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Anyone who has quit an addiction will tell you that its really goddamn hard. Your body is begging for the thing it’s become dependent on, whether that be opioids, alcohol, sugar, or toxic relationships. Addictions and toxic relationships can take many forms, and breaking from them takes more discipline than many people are capable of giving. When I think of the people who are going through addiction recovery, I cannot begin to imagine the kind of self-discipline and endurance it requires. I count myself very lucky that I haven’t had to deal with that kind of ordeal, and I hope to offer resources to those who are struggling whenever I can.

Emotional support and validation is important when people are going through these challenges, but people often forget that the symptoms of withdrawal can be counteracted with clear cut fixes such as cleaning up one’s diet and nutrition.

On a societal level, capitalism ensures that we have direct access to junk food whenever we’re struck with an impulse, Mix that culture with an alcoholic’s inability to control themselves, and you often are left with a poor diet indeed. Neglect of self care (which often first manifests in food) is one of the first things to go when alcohol controls your life.

Sidebar: I want to be clear that I think there are lots of definitions of a healthy diet, and that dairy, meat and gluten aren’t essential for a healthy diet. There’s a lot of money in the food industry, and common assumptions about nutrition (i.e. animal products are inherently good for you.) are often debunked when truly examined. Several of my friends were really moved by a documentary entitled What the Health on Netflix. A healthy diet is determined by every individual’s ethics and their specific body, not by a set, generalized system.

On a medical level, alcoholics can easily become malnourished, and this negatively affects more vital systems than one would think. Alcohol prevents the breakdown of food molecules because it inhibits the production of digestive enzymes. So your body doesn’t absorb the necessary nutrients, even if you are eating well. Basically, your energy levels drop enormously, no matter how much food you consume. Malnourishment also manifests in menstrual problems, tooth decays and other various aches and pains.

Vitamins are totally essential for the body to function normally in terms of maintaining growth and metabolizing efficiently. The most common deficiencies alcoholics have are vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin B6, thiamine and folic acid. When our bodies are deficient, it hinders our immune system and renders us more susceptible to disease. These particular deficiencies can lead to heart disease, cirrhosis, nerve damage and pancreatitis. A particularly dangerous condition one can contract is ‘Wet Brain Syndrome’, which stems from a thiamine deficiency and leads to problems with brain functions and the nervous system.

But when you understand all of the risks and the effects, you become better prepared to approach these problems in the weakened state of withdrawal. It can be really tempting to eat junk or whatever’s available while going through an alcohol detox, and doing your best to give your body the fuel it needs to return to normal will help your recovery immensely. Create a regular meal schedule: 3 meals a day with snacks. You know how you get tired when your sleep schedule is upset? It’s the same thing with eating meals: your body needs a routine so you don’t get hit with bouts of hunger.

An even more direct approach is vitamin therapy. Vitamin therapy directly addresses the damage done to the body nutritionally, and can make the addiction recovery process much smoother. Basically, you’re prescribed high levels of vitamins to treat whatever condition you’re in. It’s been shown to aid in improving the mental health of patients in recovery. If you want to learn more about vitamin therapy, look into it here.

Wherever you on your journey, kudos, and be as kind to yourself as possible!

 

 

The Evolution of Social Media

Before diving into any thought piece about social media and marketing, I have to consider that my life has been shaped by the Internet. Growing up in the 2000s has deeply impacted the way I process information, how I communicate and the general speed of my life. I won’t pretend to know whether this was a positive influence or a negative one (probably both at different times), but at the very least I can give credit where credit is due: the Internet consumes an embarrassing fraction of my time, and therefore, my life. It can be a place of great vulnerability and a place of great fabrication. Understanding this, I’d like to explain how I think social media has transformed into the primary platform for modern marketing, whether business or personal.

I first got a Facebook account when I was in middle school (no Myspace or Tumblr for me), and it opened up a whole new way to stay connected to my friends. Social pillars rose and fell by messages, likes, and whether or not someone poked you back. It was closer to high school when I became aware of conversations about cyber-bullying. I remember sitting in the Hardware Store in my hometown, talking to the guidance counselor of our local high school about how virtual messaging lowered the participant’s empathy. I argued with her, but I can’t recall a conclusion.

Buying Followers and Buying the Lie

When I went to college, and my mental health declined, I bore the full brunt of the paradox of social media. It brought us closer, but it isolated us further. The timeline of someone’s life was edited, trimmed and embellished to perfection. The best version of themselves, their relationships, their accomplishments were front and center, the rest of them erased. It’s a more recent trend for people to post selfies with captions describing self doubt, personal struggles, etc. With all of this going around, I fancied myself a Facebook hermit. I looked down on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Vine. I derived pride from choosing not to indulge. Eventually I could comfortably take social media hiatuses, and I found some semblance of inner peace for a period of months.

Instagram Influeners and Imposter Syndrome

Fast forward to this last semester, when I was arguably enjoying the best career success I’d ever had and the most lonely I’d ever been, I chose to indulge Instagram and Twitter. I was suffering from imposter syndrome surrounding my success, feeling it was undeserved, and the plethora of likes and comments momentarily assuaged my growing sense of dread. But I was convinced that my relationship with social media was revitalized: this could be a place where I could celebrate my accomplishments, and present the best version of myself. But the more I explored Instagram specifically, the more my initial distaste for it returned.

To learn about how Instagram influencers are paid to promote specific products, and that autobots are bought to post and like and follow users in the hopes of making money: it’s not necessarily disheartening. There are much worse things happening on the internet, for sure. But with ad blocks being so accessible, the line between digital marketing and personal expression are completely blurred to me. What once may have been (at least partially) a safe haven for people to express things they could never do in real life, is now just an infinite scroll of people plastering corporate logos on their face.

I’ve read articles about ‘ethical search engine optimization’, or white hat SEO, and they do a fine job of explaining how building legally a relationship with a social media influencer and organically building a following will help your business in the end. Yes, there are search engine optimization techniques that follow the guidelines of social media platforms, and those that don’t. After educating myself more on the subject, I can see the subtle difference between building followers and buying followers. But in my heart, the difference doesn’t seem to matter that much. At the end of the day, if some influencers consensually agrees to promote your product, do they really, truly like it? Part of it will always be about the money. If social media, and sharing about your life and lifestyle is based on some ideal of authenticity, then in the end, there’s an element of trickery, of falsehood, that I can’t shake from my mind.

How do you feel about the shifting purpose of social media? Leave a comment below!

 

Among the artistic community, there’s a whole lot of stigma surrounding copywriting, marketing, and what’s generally known as ‘selling out’. As a playwright and a theatre artist, I see where this aversion stems from. Impactful art comes from the heart and the soul, not from the wallet.

But bills exist, and starving artists aren’t really much use to anyone, so support ourselves we must. More and more creative writers are falling into web copywriting as day jobs because they require similar skills. This can actually be super helpful for creative writers because it can help improve our craft. Although creative writing and copywriting have vastly different goals, both mediums inform one another. So before you stick up your nose at marketing, consider how it could inform your true passion. Because my primary medium is theatre, I’m mostly going to refer to playwriting.

Get To The Point

In content writing, it’s important to be clear about what the point of your piece is from the beginning. A lot of vagueness or mystery gets in the way: you want to be clear about what kind of article you’re writing, what it’s about, and what the reader can take away. But this is also important when you’re writing a play, a short story, a novel, whatever!

Sometimes when you’re working on a play, you can fall into the trap of setting up the world without driving the action forward. Copywriters know to get right into the action with the preamble. Simplicity is the hallmark of copywriting, but it’s also incredibly important in creative writing. When confronted with areas that need improvement, the simplest solution is often the best.

Being Aware of Your Audience

When writing creatively, a very common piece of advice is to follow your heart. Don’t cater to what others want you to write: your greatest work is deep inside yourself, and you just need to pour it out onto paper. Although finding your voice and being true to what you want to write about is imperative, connecting to an audience is equally essential. If there’s anything copywriters are great at, it’s knowing their audience.

Something I’m noticing more and more now is that many writers believe that their audience is universal: everyone will want to read whatever it is they write. Yes, great writing taps into a universal truth, but not every piece of writing is for everyone. I think it’s fair to say that most Americans have grown up reading books by white cis men and being told that the white cis male perspective is universal. A lot of people aren’t white cis men, and have wonderful, varying perspectives to share! Owning your point of view and recognizing your target audience (especially in theatre) will strengthen your writing and your connection to the world at large. This isn’t sucking up to your audience, or compromising your artistic integrity: it’s realizing your art always exists within a given context. Which brings us to our final point . . .

Context Context Context!

When writing content, good copywriters know to consider the context they’re posting it within. Nobody ever writes in a vacuum. Unfortunately, creative writers put themselves pedestal sometimes, deluding themselves into thinking that they somehow transcend the political, social or cultural climate. This is a total fallacy. What makes writing mean anything is the interaction between the individual and the outer world. The meaning of whatever your writing changes every day because the world continues to change, so staying in the know, politically, culturally, and socially is essential.

Final Thoughts

There are lots of writing techniques that we can borrow from different mediums to improve what makes our hearts go pitter- patter! And we don’t have to starve! As long as you stay true to the goals of whatever medium you’re in, porque no los dos!

 

I don’t know if there’s anything more intimate than someone’s relationship to food. It’s a cultural sphere where there appears to be a lot of freedom: one has a reasonable amount of control over what goes into their body, which bears a lot of responsibility. A person’s food preferences, rituals and aversions directly affect how their body operates in the world.

So when someone suffers from an eating disorder, they cannot be entrusted with that responsibility. Whether it manifests itself in binge-eating, consuming banned weight loss supplements, or forcing oneself to throw up, eating disorders are dangerous and often misunderstood. In an effort to bring light and understanding to these mental illnesses, I’m going to dispel some common myths associated with eating disorders.

#1: You Can See When Someone Has An Eating Disorder

Not all those who suffer from eating disorders ‘look’ unhealthy, i.e. are extremely skinny. Eating disorders affect those across the BMI spectrum. People categorized as overweight can be diagnosed with atypical anorexia nervosa if there’s a drastic loss of weight. This myth is damaging for several reasons. It can glamorize eating disorders by associating its effects with fashion model weight, and it can prevent people with eating disorders from coming out and getting treatment.

A few months ago, Netflix released a movie called ‘To The Bone’, about a young woman suffering from an eating disorder. I remember my friend posting about it, critiquing how it chose to portray eating disorders. She said she was sick of these milk toast, feel good movies, especially with an extremely skinny protagonist. As someone with an eating disorder, she said she wished she was that skinny all the time, and wished for more varying representation in the media.

#2: Eating Disorders Are A Choice, Not An Illness

A lot of people mistakenly think that people with eating disorders are vain, or even worse, strong-willed: that if they put all that energy into throwing up or cutting down on food, they could put the same into gaining back weight. Even doctors can dismiss patients with eating disorders, requesting them to stop exhibiting symptoms. But that’s the thing about diseases: they’re involuntary. The interaction between a person’s biology and their environment caused them to contract an eating disorder. The eating disorder actually prevents them from being in control, not the other way around.

#3: Only Rich White Teenage Girls Can Have Eating Disorders

People from all walks of life can get eating disorders: men, POC, older people, etc. The myth that only white teenage girls can have eating disorders actually prevents a lot of people from getting treatment. Men feel embarrassed to admit they have these types of disorders because they’re associated with femininity. In black or latinx communities, mental illnesses are often stigmatized, so people suffer in silence.

#4: Families/Mothers Are To Blame

Another common misconception is that eating disorders simply come from a person’s familial environment. Placing the blame on families, and particularly mothers, has been a common theory applied to misunderstood disorders for the past century. This can be seen with Bruno Bettelheim and his theory about Refrigerator Mothers and autism, and with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and her theory about schizophrenoegenic mothers. Families can more often than not be allies in a patient’s recovering.

#5: Society Is To Blame

This is linked to the idea that eating disorders are a choice. Although American culture does have some incredibly problematic body image standards, that’s not the sole cause of eating disorders. If that were the case, everyone would either be purging, starving themselves, or throwing back banned weight loss pills. Although there is some connection, and it is a good thing that there are treatments and diet pills that are FDA banned, it’s inaccurate to put all on the responsibility on society.

Final Thoughts

After learning more about eating disorders, I want to remind readers that help is out there. Our bodies and our food are worthy of respect and love, but it can be difficult to remember that sometimes. When it becomes impossible to remember that, help is required. With heightened awareness, we can be more diligent in looking out for ourselves and each other.

If you’re curious to learn more about diet pills banned by the FDA, you can find more information here.

For the past two months I had been a literary intern at Hyde Park Theatre in Austin, reading scripts and helping out with events. While I was there I had the pleasure of seeing their production of The Moors, a new play by Jen Silverman. I had heard of the play, and I know a couple of people who are salivating for the rights. In their weekly email blast, my eyes had skimmed over the phrases “illicit sex” “secret diaries” and “rock ballads”. I had high expectations for the play, but I when I sat in my reserved seat last weekend, I did my best to put them out of my mind and enjoy the show.

The show is as odd as it sounds: a darkly comic thriller set in the late 1800s in a Jane Austen England, but with American accents. It’s out of this world in an unexpected way. In a place where one could contract typhus today or get lost in the moors and die tomorrow, every character is fighting tooth and nail for dominance over their place in the household. The audience follows the new governess of the household as she navigates the ever-changing rules set by the madam of the house, her depressed, pathetic sister, and the many-named maid.

Although all of these actresses had stand out performances, the subplot intrigued me the most. The characters pictured above are the Moorhen and the Mastiff. The Mastiff roams the halls of the mansion, ignored and unloved by his owners, and while walking in the moors comes across a moorhen with a damaged wing. The Mastiff develops a deep infatuation with the Moorhen, and stays with her while she heals. The Moorhen chats with the Mastiff and agrees to his presence only if he keeps his distance (he could very easily eat her).

Silverman does a wonderful job of playing with the worldviews of these different animals: the fast paced, optimist moorhen with her head in the clouds and the droopy, landlocked mastiff steeped in existential dread. But watching their relationship in particular illuminated a part of my romantic mythology: the idea that we can fix other people, or that others can give our lives meaning. There are only three scenes with the Mastiff and the Moorhen, but they are teeming with millennial commentary. In the middle of the first scene, the Mastiff promises that he will never hurt the Moorhen. And if I have learned anything about dramatic storytelling, it’s that if a character promises that they would never do something, they better do it by the end of the play.

Much of my Disney romance mythology had been debunked (but don’t underestimate the power of a single narrative: I still struggle to scrub my brain clean of the idea that purpose isn’t merely to find a prince, get married and pump out babies). But mainstream media in general didn’t provide educate me about mental health, substance abuse and how these affect relationships. Through Disney princesses, romantic comedies, and manic pixie dream girls, female characters are often used as sounding boards for the male protagonists to learn to love themselves. These girls come through and fix everything, awakening these sad, lost boys. But there is a difference between support and enabling. Love is supporting and complimenting another person, NOT completing them.

Jen Silverman dissects loving vs. enabling in this subplot, and takes this common trope to its true fruition: disaster.

The Mastiff unhinges his existential dread upon the Moorhen, telling her about all of his woes. The Moorhen understands little of this because she can’t relate: she’ll even say she has a short attention span. And here’s the crux: their relationship is also contingent on her injury: when she’s close to healing, the Mastiff suggests that she simply continue to walk, or that he learn to fly. When she refuses, he says he can’t afford to live without her. The play inevitably ends with him entering, his mouth bloody with feathers.

What shook me so deeply about this play was the parallels to my idea of love and my friends’ idea of love. With many friends suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues, it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate support and enabling. This wonderful play was a powerful reminder.