Disclaimer: This interview discusses addiction and may be hard for some to read. Erin Khar offers anecdotal advice that is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.
Erin Khar’s debut memoir, Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies that Nearly Killed Me (Park Row Books 2/25/20) has appeared on most anticipated lists from The Rumpus, SELF, Apple Books, Goodreads, Bitch Media, Alma, and others. Her work has been featured in Marie Claire, SELF, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, and Salon. Erin Khar is a New School alumna, who graduated in 2014 with a Liberal Arts BA with a focus in Creative Writing.
She writes a popular weekly advice column, Ask Erin . Her personal experiences with addiction and recovery have led her to work within the substance abuse field as a panelist and keynote speaker on the topic of treating addiction.
12TH STREET: As a [former] Ravishly editor who has published many New School students, what advice do you have for aspiring writers?
ERIN KHAR: Get to know the publications you’re pitching, look at what they’ve published recently, their tone, length of pieces, etc. When pitching an editor, put a headline in the subject line that you can picture running on that site or in that publication. Keep your pitch succinct, displaying a narrative arc.
STREET: The gig economy has students facing employment instability after graduation. What was your first job after graduating from The New School?
KHAR: I started freelancing before graduation. Freelancing was definitely where I got my footing. That said, it is tough to make a living as a freelancer. Moving into editing at Ravishly gave me much needed stability.
STREET: You’ve written poignantly in Salon about how important a role compassion plays as part of the recovery process for addiction. How does someone show compassion to a loved one struggling with addiction while maintaining healthy boundaries?
KHAR: The most important thing to remember when you’re dealing with a loved one struggling with addiction is that they are a human being struggling with a human condition. Addiction is not a moral failing.
What do personal boundaries look like when you have someone in your life struggling with addiction? Drugs aren’t allowed in my house. You can’t drive my car. I am not participating in illegal activity with you. I’m not covering up for you. If you are violent, physically or verbally, I will remove myself.
We can still set boundaries without completely cutting someone off. We do this by picking up the phone, helping to whatever degree we have the bandwidth for when they reach out for help. We can direct them to harm reduction services so they don’t die. We can share a meal with them; remind them they are worthy of love, shelter, food, employment, friendship, happiness. Coming from this position, we can remind them that they have not lost their humanity.
STREET: In your new book Strung Out, you write about watching Beverly Hills, 90210 with your adolescent son as a way of teaching him about the perils of drug use.
Which characters did you and your son identify with the most? What would you do if you found out your son was using?
KHAR: I think my son, now 16, is just beginning to identify with the characters. I think we’d both agree he is a David Silver! For me, I have always related to Kelly Taylor and Dylan McKay. Both of them had a lot of emotional pain and trauma to deal with and they both dealt with self-esteem and addiction issues.
If I found out my son was using, I would confront the situation—with compassion, without judgment. I’d do as I’ve had to do with people I loved in the past—set boundaries and do everything I can to get him the help he needed.
STREET: Addicts balance on a double-edged sword when it comes to being criminalized by the government while at the same time being moralized by society at large. What do you think is really at the heart of addiction?
KHAR: Addiction is absolutely not a moral failing, nor should it be a criminal issue. The stigma attached to addiction perpetuates cycles of shame that keep addicts stuck, that prevent them from reaching out for help. At the core of addiction is emotional pain—be that untreated mental health issues like depression or anxiety or some sort of trauma. There are people who biologically react to substances differently, and that lends itself to the disease model of addiction, but it is more complicated than that. I have yet to meet an opiate addict who did not also struggle with a mental illness and/or trauma.
STREET: If you could go back in time, is there any advice you could give your thirteen year old self that would have stopped you from doing heroin for the first time?
KHAR: I would tell thirteen-year-old me that the belief systems I had about myself were not true, that I could show people who I really was, what I was really feeling, and they would still love me. I would tell thirteen-year-old me, “You are not broken; you are not a monster.”
STREET: The advice you give in your column Ask Erin is direct, yet humble— sometimes offering heart-wrenching truths to people going through personal trauma.
How do you select the questions you answer?
KHAR: The hardest part about choosing questions, and I get 50-75 each week, is trying to balance the subject matter.
It’s amazing how essentially the same questions pop up again and again—what I look for are subjects I haven’t covered recently and definitely unique situations will spark my interest.
Erin Kahr can be found on Instagram at @erinkhar, Twitter at @ErinKhar, and on her website.
Her book can be purchased anywhere books are sold, but we encourage purchase through bookshop.org to support independent bookstores.