Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget — SuperSalon with Sarah Hepola

In this SuperSalon, special guest Sarah Hepola — author of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget — joins host and Interintellect Editorial Lead Christin Balan to discuss her personal misadventures in “stumbling into sobriety” and all of the moments of laugh-out-loud humor and brutal honesty that journey entailed. 

“It’s such a savage thing to lose your memory, but the crazy thing is, it doesn’t hurt one bit. A blackout doesn’t sting, or stab, or leave a scar when it robs you. Close your eyes and open them again. That’s what a blackout feels like.”

–Blackout, Sarah Hepola

Have you ever spent a night out drinking until last call and woken up with a dark spot in your memory where four hours should have been? Apologized for things you don’t remember saying or doing? Woken up in a strangers bed?

Sarah Hepola has.

Join us for this candid Q&A about her memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, recounting her personal experiences with drinking culture in America. Whether you do or don’t have a personal relationship with alcohol, we’ll cover broad themes of what it means to feel (and to avoid) fear & insecurity and what it means to be (and to prevent yourself from being) empowered & confident through one woman’s brave journey.

Come join Sarah and fellow Interintellects to explore questions like:

• How does alcohol relate to (and contradict) being empowered?
• What did your behavior in a blackout reveal about your deeper longings and inner conflict?
• Was there one experience that made you realize you needed to quit drinking?
• What has been your experience with alcohol and sex, both in your drinking years and after you got sober?
• Can you talk about the quote: “There are times in life when you realize that maybe your dream wasn’t the right dream for you”?
• What were some of the top fears you had when choosing to get sober?
• How does parenthood affect people’s drinking, and how does modern drinking become entwined with parenthood, or the lack of parenthood, in your case?

Recommended Reading:

• Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola
• New York Times: Sarah Hepola’s ‘Blackout,’ on the Darkness That Took Over Her Life 
• Washington Post: Why ‘Blackout’ would make a perfect book club choice
• Chicago Tribune: Review: ‘Blackout’ By Sarah Hepola

About the Author

(Biography originally found here)

Sarah Hepola is the author of the bestselling Blackout and whatever she writes next. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times magazine, the Atlantic, Elle, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Salon, and Texas Monthly.

She lives in East Dallas, where she enjoys listening to the Xanadu soundtrack and puttering in her garden, when she remembers she has one. She’s the co-conspirator of “Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em,” a weekly podcast on what’s burning through the culture that she hosts with friend and fellow scribe Nancy Rommelmann. She’s the host and creator of the Texas Monthly podcast America’s Girls, an eight-part series on the lost history and cultural impact of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, a series that no less than Vogue magazine said “expertly complicates America’s cheerleading obsession.” Sarah never knew she was a cat person until she got a cat. What might happen if she got a dragon?

Follow her on Twitter @sarahhepola, on Instagram @thesarahhepolaexperience, and on Facebook @facebook.com/sarah.hepola.blackout.