Alex Wood - Float like a butterfly, drink mint tea : How I Quit Everything

How I Beat the Shit Out of All My Addictions

ALEX WOOD

ROBINS EGG BOOKS
AN IMPRINT OF
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
VANCOUVER

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, DRINK MINT TEA

Copyright 2021 by Alex Wood

Foreword copyright 2021 by Charles Demers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

ROBINS EGG BOOKS is an imprint of

ARSENAL PULP PRESS

Suite 202 211 East Georgia St.

Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

Canada

arsenalpulp.com

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada, and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program), for its publishing activities.

Arsenal Pulp Press acknowledges the xmkym (Musqueam), Swxw7mesh (Squamish), and slilwta (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, custodians of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories where our office is located. We pay respect to their histories, traditions, and continuous living cultures and commit to accountability, respectful relations, and friendship.

Cover and text design by Jazmin Welch

Edited by Charles Demers

Copy edited by Shirarose Wilensky

Proofread by Alison Strobel

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Title: Float like a butterfly, drink mint tea : how I beat the shit out of all my addictions / Alex Wood.

Other titles: How I beat the shit out of all my addictions

Names: Wood, Alex, 1986 author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200322966 | Canadiana (ebook) 2020032313X | ISBN 9781551528335 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551528342 (HTML)

Subjects: LCSH: Wood, Alex, 1986Alcohol use. | LCSH: Wood, Alex, 1986Drug use. | LCSH: Recovering addictsCanadaBiography. | LCSH: Compulsive behavior. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC HV5805.W66 A3 2021 | DDC 362.29/092dc23

For Ali and Otis

In the summer of 2009, Alex Wood, author of the handsome volume you hold in your hands right now, and I, its handsome editor, competed against each other in the same comedy competition at the Just for Laughs comedy festival held, that year, in both Toronto and Montreal. You will read, in these pages, about how Alexs experiences at the festival were shaped by the demons of his addictions to drugs and alcohol. But what I can also tell you is that, at one of the shows we did together that week, I had a ball of toilet paper jammed between my bum cheeks, and that fact is not unrelated to my own struggle with addiction.

Earlier that day, my wife, Cara, had joined me for a walk up Montreals Rue Saint-Denis, before her flight back to Vancouver, and along the walk Id shared the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity that being at the festival (a childhood dream, as it had been for Alex) had brought up for me, as well as my worries that I couldnt properly enjoy the festival because of a looming book deadline (for evil and unforgiving publishers Arsenal Pulp Pressgoogle them, or look at the copyright page of this book). So when we happened upon a candy shop, I decided to soothe my pain the way I so often had: with a large bag of gummy candies.

It wasnt always gummy candies. Sometimes it was the large cardboard flats of bags of chips my grandmother had in her basement, which I would empty in such a way that I could convince myself she couldnt tell I was eating them. Or the doughnuts Id wait until a minute after midnight to buy, and eat, by the dozen with my friends as a teenager so that theyd be available at day-old prices. Or the platter of birthday ribs a friend of my fathers made for me that I ate until I threw up. And so often, after Id throw up from overeating, I would think to myself: You know what that means theres room for again? In the years after my mother (the Robin for whom this imprint is named) died when I was ten, I simply lost the ability to be sated.

Stillwhy did I shove toilet paper up my ass?

That afternoon in Montreal, Id found one of those loopholes in the moral universe that the compulsive eater dreams about, like Diet Coke, or an elderly relative from whom it would be rude to resist a seventh helping: the bag of gummy candies was sugar-free! I could eat as many as I wanted, as I needed, without worrying about the consequences. Until an hour or two later, when I nearly shat myself in a shopping mall.

As it happens, the gummies had been sweetened with the kind of sugar alcohols that, on a package of, say, sugar-free Werthers Originals, would come with a warning not to overindulge. However, no such warning appears when one is buying in bulk. Despite drinking an entire bottle of Pepto-Bismol (something not even recommended in the Pepto-Bismol subreddit), my insides liquefied like the undersoil of a rural Midwestern outpost with a particularly lucrative fracking concession. Hence, the protective measures taken that night, which may go some way towards explaining the lukewarm reception I received at the comedy club. The faces of addiction are myriad; so are the assholes.

But as we go to press with this funny and heartbreaking book about addiction, written by someone you will come to know as a funny and heartbreaking addict, I am 263 days into what you could call sober eatingor what is called in some compulsive eating recovery circles abstention, though Im not doing a twelve-step program this timewhich for me involves restricting the hours of the day during which I can eat. And Ive been able to do that, at least in part, because of this book.

My path barely crossed with Alexs in the nine years between our Just for Laughs appearances and the publication of his Vice article How to Quit Everything in 2018 in January of that yearbut as soon as I read it, I knew there was a Robins Egg Book in his story. I hope it affects you as profoundly as it did me. Even if it doesnt, it will have you laughing until you cry, and crying until you also cry. Things get pretty goddamn rough along the way, so you may want to have some tissues handy. Especially if youre sucking on some sugar-free Werthers Originals.

Charles Demers

Robins Egg Books Editor

Ive been in dozens of fist fights. Growing up as a lippy kid with a lazy eye will do that. But this feels different. Theyre going to call me for my walk to the ring any second. Im bouncing nervously in place throwing some hapless jabs. I can deal with the nerves though. Im a stand-up comedian and it goes with the territory. Two months ago I was even a guest on NBCs Today Show with 3 millions people watching. But this feels different. Ive been in fights I knew I was going to win; those were easy. There are other fights that arent so easy, and even though youre not supposed to let the doubt creep in, you know in your heart, you could lose. This feels just like that.