have that coin because I was sitting alone at the bar just waiting, you know, going to get dinner.
I feel the craving really isn't there.
And then suddenly it was like, oh, that drink looks really good.
And I was nervous and feeling all kinds of emotions.
Just in general, I don't like that.
And I went to a meeting, you know, I took myself to a meeting, which is the not my normal behavior.
I mean, that's my normal behavior now, but it is that like insidious kind of sneaky.
And it will seem totally reasonable.
It'll come through like, oh, this seems like a good idea right now.
And I would, I would, I get so, when, when I was asking you why you do it, it got me thinking about why I am doing this.
And this conversation, I will have this conversation with anyone.
I will, in particular, about recovery and getting, and shame and feelings of worthlessness.
I went on Gavin McGinnis and we talked about my heroin addiction.
And I mean, that was like, you know, that was the all right, essentially, as everybody told me.
And we talked a lot.
No, I'm not saying that.
I agree with that.
I'm saying that's the perception.
Yeah.
And I we mostly talked about my addiction recovery and the path.
And I cannot tell you how many emails I've received from people who saw that show.
And we talked about kind of signs to look for with your teenagers.
If they, if he said, you know, what could somebody have looked for with you if and when you were a teenager, how could they have known that something traumatic had happened to you?
And we talked about that.
And people have emailed me and I've talked to people's kids who were struggling with addiction.
And we have a massive opioid addiction crisis in this country right now that's just somehow, you know, people are struggling with this.
And yeah, that's, that's more important to me than all the noise.
All of it.
It's, it is the most important thing to me.
Will you do me a favor?
Yes.
Will you keep a diary that is just of just those things?
Because when you start to feel worthless, because I can't, I don't know if we feel the same way.
I feel like, I guess it's worthless.
That what I do has absolutely no value.
It's just all bad.
What keeps you?
What are the things that inspire you?
Things like this, the emails from people, the personal individuals?
I remember the people who will come up and say, you changed my life.
And I don't know them.
I don't see them.
I only get people don't say that to you all the time.
No, no.
You hear more of the noise.
You need to keep a good noise journal.
That's a really good idea, actually.
That is a good idea.
I will do that.
One more favor?
Yes.
Will you come back?
I will.
Great.
I would love to.
Thank you for having me.
You bet.
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