September 11th, 6:30pm (MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA): I’ll be at MECCA Bourke Street, come hang. You can get tickets here.

September 19th, 10am (ONLINE): Quarterly Energy Bath with Uta Opitz for paid community members. Link to register is here.

September 27th, 10am (MISSOULA, MONTANA): I’ll be doing a Q&A with Athena at the Missoula Public Library. You can get tickets here.

I’ll be announcing an October Office Hours for paid subscribers next week once I sort out my schedule. Okay, on to the main event.

You can also find this episode on Spotify, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs is the host of the podcast Last Day, which is also the title of her new book, which we’re going to get into today. Her first book was a memoir called, Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful. And Steph is also the co-founder and CEO of Lemonada Media, which is the podcast network that I’ve been with for the last year or so.

Steph’s new book is really such a gift to us. It’s a vital guide for living with addiction, for connecting with loved ones who have this disease, for saving lives—and really—for evolving our culture more broadly.

I so wish that Steph didn’t have to write this book, and that her brother, who died a decade ago from an opioid overdose, was still here with her. And again, I’m so grateful for what she is sharing now. There are so many compelling, helpful, and really practical things we could all be doing—so I hope you’ll keep listening. Also, I should say, Steph is really fun!

This one is essential for me.

All Pulling the Thread episodes on Addiction (including Gabor Maté, M.D., Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., Carrie Wilkens, PhD, and Anna Lembke, M.D.)

Stephanie’s Book: Last Day: How to Stop Losing Our Loved Ones to the Opioid Crisis

Stephanie’s Memoir: Everything is Horrible and Wonderful

Stephanie’s Podcast: Last Day

ELISE:

We're going to roll because there's so much to say and I will start by saying thanking you for this gift and don't be upset, but I already sent this galley to a friend in crisis with a sibling because for all of the ink spilled about addiction and all of its variations, and there's so much great stuff out there and I will include everything in the show notes, all the episodes that we've done here on this show in particular, that it's still so not well understood. It's so paralyzing to find yourself in that situation. And old stories die hard in this space, particularly when you love someone who is in trouble and needs help. And this idea of you can't do that, it's codependent. There's so much poor information out there that's landed in our psyches. Yeah. So thank you for this book. It needs to exist.