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Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
This singer got sober at 25. How 'rock bottom' and recovery look different at that age
Is there such a thing as "too young" to get sober? At 25, Lauren McQuistin decided she needed to quit drinking for good. At the time, she was studying and performing opera at Yale School of Music. Many of her peers were deep in heavy, college-era drinking habits. But she was addicted, and as she used alcohol to cope, her life became 'unbearable.' There wasn't a 'rock bottom' moment like she'd always heard about. She hadn't been arrested, fallen into debt, lost her house or spouse or kids. She didn't even have any of those things. ('Who could afford a house, right?' she tells USA TODAY.) She thought she had to wait for something really bad to happen before getting sober and 'on the right track.' 'I didn't feel like I was ever on the track,' McQuistin says. This is one of the experiences with alcoholism and sobriety that McQuistin and other young people are eager to rewrite. In her memoir and guide 'No Lost Causes Club' (out now from Blackstone Publishing), McQuistin, now 32, writes that rock bottom 'doesn't have to be the worst things can get. It's the moment you don't want it to get any worse.' McQuistin runs the Instagram account @brutalrecovery, a page dedicated to memes that don't sugarcoat sobriety. It leads with humor, something that Gen Z is well-accustomed to in the face of difficulty or trauma. She started the account as a joke to share what she was struggling with or funny 'contradictions' about her sober friends – 'We're so tough, we can do impossible, impossible things, but we really struggle to brush our teeth,' she says, laughing. Now, she has 179,000 followers. Because getting clean can be a 'hard sell,' McQuistin says much of the language around it focuses on the after, not the during, of quitting drinking. On the low end, sobriety mitigates alcohol-related symptoms like headaches, stomach aches and anxiety from hangovers. Alcohol consumption is also related to a wide range of health issues, including certain cancers. Many get sober because, frankly, they could die if they don't stop drinking. But McQuistin wanted more people to talk about the hard parts of sobriety. When she got sober, she had to confront her self-harming behaviors, eating disorder, relationships, escapism and trauma. 'When you're talking about sobriety, you want to talk about the benefits. You don't necessarily want to talk about the things that you have to go through for those benefits to start metabolizing,' McQuistin says. 'I want to talk about the things that we don't talk about so much because I remember sharing that with other people and hearing them reflect that back to me, I felt so much less broken.' With @brutalrecovery, she can talk about all parts of sobriety – especially the ugly ones. One post rounds up 'early recovery experiences like confusion, disconnect, emotional deregulation, 'becoming an adolescent again' and feeling like 'everything hurts.' Another 'tag yourself' post boasts different types of sober people in McQuistin's signature humor: 'grandmacore sober,' 'cold shower, wild swimming sober,' 'overspending to feel something and fill the void sober' and '9 hours of playing the sims a day sober.' She also celebrates the things she doesn't miss from her days of addiction, like 'checking my bank balance after a mysterious force spent all my money.' 'We have this community of holding our past lightly. We take it seriously – I have to take my recovery seriously, but I can't take myself too seriously and that's why I really enjoy the community of laughter around that,' McQuistin says. 'We're really fun, we laugh in recovery. We don't get sober to be somber.' When McQuistin got sober, she needed to reevaluate the way she made friends and socialized with people her age. Some judged her. Now, she says, young people see her sobriety as a 'valid choice.' McQuistin thanks 'trauma-informed thinking' and greater vulnerability about mental health in a generation that's 'lucky enough that we have words to describe our experience.' Today, we know addiction is a disease and not a personal deficiency. There's a more holistic understanding that addiction doesn't exist in isolation – it can influence and be influenced by anxiety, depression, PTSD and eating disorders. As 'sober-curious' movements like Dry January gain traction, so does sobriety overall. Young adults, including Gen Z and millennials, are drinking less than in previous decades, a 2023 Gallup survey found. In January 2025, another survey found that 65% of Gen Zers said they planned to drink less in 2025 and 39% said they'd adopt a dry lifestyle this year. 'It's so indicative of how millennials and Gen Z are learning from what doesn't work in past generations,' McQuistin says. 'And rather than putting a stamp or a line underneath something to say 'This is it,' we get to investigate our choices. We get to be thoughtful and mindful about them and really work out what our path is because, as I say in 'No Lost Causes Club,' the path doesn't exist anymore.' This 'serial monogamist' gave up sex: What she learned surprised her Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Singer who stopped drinking at 25 says 'don't get sober to be somber'
USA Today
15-07-2025
- Health
- USA Today
This singer got sober at 25. How 'rock bottom' and recovery look different at that age
Is there such a thing as "too young" to get sober? At 25, Lauren McQuistin decided she needed to quit drinking for good. At the time, she was studying and performing opera at Yale School of Music. Many of her peers were deep in heavy, college-era drinking habits. But she was addicted, and as she used alcohol to cope, her life became 'unbearable.' There wasn't a 'rock bottom' moment like she'd always heard about. She hadn't been arrested, fallen into debt, lost her house or spouse or kids. She didn't even have any of those things. ('Who could afford a house, right?' she tells USA TODAY.) She thought she had to wait for something really bad to happen before getting sober and 'on the right track.' 'I didn't feel like I was ever on the track,' McQuistin says. This is one of the experiences with alcoholism and sobriety that McQuistin and other young people are eager to rewrite. In her memoir and guide 'No Lost Causes Club' (out now from Blackstone Publishing), McQuistin, now 32, writes that rock bottom 'doesn't have to be the worst things can get. It's the moment you don't want it to get any worse.' Using memes and humor to cope with recovery McQuistin runs the Instagram account @brutalrecovery, a page dedicated to memes that don't sugarcoat sobriety. It leads with humor, something that Gen Z is well-accustomed to in the face of difficulty or trauma. She started the account as a joke to share what she was struggling with or funny 'contradictions' about her sober friends – 'We're so tough, we can do impossible, impossible things, but we really struggle to brush our teeth,' she says, laughing. Now, she has 179,000 followers. Because getting clean can be a 'hard sell,' McQuistin says much of the language around it focuses on the after, not the during, of quitting drinking. On the low end, sobriety mitigates alcohol-related symptoms like headaches, stomach aches and anxiety from hangovers. Alcohol consumption is also related to a wide range of health issues, including certain cancers. Many get sober because, frankly, they could die if they don't stop drinking. But McQuistin wanted more people to talk about the hard parts of sobriety. When she got sober, she had to confront her self-harming behaviors, eating disorder, relationships, escapism and trauma. 'When you're talking about sobriety, you want to talk about the benefits. You don't necessarily want to talk about the things that you have to go through for those benefits to start metabolizing,' McQuistin says. 'I want to talk about the things that we don't talk about so much because I remember sharing that with other people and hearing them reflect that back to me, I felt so much less broken.' With @brutalrecovery, she can talk about all parts of sobriety – especially the ugly ones. One post rounds up 'early recovery experiences like confusion, disconnect, emotional deregulation, 'becoming an adolescent again' and feeling like 'everything hurts.' Another 'tag yourself' post boasts different types of sober people in McQuistin's signature humor: 'grandmacore sober,' 'cold shower, wild swimming sober,' 'overspending to feel something and fill the void sober' and '9 hours of playing the sims a day sober.' She also celebrates the things she doesn't miss from her days of addiction, like 'checking my bank balance after a mysterious force spent all my money.' 'We have this community of holding our past lightly. We take it seriously – I have to take my recovery seriously, but I can't take myself too seriously and that's why I really enjoy the community of laughter around that,' McQuistin says. 'We're really fun, we laugh in recovery. We don't get sober to be somber.' How Gen Z, millennials are doing sobriety differently When McQuistin got sober, she needed to reevaluate the way she made friends and socialized with people her age. Some judged her. Now, she says, young people see her sobriety as a 'valid choice.' McQuistin thanks 'trauma-informed thinking' and greater vulnerability about mental health in a generation that's 'lucky enough that we have words to describe our experience.' Today, we know addiction is a disease and not a personal deficiency. There's a more holistic understanding that addiction doesn't exist in isolation – it can influence and be influenced by anxiety, depression, PTSD and eating disorders. As 'sober-curious' movements like Dry January gain traction, so does sobriety overall. Young adults, including Gen Z and millennials, are drinking less than in previous decades, a 2023 Gallup survey found. In January 2025, another survey found that 65% of Gen Zers said they planned to drink less in 2025 and 39% said they'd adopt a dry lifestyle this year. 'It's so indicative of how millennials and Gen Z are learning from what doesn't work in past generations,' McQuistin says. 'And rather than putting a stamp or a line underneath something to say 'This is it,' we get to investigate our choices. We get to be thoughtful and mindful about them and really work out what our path is because, as I say in 'No Lost Causes Club,' the path doesn't exist anymore.' This 'serial monogamist' gave up sex: What she learned surprised her Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
Geek Tyrant
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
James Cameron Hires Martin Sheen for GHOSTS OF HIROSHIMA Audiobook as He Preps Film About Survivor of Both A-Bombs — GeekTyrant
James Cameron is finally making his long-awaited return to non-Avatar filmmaking, and he's doing it with a haunting story about a man in Japan who survived both A-bomb blasts. The director has hiredMartin Sheen to narrate the audiobook of Ghosts of Hiroshima , a new work by Charles Pellegrino, and Cameron plans to adapt the book into a feature film once Avatar production allows. 'Martin Sheen is my dream come true to read this book for audio,' Cameron said. 'His voice-over narration for Apocalypse Now still haunts me, and for a subject this dark, he will give it the gravitas and humanity that it needs.' The book, set to be released by Blackstone Publishing on August 5th, marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. It tells the staggering true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a man who survived both atomic bombings in Japan during WWII. He lived through Hiroshima, boarded a train to Nagasaki, and endured a second nuclear blast. Ghosts of Hiroshima blends personal accounts from survivors with cutting-edge forensic archaeology to examine the aftermath in vivid, often painful detail. 'It's a subject that I've wanted to do a film about, that I've been wrestling with how to do it, over the years,' Cameron explained. 'I met Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just days before he died. He was in the hospital. He was handing the baton of his personal story to us, so I have to do it. I can't turn away from it.' Cameron and Pellegrino, who also collaborated on Titanic and Avatar , and whose scientific writings helped inspire Jurassic Park , pledged during that hospital visit to honor Yamaguchi's wish: that the world remember and learn from what happened. And if there's a filmmaker who knows how to handle large-scale catastrophe stories with both spectacle and heart, it's Cameron. He describes the upcoming film as an 'uncompromising theatrical film,' one that won't shy away from the subject's emotional or historical weight. The film will mark Cameron's first non-Avatar feature since Titanic in 1997. The themes in the story aren't exactly new territory for him either. His fear of nuclear devastation, planted at the age of 8 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, has long influenced his work from The Terminator films to Aliens . Blackstone, which also released the bestselling audiobook of Oppenheimer, sees the Cameron-Sheen team-up as a landmark collaboration. 'Everyone at the imprint is thrilled with this remarkable partnership of James Cameron and Martin Sheen on this epic book,' said Blackstone's Josh Stanton and Anthony Goff. I remember learning about this story years ago, and it's one that has always stuck me. I'm looking forward to seeing Cameron bring it to life for the big screen. Source: Deadline
USA Today
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Author Jeneva Rose isn't done with 'The Perfect Marriage' series anytime soon
Author Jeneva Rose isn't done with 'The Perfect Marriage' series anytime soon Bestselling author Jeneva Rose didn't expect she'd ever be able to publish a sequel to 'The Perfect Marriage.' But like any good thriller writer, she left a few clues unanswered. 'The Perfect Marriage' follows a seemingly copacetic couple, Sarah and Adam Morgan, whose lives turn upside down when Adam is accused of murdering his mistress and top-dog attorney Sarah decides to represent him. 'The Perfect Divorce' (Blackstone Publishing, out now) adds even more twists to the murder mystery that's sold over one million copies and has been acquired for a film adaptation. Rose wrote 'The Perfect Marriage,' published in 2020, on weekends and evenings as a passion project outside of her full-time job. Now that she's got a fanbase of hungry readers, several other thrillers under her belt and three (that's right – three) books coming out in 2025, Rose says the pressure is on. Stepping back into the world of Sarah for the first time in years, she didn't want to let her readers down. But as early reviews for the book poured in, her anxieties eased. 'People are saying it's better than 'The Perfect Marriage,' I'm a little offended by that,' Rose says, laughing. 'The Perfect Divorce' picks up after 'The Perfect Marriage' twist ending The investigation into Kelly Summers' murder in 'The Perfect Marriage' hinged on three sets of DNA evidence. Two are explained away, but that third set of DNA is revealed without much additional explanation. Until now. 'The Perfect Divorce' is set 11 years after the events of the first book. Sarah has moved on, opening a nonprofit organization and starting a family with her new husband, Bob. But history has a way of repeating itself, and Sarah is determined to learn from her past relationship. So when she discovers Bob had a one-night stand, she swiftly files for divorce. But then the woman Bob slept with goes missing and new revelations in the decade-old Summers case send Sarah and Bob back into the interrogation room. That third DNA component is what drove Rose to pick up Sarah Morgan's story again. She didn't want to write a sequel just to write a sequel – she needed a catalyst to reopen the case, so to speak. 'What more do readers need to learn about her? It needs to be as twisty and jaw-dropping as 'The Perfect Marriage' because it's a thriller and that's what readers expect these days – you need to make their jaws drop,' Rose says. Once she had that, she spent a day with the Appleton Police Department in Wisconsin on a ride-along and taking tours of the forensics department. She spent so much time with them that she named two characters – Lieutenant Nagel and Chief Deputy Olson – after the police officers she met. And then she got into the nitty gritty – asking them what they would need, hypothetically, to reopen a case like the one in 'The Perfect Marriage.' The result is several interwoven cat-and-mouse games as the cases and bodies pile up in 'The Perfect Divorce.' The book is also a departure from Rose's style in 'The Perfect Marriage,' told from Sarah and Adam's alternating perspectives. Now, readers get inside the heads of Bob, former deputy Marcus Hudson and other new characters. Rose said writing Bob's perspective was a favorite because he played such a major role from the sidelines in 'The Perfect Marriage.' More to come for 'The Perfect Marriage' series Readers will also find a few extra easter eggs in the novel's endpages and author acknowledgements, where Rose has become notorious for dropping hints about future work. 'I'm not done with (Sarah),' she says. 'There's so much for her as a character and her growth.' A future book, she hints, could focus on Sarah's relationship with her daughter as she ages. In the first book, readers find out the truth about Sarah's murky (and deadly) relationship with her mom. How could that play out in this generation? 'What happens when she has a daughter that's a teenager and can no longer be a child that everything is hidden from?' Rose says. 'What happens when that daughter finds out everything that their mother has done in order to protect them?' Love a twisty, romantic thriller?: 10 books similar to 'Verity' by Colleen Hoover Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY's Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you're reading at cmulroy@
New York Times
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
3 Chilling Horror Books to Read This Month, Including a Reissued Classic
Strange Pictures The Japanese author Uketsu, according to his biography, 'only ever appears online, wearing a mask and speaking through a voice changer.' His work mirrors the mysterious nature of his persona. STRANGE PICTURES (HarperVia, 236 pp., paperback, $17.99), the first of Uketsu's novels to be translated into English, is a labyrinthine and multilayered horror mystery, full of cryptic images, about a series of deaths. The book opens with two college students in Tokyo reading a sad, abandoned blog that chronicles a portion of a man's life. The blog is filled with personal details, including entries about the man finding out that he's going to be a father and posts about the death of the man's wife during labor. It also features mysterious drawings by the man's wife. The students are convinced these drawings contain secrets and work to unravel them. But that's just the beginning. In the past, a string of unsolved murders plagued the region. In one instance, a man was brutally beaten to death with a rock while hiking and painting. Among his things was an unusual drawing, sketched on the back of a receipt and rendered in a different style than his other work. Is the picture a clue like the drawings on the blog? Who's responsible for the murders? Nine drawings hold the answers, but cracking the case is much more complicated than it seems. The novel is split into four parts. The third can feel repetitive, but the entire mystery is wonderfully complex and carefully crafted, so the misstep is easy to ignore. This is a story where revelations and new questions wait around every corner, and Uketsu keeps readers guessing until the very end. At Dark, I Become Loathsome Most people associate horror with fear, but great horror can also incite a deeply rooted sense of discomfort and revulsion. The work of the author Eric LaRocca does just that. Blacker than the blood of a fountain pen and unapologetically queer, AT DARK, I BECOME LOATHSOME (Blackstone Publishing, 230 pp., $25.99) shares the gruesomeness of LaRocca's previous work while exploring the inner workings of a mind shattered by guilt and grief. Ashley Lutin lost his beloved wife to cancer; then his young son went missing. The authorities are sure the boy is dead, but Ashley can't accept that. He has nothing left to lose and the memories of the mediocre father he was haunt him. As a coping mechanism, Ashley has covered his face in piercings and is trying to help others by ushering them through a multistep ritual of death he created where, among other things, he buries people alive in a coffin for 30 minutes. His patrons hope that facing their mortality will be transformative. One night, Ashley connects online with a man named Jinx who is interested in the ritual. After setting up an appointment, Jinx shares a disturbing story of sex, violence and kidnapping. Later, when the two finally meet, Ashley learns that Jinx has much more to tell, forcing Ashley to reckon not only with a past he'd rather not face but also with the weight of all his recent decisions. LaRocca exploded onto the horror scene in 2021 with 'Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke,' a brutal novella about queer love and obsession that went viral because of the graphic content it contained and the twisted psyches it studied. 'At Dark, I Become Loathsome' picks up those same themes, using them to fashion another unique, relentlessly depressive, strangely sexual and extremely violent novel about how pain changes people. The Contortionist's Handbook Craig Clevenger's THE CONTORTIONIST'S HANDBOOK (Datura Books, 250 pp., paperback, $18.99) — originally published in 2002 and now reissued 23 years later — is one of those stories that defy categorization. It is a cult classic, a crime book and an understated horror narrative, all about a brilliant man who constantly reinvents himself to evade the law. John Dolan Vincent is a talented forger with an extra finger on one hand. He also suffers from horrible migraines and blackouts. Doctors haven't been able to help, so John self-medicates. One night he accidentally takes too many painkillers, and when he wakes up, he's in a hospital in Los Angeles where doctors think he tried to kill himself. As a result, he must undergo a psychiatric evaluation. But the hospital isn't evaluating John; they're evaluating Daniel Fletcher, one of the fake identities John adopted to outrun a criminal past. Now, however, both the thugs who hunt him and the authorities who want to detain him are encroaching. In order to get to safety, John must successfully trick the doctor evaluating him before time runs out. This novel is a master class in tension. John lived through a rough and traumatic childhood, and the evaluations force him to be someone else while he also contends with the deep wounds he carries. With its re-release, this superbly written and very entertaining novel is sure to make its mark on a new generation of readers.
