Sarah Levy, DRINKING GAMES: A Memoir
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much.
[0:08]Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year and each day we talk to,
[0:15]an author about all of the things related to their career, their book, their life,
[0:19]and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast,
[0:26]and you can get my new memoir, bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature,
[0:31]wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:37]You can learn more about me at ziviowens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors
[0:42]and that is what we're going to do.
[0:44]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Zcast podcast network.
[0:49]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Sarah Levy is the author of drinking games, a memoir.
[1:01]Sarah is a writer based in Los Angeles by way of New York.
[1:04]Her work examines the intersection of sobriety, relationships, and identity,
[1:08]and has been featured in the New York Times, New York Magazine's The Cut,
[1:11]Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue, Elle, and other publications.
[1:15]She holds a BA in literary arts from Brown University,
[1:17]and pursued a master's in fine arts and creative writing from the new school.
[1:21]Drinking games is her first book.
[1:23]Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books
[1:26]to discuss drinking games a memoir.
[1:29]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:31]It's my pleasure. I was so excited to get this book.
[1:33]I was like, oh, it's the perfect cover. Great title.
[1:37]I couldn't wait to dive in, so yeah.
[1:40]Thank you. I am so excited to talk to you about it.
[1:43]Okay, first tell listeners what it's about in general.
[1:47]So drinking games is a memoir in essays about my experiences
[1:52]living in New York City right out of college, growing up in a work hard play hard culture,
[1:57]and how my life changed when I got sober in my 20s.
[2:01]So you go into depth about your blackout experience,
[2:05]and even defining the difference of a brownout and a blackout,
[2:08]and how you may have inadvertently sort of triggered this phenomenon
[2:12]with this one sort of drinking experience you had early on to talk about your blackouts,
[2:17]or give an example or two that you give in the book,
[2:19]because they're quite dramatic.
[2:20]Like, I thought I blacked out, but not like this.
[2:22]This is like quite an extreme.
[2:25]Yeah, so it's so funny to even hear you say that,
[2:29]because for so long I thought that that was just normal.
[2:31]I thought that the way I drank and the way that I blacked out was normal.
[2:34]Basically what would happen to me,
[2:35]really from some of the first experiences I had drinking,
[2:38]was that I would be drinking and be engaged with people around me,
[2:42]and having fun and talking to my friends,
[2:43]and then it would be like a light switch,
[2:45]which would flip off in my brain,
[2:47]and I would wake up the next day with no memory of anything between that light switch,
[2:54]and the moment that I was waking up in my bed.
[2:56]And it wasn't that I was passing out and falling asleep in that moment.
[3:01]It was that my brain was no longer forming short-term memories,
[3:06]and was no longer logging the interactions that I was having in real time.
[3:12]And yet I was awake and still able to function,
[3:15]so I would continue having conversations.
[3:18]I would be able to walk, order more drinks for myself,
[3:23]make out with someone, take pictures.
[3:25]I was on autopilot.
[3:26]It's crazy to think about now.
[3:28]I was a robot, essentially.
[3:30]And there were certain tells that I had.
[3:32]My friends would tell me they could tell if I had locked out,
[3:35]because I would be asking the same questions over and over,
[3:38]because I would have no memory of the fact that they had just told me,
[3:41]what bar we were going to next, or whatever we were talking about.
[3:45]And it happened most times that I drank.
[3:50]And I really thought that it was, like I said, normal.
[3:53]I thought it was a sign of a really fun night.
[3:54]And it was pretty normalized when I was younger.
[3:57]Oh, we're going to get, we're going to blackout tonight.
[4:00]We're going to have a crazy night, but it got scarier for me in my 20s,
[4:05]living in New York City, because I was waking up in strange departments,
[4:09]and in really scary situations that I had no memory of getting myself into.
[4:14]And yeah, a couple of examples that I give in the book,
[4:16]are just, you know, from like one of my first times blocking out,
[4:21]was I was at a party in high school.
[4:23]There was a guy that I liked there.
[4:25]He said something that kind of hurt my feelings.
[4:28]And I just started to drink, you know, because that was just what I thought you did.
[4:33]You wanted to change or alter your state.
[4:37]You had a drink like that was sort of what had been modeled for me and TV and movies.
[4:41]And I didn't know how to, what like a normal cocktail was.
[4:44]I didn't know how to pour a shot or I was 15 or 16 at the time.
[4:47]And so I poured myself like a whole cup of vodka, like a solo cup of vodka,
[4:52]as if I was pouring a glass of water and I just drank the whole thing.
[4:55]And, you know, the light switch went off and I don't remember anything else,
[4:59]but I have since talked to people who were at that party.
[5:02]And I carried on like throughout the night.
[5:04]I was playing drinking games and was, you know, awake and alert and stuff until
[5:09]I started throwing up and, you know, was, was eventually brought home to my parents.
[5:14]And I don't remember anything from that night still.
[5:17]So my blackouts were, yeah, I was essentially operating in my body,
[5:22]but my brain was not aware of what was going on.
[5:27]And it went on for over a decade until I had my last blackout a few days after I turned 28.
[5:36]And that sort of where the book starts in a lot of ways is that last blackout
[5:42]and how it prompted my decision to get sober and eliminate alcohol.
[5:47]And how did it?
[5:48]Can you talk a bit more?
[5:49]Yeah.
[5:50]So that last blackout, you know, what had kind of changed for me was,
[5:55]I felt like I had lost the power of choice when I came to, to how drunk I was going to get.
[5:59]And that was really scary.
[6:01]I had always been able to sort of justify the way my night had ended.
[6:06]Oh, well, it was my birthday or it was a really fun party or everyone was drinking a lot.
[6:13]And throughout the last couple of years of my drinking, it had been harder and harder to
[6:17]tell myself those stories.
[6:19]And my last night that I drank, I had gone into the night not wanting to get drunk.
[6:25]I'd booked, it sounds really silly, but I had booked a workout class for the next morning.
[6:29]And I paid for the class.
[6:30]That's why I was going to be at that class, you know.
[6:32]And instead I went to happy hour.
[6:35]I met up with some friends for drinks and then I had a dinner with my then boss.
[6:41]And once we all started drinking, like I just really had a hard time stopping, which was scary.
[6:48]And I kept drinking some of his friends ended up coming over.
[6:53]We all went out and last thing I remember as like being in a taxi on the way to like go dancing
[6:58]with all of these people.
[6:59]And I woke up the next morning, next to my boss's best friend, which is really shameful,
[7:06]even now to remember and felt horrible at the time.
[7:10]Like, I did not want that.
[7:12]I did not want to be there.
[7:13]I didn't want to, I didn't remember what had happened between us.
[7:16]Like, I had no intention of doing that and having that the way my night ended.
[7:20]And I missed my workout class, you know, and I was so hungover.
[7:24]I just felt so awful.
[7:27]And, you know, I had these goals for myself.
[7:31]I had things that I wanted to accomplish.
[7:33]And I had this idea of, you know, the type of woman that I wanted to become.
[7:37]And the type of person that I wanted to be.
[7:39]And I had this moment when I was walking home from his apartment like having a walk on a shame
[7:43]the next day, where I was just like, every time I drink, it takes me farther and farther away
[7:51]from being that person that I want to be.
[7:54]And it was just this tiny sliver of desperation and willingness to just try something different
[8:02]and just see what happened.
[8:04]You know, and every year I would make like resolutions that I wasn't going to drink as much.
[8:09]And I would tell myself I'm going to try to control my drinking.
[8:12]And I'm going to limit the amount of drinks that I have.
[8:14]And I really didn't want it to be so black and white that like, I had to stay in all together.
[8:18]You know, I really didn't like that idea of just being so extreme and so dramatic.
[8:23]But my drinking was pretty dramatic.
[8:25]And so I was just like, maybe I need to try abstaining all together and see what happens.
[8:33]And so that's that's what I did.
[8:35]You know, there's so much about like alcoholism.
[8:37]But it feels like it's this is not exactly what you do consider yourself to be an alcoholic.
[8:43]So for a long time, I hated that word and I really did not identify with it.
[8:48]I think that the label doesn't matter so much to me now.
[8:52]You know, like whether we call it alcoholism or alcohol use disorder or a binge drinking problem
[8:59]or like whatever we want to call it, I consider myself to be someone who cannot drink safely
[9:05]and who has like lost the ability to drink and lost the privilege of being able to drink.
[9:10]Like I can't do it safely anymore.
[9:13]And I didn't know I was allowed to feel that way.
[9:15]You know, I thought that alcoholics were people who had lost everything in their lives,
[9:19]who were much older than I was, who were unemployed or divorced or whatever.
[9:26]I had this like image of I had of something that I didn't think I was and the truth is I think
[9:31]I continued drinking the way that I was.
[9:33]I could have become that.
[9:35]And I also think that and I write about this in the book that like we've made such strides
[9:39]in the way that we talk about mental health and the way that we talk about, you know,
[9:42]sexual assault and how nuanced it can all be.
[9:45]And I think that alcoholism and addiction is not far behind, you know,
[9:49]yeah, I think I drank alcoholically.
[9:51]And I think that if alcoholism is defined as, you know, being powerless over alcohol once you start to
[10:00]And a lot of ways I was because once I started to drink,
[10:03]I didn't really know how my night was going to end.
[10:05]Not to me is not having power over it.
[10:08]So, but I try not to think too much about, you know,
[10:13]the label because ultimately like being sober
[10:16]has helped me in so many ways.
[10:18]And that's what I always say to people who are like,
[10:21]well, I don't think I'm an alcoholic,
[10:22]but I feel like I might want to stop drinking.
[10:24]It's like, great.
[10:24]So just take a break from drinking.
[10:26]You don't have to worry about it.
[10:27]Like, no one has to diagnose you with something
[10:30]for you to decide to make that change.
[10:33]The only differentiating factor,
[10:35]I would think is there's a genetic component to alcoholism.
[10:40]Right?
[10:41]Some people know like they just have to watch out.
[10:43]They know they shouldn't even start.
[10:45]So that's why I was just wondering.
[10:46]Yeah, it's a great question.
[10:48]And I didn't have that in my family.
[10:50]Like my parents are normal drinkers.
[10:52]There's no history of alcoholism that I know of
[10:54]and my immediate family tree.
[10:56]But I also don't know, right?
[10:58]Like I've since had conversations with like other relatives
[11:02]and they're like, oh yeah, like so and so definitely
[11:05]couldn't drink without getting sick,
[11:07]but it was generations ago.
[11:08]So they didn't maybe have the same language.
[11:11]So I don't know.
[11:12]And I think there's also a lot of shame
[11:14]and a lot of secrets around alcoholism and addiction
[11:17]and families.
[11:18]And I think sometimes it's not spoken about very openly.
[11:21]So you wrote about how on the outside,
[11:24]nobody would ever really know this about you.
[11:27]You were so high functioning.
[11:28]Everything was fine.
[11:30]You're so capable, all the good stuff.
[11:33]But yet there was still this,
[11:35]like this secret that you felt like you were hiding.
[11:37]And now it's a memoir, right?
[11:39]You have it out everywhere.
[11:41]And so it's the opposite of a secret.
[11:43]What made you wanna share it?
[11:45]Why now?
[11:47]And how do you feel now that it's like out in the world?
[11:49]Yeah, you know, I think like I was always the kid
[11:52]that my parents like didn't have to worry about.
[11:54]It was always like Sarah's fine.
[11:55]She's does well in school.
[11:57]She right it all looked good on the outside.
[11:59]And I was perfectionist and really private myself
[12:02]and that and being like high functioning
[12:04]and it's gonna go to the best college
[12:06]and just do everything by the book.
[12:08]And yet I was in a lot of pain.
[12:09]I felt really uncomfortable in my own skin
[12:13]from like as early as I can remember.
[12:16]I struggled with food and eating disorders.
[12:18]And then alcohol became kind of a solution for me.
[12:21]And I did a lot of, yeah, just like hiding, you know,
[12:26]and kept a lot of secrets.
[12:27]And so even when I made that decision
[12:30]that I was just talking about at that moment
[12:31]like I think I'm gonna try getting sober,
[12:34]I never thought I would talk about it publicly.
[12:36]It was in my biggest best kept secret for about a year.
[12:40]I would go to bars with friends
[12:43]and order a shot of water and take a shot of water,
[12:46]whatever one else was taking to kill a shots
[12:47]because I just was mortified at the thought
[12:50]of anyone knowing that I wasn't drinking.
[12:53]And over time, over that first year,
[12:56]I slowly started to become more comfortable with myself.
[13:00]I became more confident in my decision not to drink
[13:03]when I started to feel better.
[13:04]I also had always wanted to be a writer
[13:07]and had studied writing English and college
[13:09]and read all the time.
[13:10]And I started to kind of have this seed, you know,
[13:13]in my head of what if I wrote about this, right?
[13:17]I always say, right, what you know.
[13:18]And for a long time, my writing,
[13:21]I think really reflected how I was living my life,
[13:23]which is it was just nonsense.
[13:26]I was trying to write things that I thought I should write.
[13:28]I had all these great ideas,
[13:30]but I wasn't actually writing anything.
[13:32]Like it was smoke and mirrors, you know,
[13:34]I would get really drunk
[13:35]and talk about like the book I was writing
[13:36]and I had not written anything.
[13:39]And so I was starting to live more authentically
[13:42]and journaling a lot
[13:45]and just feeling more connected to my voice as a writer.
[13:48]And I on a whim pitched an essay
[13:52]to the cut about my experiences dating sober
[13:56]in that first year and how uncomfortable it had been
[13:58]and how I really felt like a teenager in a lot of ways.
[14:01]Like they say, when you get sober,
[14:03]you kind of regress to the age that you were
[14:06]when you drank for the first time.
[14:07]And so emotionally, I felt 15, you know,
[14:10]going on these dates with like 30,
[14:12]and something year olds.
[14:14]And so I wrote that essay and I was really scared.
[14:17]I was really scared of what the reception would be
[14:20]and a lot of people in my life still didn't know
[14:22]that I was sober.
[14:23]Like my parents knew at that point,
[14:24]but not everyone knew I was not public about it the way.
[14:27]And now, and the response that I got was really amazing.
[14:31]You know, I got messages from a lot of young women,
[14:33]just young people who said that they really related,
[14:36]that they also had been struggling
[14:39]and that they were acting like everything was still okay
[14:42]and that they were fine on the outside.
[14:44]And it kind of continued from there.
[14:45]I wrote other essays for different publications.
[14:48]I continued writing on my own
[14:50]and it became the idea for this book.
[14:53]And I had read a lot of recovery like addiction memoirs
[14:55]and I felt like a lot of them ended at the point
[14:59]where the author got sober.
[15:01]You know, like, and I wanted to show and just share
[15:07]for me, I felt like my life was going to be over.
[15:10]When I stopped drinking, that was my genuine fear was,
[15:13]okay, I can't do this anymore.
[15:15]And my life is over.
[15:16]No new friends, no boyfriend, no fun.
[15:20]But at least I won't black out every weekend anymore.
[15:24]And it was just the exact opposite.
[15:25]Like my life really started when I stopped drinking
[15:27]in so many ways.
[15:29]And so I was scared, but I wanted to share that.
[15:33]And I wanted, I thought maybe it could help someone.
[15:36]You know, I felt like if I had found a book like this
[15:38]when I was struggling, it really would have helped me
[15:41]to just feel less alone and to feel like I could really
[15:44]with someone who maybe on the outside looked
[15:47]and seemed like me, but was struggling
[15:49]with the same thing that I was.
[15:51]And now how I feel about it, now that I mean,
[15:55]I wrote it now almost two years ago,
[15:57]a lot of it was written a while ago.
[15:59]And how I feel about it coming out now,
[16:01]I've heard writers say like, you know,
[16:02]a book is a moment in time, right?
[16:04]And so the things that I wrote,
[16:06]the way that I felt, the opinions that I have,
[16:09]like I can look back on some of them now
[16:11]when I read it and think, oh, I don't even necessarily know,
[16:14]like more has continued to change since then,
[16:16]which is cool.
[16:17]And I'm really proud of it.
[16:19]I think it is, it's a moment in time.
[16:21]It's exactly how I felt when I wrote it,
[16:23]all the things that are in it or true,
[16:25]they're all my experiences.
[16:27]And enough time has passed since a lot of it has happened
[16:31]that I don't feel the fear of what are people going to think,
[16:35]because I'm not in it the same way anymore.
[16:39]And I just hope it will, I hope it will help people
[16:41]and I hope that people will be able to connect
[16:43]to the storytelling and to, you know, the content of it.
[16:49]And so when you're not writing memoir, what do you do?
[16:52]Well, this has taken up a lot of my life, right?
[16:54]For the last time.
[16:55]I bet.
[16:56]So I got sober in New York City
[16:58]and I lived in New York for years
[17:01]and from there originally, my family still there.
[17:03]I moved to Los Angeles two years ago now.
[17:05]So I moved with my now husband.
[17:07]He was my boyfriend at the time.
[17:09]We got engaged.
[17:10]We got married a year ago and we're now newly married.
[17:14]And we have a dog.
[17:15]And what do I do when I'm not writing?
[17:18]I am still very much trying to think
[17:20]find my footing in LA.
[17:22]It's so different from New York.
[17:23]And that has been a really humbling experience,
[17:28]moving to a new city in the middle of the pandemic.
[17:30]I very much still feel like I'm finding friends
[17:33]and finding a routine and finding, you know, my coffee shops
[17:36]and my rituals and places where I feel like myself,
[17:39]which I very much had in New York
[17:41]and I'm still trying to find in a new city.
[17:42]But it's been fun.
[17:44]It's been like a really exciting period of life
[17:47]to rediscover a new city.
[17:49]Yeah, I just, we hang out, we cook, I read books.
[17:53]I love to go on hikes.
[17:55]I like to spend time with my family.
[17:58]And yeah, that's, that's a lot of what I do.
[18:01]Yeah.
[18:02]There's so many, I mean, I'm not even gonna go into,
[18:05]we'll have to have coffee or something.
[18:06]I feel like I have so many similar things
[18:08]and like basically every area that you're talking about.
[18:10]So I'm like, okay, how do you feel about chocolate?
[18:13]You know, let me try something.
[18:15]What do we not have a common here?
[18:17]So it's funny for me.
[18:19]And I did move to LA from New York with the guy I was dating
[18:23]and we ended up breaking up,
[18:24]but that was, you know, in 1998.
[18:27]So I'm much older, I guess.
[18:28]But I had the same thing in West Hollywood
[18:30]and getting, like getting used to LA
[18:32]and figuring out where to go, what to do,
[18:35]finding my people basically was a challenge.
[18:37]Yeah, it's interesting because there's so much overlap
[18:39]between New York and LA and people I think go back and forth.
[18:42]And so I really thought that it would be so easy
[18:44]and that it would just be exactly the same
[18:46]with like better weather.
[18:47]And I remember telling my husband like,
[18:49]I'll just get a metro card,
[18:50]like I'll be the person taking the subway.
[18:52]I'll be the one taking the bus and he was like,
[18:54]oh, you really want to drive in LA.
[18:57]And I knew how to drive, but I hadn't driven a long time.
[18:59]So, you know, I had to get comfortable driving.
[19:01]I had to get comfortable parallel parking,
[19:04]going to New York, you can leave your house in the morning
[19:06]and stay out till 10 o'clock at night
[19:07]and just bounce around in the city.
[19:09]It's like a wave, it just takes you from place to place.
[19:12]And you have to, I think, be much more intentional
[19:14]with your time in LA and schedule your plans
[19:17]and know where you're going.
[19:18]And for me, I have to like Google parking where I go
[19:20]somewhere and the neighborhoods are so spread out.
[19:24]You know, I feel like it's like a little suburban town
[19:27]within a big city when you're in like Brantwood
[19:29]or Santa Monica, like they're all so unique.
[19:32]So it's definitely very different.
[19:35]And I've been here two years and I still feel like I'm new
[19:40]and figuring it out.
[19:42]These have been a weird two years.
[19:43]You know, it's not a fair test, very true.
[19:47]Yeah, no, like living, you know, not the easiest way.
[19:49]Do you read other memoirs and assuming you do?
[19:51]And if so, like which ones are some of your favorites?
[19:54]Yeah, I love memoir, I love fiction.
[19:57]Recently, I read Stray by Stephanie Dow.
[20:00]And I loved that, especially with the LA, New York connection and she writes a lot about addiction in her family and with her parents and then how it's impacted her relationships. I loved that. I loved that book.
[20:13]She's now I.
[20:14]Yeah, she is.
[20:15]Yeah, I love straight. That was just a beautiful red. She's a beautiful writer. I'm excited to read what she's working on that.
[20:20]What about fiction?
[20:21]Any novels or like all-time favorites?
[20:24]I mean, so many. Yeah, recent favorites. I loved this time tomorrow by Emma Stroud who I knew you had on and I listened to your conversation with her. I think I told everyone that I know to read that book.
[20:36]I obviously had my dad read it and my mom. I thought it was so beautiful and it really just hit on. I think like where I've been personally of being married now and living in a different city than my family.
[20:50]And you know, I lost my grandparents last year. I was very close to both of them and it just really spoke to a lot of it. She put words to a lot of the emotions I had been having about just the passage of time and feeling like there's not enough time to spend with the people that you love most and wanting to really just capture every second that you have with them.
[21:09]It was, I thought so beautifully written. I loved how she captured New York City and I just, I loved it. That was like my favorite book over the year.
[21:17]Amazing. And how have you found that being out in the world book marketing, all that stuff?
[21:22]Oh my gosh, it's so wild. It's everything everyone says. I thought that my job was over when I finished writing the book and it's like, it's now been a completely different experience of being out and marketing and having these conversations.
[21:36]I'm really enjoying it. I'm excited to finally be talking about it because I've been working on it for a long time and now it's like finally almost here.
[21:44]But it's also, it's like a baby. You know, I hope that people like it. I guess that's not really how people feel about a baby. I feel like it's very precious to me and I'm now talking about it with all these people and I hope that people will resonate with it.
[21:58]And it's also like admitting that I don't have control over the outcomes here. Right. Like when you're writing the book, you can just sit down every day and try to do your best to try to work on it and now so much of the marketing and PR part of it all is out of your hands.
[22:13]So that's just what it is.
[22:16]Well, I wish we had more time, but it's already been having added so fast. Thank you for coming on. I'll be in LA. I'm in LA a lot. So I feel like we should have coffee or something.
[22:24]I would love that. Thank you so much for having me on. It was so good chatting. Very exciting. Thank you. Okay. All right. Take care. Bye bye.
[22:46]Love and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.