AJ got sober in the middle of the Hulk Hogan trial, three months in, every defect of character tossed to a jury. He calls it fourth step dinner theater. He built The Small Bow afterward for people who are past rock bottom and a little adrift, which is a lot of you. We tried to name the category sober media belongs in. I said The Sober Curator is sober BuzzFeed and The Small Bow is literary meat.
In the fourth grade, Paulina Pinsky was cast as Miss Piggy on Ice. At eight, she was praying to Elvis before skating competitions. By her twenties, she was smoking weed every day and telling everyone it was medicine.
Now she’s almost five years sober, writes the Substack newsletters Newly Sober and Process Over Product, and she’s our newest Sober Curator contributor, bringing something we haven’t covered enough: marijuana addiction. Alysse and Tamar talk with her about Muppets, Graceland, and the rhetoric that kept her high.
Contributor Paulina Pinsky was repeatedly told that weed wasn’t addictive—even as she experienced cravings, withdrawal, vomiting, and an inability to stop. In this personal essay, she examines the complicated line between cannabis dependence and addiction and asks whether recognizing the difference sooner might have changed her story.
