Political Animals

Are you having trouble staying sane during this political moment? Me and some fellow Americans discuss our coping strategies.

Cat patriot photo by Reba Spike, via Unsplash.

My sobriety date is January 23, 2017. One thing you might notice about that date is that it’s three days after Trump took office, and while that was by no means on purpose, the events are nevertheless entwined. Forty-eight hours before I dragged myself into a meeting in San Francisco’s Castro district, beginning a journey that’s now lasted 2,732 days, I was grievously hungover while trudging down Market Street for the Women’s March. Prior to that, of course, was the inauguration, the run-up to that, the election itself, the needle, the Comey letter, etc., all of it taking place against a backdrop of desperate late-stage alcoholism. I started my sobriety adventure that first Monday Trump was in office. While his administration was gearing up to launch the Muslim travel ban, I was raising my hand and announcing myself—for the first time—as an alcoholic. Good times.

And now here we are—seven and half years later, with the grim and increasingly likely prospect that this dude will be elected again in November, will be inaugurated again in January, that I’ll celebrate my eight-year sobriety birthday right around the time Project 2025 is getting off the ground in earnest. Even the mere prospect of this is depressing. The fact that it’s a statistical probability is, well…I’m honestly having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

AA has a suggestion for all of this: Ignore it and focus on staying sober. The prevailing wisdom is the recovering alcoholic has enough on their plate, as well as a track record for letting the things on their plate lead them to destructive behaviors. Hence the widespread invocation of the Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (e.g. our current president’s utter intransigence when it comes to passing the torch), the courage to change the things I can (e.g. my own personal relationship to political news), and the wisdom to the know the difference. 

It’s this last clause that’s always bedeviled me. To my control-seeking, validation-obsessed brain, it reads like some combination of a riddle and a taunt: If you were smart enough and brave enough, you’d figure out how to change more of those things you can’t accept—so do it! But this brings to mind another of AA’s lovely koan-cliches: My own best thinking got me here. 

Sometimes, for some of us at least, it’s better to focus on quieting the mind rather than following each and every thought down each and every dark alley. 

In the rooms, any discussion of politics is politely discouraged, and in my experience totally avoided. “I made the mistake of listening to the debate on the way over here,” someone said in my regular Thursday homegroup meeting two weeks ago. But before the rest of us even had a chance to groan in sympathy, he quickly moved on to sharing about “our common problem.”

That’s because one of the program’s 12 Traditions is a pledge to remain a-political, to have “no opinion on outside issues,” which is good because it keeps everything focused on staying sober, and leads to situations in the rooms where—and I’m sure this is not uncommon in more purple states—devoted Fox news fans can cry on the shoulders of MSNBC devotees and vice versa. And this actually happens (here’s A.J. Daulerio at

The Small Bow

writing about the topic just this week), and I can say from personal experience that there’s something special about going to a meeting a rural Texas, where my wife is from, and experiencing a kind of safety I’d never expect to find just around the corner at the local evangelical church. By focusing exclusively on the thing we all have in common—that addiction laid waste to our lives, and that we’re here to repair them—AA emphasizes our shared humanity, rather than our myriad differences. 

There’s a lot of talk about unity right now, but the Rooms are the only place I’ve truly experienced it. 

I wish I could say they’ve helped me to achieve perfect serenity in the face of an increasingly perilous and anxiety-inducing political moment, but for better or worse I have a long way to go. The best I can say—and thankfully, it’s plenty—is that at least I’m not going to drink over any of it.

But lately I’ve felt particularly paralyzed. I recognize the futility of constant political scorekeeping, but I do it anyway. I acknowledge my very clear addiction to the little dopamine hits I get from my phone’s various apps, but I still keep my device within arm’s reach at all times. I can feel the resentment boiling over toward The Other Side whenever I see a headline about some new injustice or despicable act, but instead of letting it go, I let it fester. There’s a quote attributed to the Buddha that goes, “Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else: you are the one who gets burned.” See all those blisters on my hands?

Anyway, I don’t have all the answers, but I’m also not starting from scratch—progress not perfection, as they say in the rooms. And since trying to find serenity amidst our political moment is a monumental task, I thought it might help to try and crowdsource it a bit, so I reached out to readers and my fellow sober substackers to see what they had to say on the topic. There’s a lot of wisdom in the responses that follow—and thanks to everyone who was kind enough to share it with me.

How’s your media diet – healthy, unhealthy, or somewhere in between?

Ben T G

. I do less doomscrolling, but more doomreading — is that healthier? The place where I worry is how it affects my brain. Not just the dopamine hit of seeing a well-argued point I agree with, but how callous it makes me. Climate nightmare Jim Inhofe died today, and the first thing I thought was “Fuck that guy.” I don’t want to be that person. I don’t think I’ve found my perfect line between empathy and judgment, but constantly searching keeps me human.

Anonymous. Healthy for me, unhealthy for society. I have surrendered my duty to stay intelligently informed in the interest of staying sober and sane. I feel sad about it, because I would prefer to be both (sober & sane AND intelligently informed). I have to protect my recovery through frequent News Fasts and avoiding social media, because when I don't, the Fuckits come back real fast. So, my media diet — as in my media fasting — helps me maintain my (fragile-ass) recovery.

Chris Sontag

. I know myself well enough that if I let myself despair and obsess over the news, state of the world, basically *gestures at everything going on outside my current life*, that I'll go back to my old ways. So in a weird way my recovery is affecting my media diet (as in drastically reducing it), so that my media diet can't affect my recovery.

Amy Knott Parrish

. I have a conflicted relationship with the news. I feel a sense of responsibility to be aware of what's happening in the world around me, and also the news feels gross—so much of it comes across as manipulative rather than informative. Knowing where the line is...that's an interesting question. I think for me, the line is headlines. Getting a main idea of what's happening in the world without getting sucked into the way reporting uses words and stories to create a need to choose a side.

Jared Paventi

. I get the calories I need to survive. I’m on a news diet, as opposed to the actual diet I should be on. My consumption is enough to sustain life as someone who is/was a news glutton. I read the local headlines for my work in media relations, ingest the top of the hour headlines from NPR and BBC once or twice a day, and glance at my push alerts. That’s it. Truly, it surprised my wife to learn how little I’m consuming lately because she was always the one quietly suffering because of my voluminous news intake.

Josh Luton

. My consumption of news is mostly non-existent these days, save for skimming the headlines of national newspapers every day or every other. I used to listen to NPR while driving and try to stay on top of everything, but somewhere along the way it felt like staying so "connected" wasn't doing me or anyone else much good. I sometimes have concerns that I'm not as engaged as I "should" be, but still working through this.

For the sober folks — Do you file politics under "accept the things you cannot change," or "the courage to change the things you can"?

Amy Knott Parrish. For me personally, politics and political scorekeeping are the things we need wisdom to know the difference between, and politics is something I have the courage to change, because I know that when we get rid of the "winners/losers" structure we will become more of what we've been all along: in it together.

Ben TG. I’m a coward who’s pretty great at accepting things I cannot change. I went to rehab in August 2019 and turned in my phone. The big political news story at the time was about Trump telling the Squad to go back to where they came from. When I got out in September, that same story was still going on. That was huge for me to learn how the daily discourse was only hurting me, not keeping me meaningfully informed. Nothing makes me feel more like a human among humans than block-walking for a candidate I believe in, when I can find the courage to do it. I recommend anyone try it once.

Josh Luton. I file politics under "accept the things I cannot change." I participate in the political process primarily through voting. I sometimes feel I should be more involved in the local political/community scene, but between work and staying connected to my wife and daughters, I haven't found a way to go out and get involved that feels supportive yet.

Do you have productive ways of channeling this stress?

Anonymous. I think so — I focus on lifting up, supporting, and fostering healing and peace in individuals through my work in healthcare because I don't really foresee such things happening on the macro scale. I Take my despair about the big picture and sublimate it by focusing on the...um...tiny picture.

Chris Sontag. I basically recite the serenity prayer when I feel myself losing it. I try to move, get active and do something productive. I spend time with my kids and wife doing fun things. I play video games, build LEGO, read books, watch movies, etc. I've actually really gotten into all types of horror movies, because it feels like a positive or appropriate outlet for me to feel anxious and stress, followed by relief.

Flo Martin

. My background as a war refugee, displaced person, indentured-labor immigrant and UC Berkeley grad has inspired me over some 60 years to act, to attend local and regional meetings, to voice my concerns (rattling cages) and to contribute beaucoup bucks to political candidates. Ergo, all positive.

Rajay Kumar

. I just put it into passion projects or anything else to take my mind off major problems. But I also put time into affecting local change that improves lives directly — talking to friends, donating blood, vegan outreach, helping family members

Jared Paventi. Like most stressful things in my life, I try to ignore [political events]. If I can’t, I make light of them. “Should we rent the vacation house in Virginia Beach next summer, or will we lose the deposit due to the civil war?”

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