Don’t Make Mac Miller’s Death About Ariana Grande

The Yoko Effect strikes again.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Today, we have
to start with a trigger warning. UM, today's episode is
going to be about addiction and substance abuse and how

(00:27):
they pertained to romantic relationships. So if that is a
issue that is tough for you, just know that is
what today's episode is all about. You may have seen
that musician Mac Miller real name Malcolm McCormick died last
week at the age of September seven of cardiac arrest
related to a suspected drug overdose. UM. I was a

(00:49):
pretty casual fan of Mac Miller's music. When he died,
I sort of was a bit sad because I was
one of those people that it took him dying for
me to go I can revisit some of his earlier
work and say, oh wow, he actually, um was a
really talented musician, and I wish I had listened to
more of this stuff. It was also pretty sad that
there was this really interesting, fascinating, glowing profile of him

(01:14):
in Vulture magazine that came out, like, I think, just
two days before he died, and in that piece, it
really illustrates what an interesting kind of guy he was. Um,
he sort of had this this kind of fun, loving
quality to him that made him seem like a genuinely
interesting person. When he died, all of these different musicians
were talking about all of these good memories that they

(01:37):
shared with him, and he just seemed like someone who
was genuinely very beloved. Um. One of my favorite vines
is him singing TLCS no scrubs. Um. I mean, he
just seemed like a like a really a really good guy.
And I think he's one of those musicians. And it
seems like he died before he really got a chance

(01:59):
to sort of show the world what he could do
right like he was, he was, he was pretty young.
He was in his twenties um, which of course is
very tragic, But he also didn't really seem to have
his one breakout album. He seemed like he was poised
for that moment where he was going to become a
megastar and sort of died right before it happened. Yeah,
I didn't know much about him, um, because I kind

(02:24):
of somehow miss a lot of Really I miss a
lot in this pop culture world, Bridget and I depend
a lot on you, and I have a group of
friends who like keep me in the know, and I
honestly had never heard of him until this happened, which
makes me really sad. And it also makes me really
sad that when you just see this public persona of

(02:48):
people and you don't see I don't know. It's just
strange when you hear how beloved someone is or how
much fun they have, and then you see the success
and to have something like this happen, it feels really jarring,
and it just makes you kind of reconsider maybe people
that you in your life or that you whose entertainment

(03:10):
you consume and enjoy. It's pretty sobering. It is sobering.
I also think it reminds us that these are real people.
Um it's really really easy to forget that, you know,
the people whose content you enjoy their humans just like us,
and it's I think it can be jarring to be

(03:31):
confronted with who they actually are and what they're actually
dealing with and what you know, who they are inside
versus the music that they make and all of that.
And again, I was really surprised to see how many.
I wasn't the biggest Mac Miller fan, but I was
surprised to see how many of the musicians and I
really love like Flying Lotus and Thundercat were like no, no,
we were very close. He was the best, Like he

(03:52):
seemed like someone who had far reaching um connections in
the music industry, and I think that's what makes the
story so sad. Mac Miller was someone who was very
open in both his interviews and in his music about
his struggles with mental issues and addiction. In a complex
interview in Miller admitted to using Lean, which is sort
of that that coding laced um cough syrup that that

(04:16):
musician sometimes abused um, and he said that he used
it to deal with depression. He explained that criticism from
an album that he had that was a little bit
of a flop in led him to rely on this
very addictive drug. In this article, he said, I love Lean,
It's great. I was not happy and I was on
Lean very heavy during the tour. I was so left
up all the time. It was bad. My friends couldn't

(04:38):
even look at me the same. I was lost. In May,
the rapper released his tenth solo mixtape, Faces, which by
the way, is really great. On it, he discussed his
battle with depression, explaining how quote a drug habit like
Philip Hoffman will probably put me in a coffin, which
is a reference to the actor of Philip Seymour Hoffman,
who I really loved, who also died a drug related death. Um.

(05:00):
Mac miller also admitted to having suicidal thoughts before releasing
this album, on which he claimed, quote every single song
is about coke in drugs. He said that was the
plan with Grand Finale, the closing song on Faces, It
was supposed to be the last song I made on Earth,
But in that interview he said, I don't feel that
way anymore. So if you don't know mac Miller, you
probably know him through his ex girlfriend, Ariana Grande. Uh.

(05:22):
They dated for a while, and Ariana was very very
open that their relationship ended because of his issues with
mental health and drug abuse. UM. And I think what
really kind of shocks me about that is that they're
very young, but their relationships seemed to be very amicable,
Like even when they broke up, she was, you know, like, oh,

(05:43):
I I wish him the best, and I love him.
He's one of my best friends, and I hope he
gets better. I'm so excited to see what he does
in his life. Um, she wrote on Instagram. This is
one of my best friends in the world and one
of my favorite people on the planet. I respect to
adore him endlessly and I'm grateful to have him in
my life in any form at all times from us
of how our relationship changes or what the universe holds
for each of us. And you know, I was not

(06:05):
having breakups and where this mature what happens in my twenties,
you know, I just I found there. I found this
to be a very for young celebrities. I found this
to be kind of surprisingly transparent and mature. Oh, I agree.
When I was fifteen, I broke up with this dude
in Barnes and Noble because he didn't like tigers enough.

(06:26):
That was it? A pretty good reason I would break
up with someone over that tigers are awesome? He I, yeah,
I don't think he appreciated fully how awesome tigers were.
And that was it. That was the last room. Um.
When I found out about mac Miller's death, I was

(06:47):
with a group of friends, like five friends, and we
were all in the same space, and they knew his
music and they knew he was and they were fans,
and so when they said his name, Like, I didn't.
I wasn't sure who it was, but from context clues
I could ascertain it was a musician. And they were,
you know, silently scrolling their phones and sad, and one

(07:08):
of my friends like shouted out, don't bring Ariana Grande
and it is yes, And I didn't. I didn't know
they were dating. Um, which is really funny because my
phone thinks I'm obsessed with ari Ariana Grande. It gives
me updates about her and Pete Davidson all the time.
I don't know why, but um, yes, they were very

(07:31):
angry at how how quickly this turned into a blame
game with Ariana Grande. Absolutely. I sort of couldn't imagine
anything worse. Ariana Grande, she went through it. She survived
a terror attack in the UK. Um she pretty recently,

(07:53):
She's gone through kind of a lot. Seeing how eager
people were to bring up her name in his death,
was really surprised, perguess I shouldn't be surprised, it was.
It was disappointing, I'll put it that way. And you know,
their relationship seemed to be rocky. You know, when you're
in a relationship with someone that has these kinds of issues.
Of course, it's going to be you know, rocky, but

(08:15):
mac Miller's friends, his friend Shane Powers, praised Ariana Grande's
role in aiding his struggle with addiction on an episode
of the podcast The Shane Show. He said, there was
no one more ready to go to the wall with
for him when it came to being sober, and she
was an unbelievably stabilizing force in his life. She was
deeply helpful and effective in keeping Max sober and helping
him get sober. And she was all about him being

(08:36):
healthy period in this area of his life. And he
went on to say that she, you know, even after
the fact of them breaking up, was always checking in
on him and making sure that he was okay. And
I guess that's what I'm saying, is that him being sober,
she was a big part of him getting sober. But
you wouldn't have known Matt from the headlines, Like the
headlines that I saw after his death basically blamed her

(09:00):
a king up with him for him his spiral into
addiction issues. And after they broke up, Mac Miller, you know,
he was arrested for a d y. He had a
hit and run who trashed his car while drunk. He
clearly seemed to be going through some kind of issue,
but that is not Ariana Grande's fault. Like how eager
people at major publications were to link his behavior to her, like, oh,

(09:24):
she shouldn't have broke up with him then, like see
what happens when you written up girl breaks up with you,
you know, if only she had stayed with them. I
found that to be not only just just just unhelpful
and hurtful, but also it completely is not how addiction works.
Someone else cannot make someone who is an addict to
get sober. I've learned that the hard way. If someone
is struggling with addiction, they only they can make themselves

(09:46):
get better. Yeah, you, it's just it's it's sad and
it's difficult. And just seeing how how people blamed her
king up with them for his death is it's really disheartening. Yeah,

(10:06):
and again we forget that Ariana Grande as a person,
she's she's not just a celebrity. And I think I
think this really does reveal um part of the toxicity
of sort of We talked about it a lot on
the show, part of the toxicity that can stem from
fan culture where you feel so like mac Miller's fans
probably felt so into him that when he died, she

(10:28):
you know, and they had to be like, oh, you know,
it's her fault. After they broke up, she got into
a relationship where she became engaged to s n l's
Pete Davidson and they had They went on to have
a very kind of publicly cute see lovey dovey relationship.
But again, that doesn't have anything to do with with
what happened with mac Miller. On Twitter, after mac Miller

(10:50):
crashed his car, one Twitter user wrote, mac Miller totaling
his g wagon and getting a d u I after
Ariana Grande dumped him for another dude after he poured
his heart out on a ten song album to her
called The Divine Feminine is just the most heartbreaking thing
that has ever happened in Hollywood. Arianta Grande was not
here for that, she replied. You know, she took to
the She took to the notes app, which is when

(11:12):
you know like a celebrity is really not having it
is when they reply on the notes app. He writes,
how absurd that you minimize female self respect and self
worth by saying someone should stay in a toxic relationship
because he wrote an album about them, which, by the way,
isn't even the case. Justinderella is about me. I am
not a babysitter or a mother, and no woman should
feel they need to be. I have cared for him

(11:33):
and tried to support his sobriety and prayed for his
balance for years and always will, of course, but shaming
blaming women for a man's inability to keep together is
a very major problem. Let's please stop doing that. Of course,
I didn't share about how scary or our heart it
was when it was happening, but it was. I will
continue to pray from the bottom of my heart that
he figures it all out, and that any other woman

(11:54):
in this position does as well. And she's exactly, exactly,
exactly right. I applaud her for standing up and saying
it's because she clearly loves mac Miller. It's clearly hard
for her to watch him go through this, But it
is not her responsibility to stay manicold to him for
the rest of her life to keep him sober, it says,

(12:14):
not her job. She's not a she's not a sober
living coach. He's not his mother, and to put this
on her to say, oh, well, he made an album
about you. That kind of thinking just really minimizes a
woman's agency. So because because a man writes an album
about you, you're obligated to stay with him forever. Yeah,
it's just another example of kind of like a bigger
example of um, well I bought you dinner, so you

(12:38):
owe me sex. It's like the same thing that it's
it's entitlement saying well, I I did this incredibly kind
thing for you, so you owe me this. And she doesn't.
She doesn't. You know. Robin Thick tried that same thing
with Paul Patton after they got divorced. He made a
whole album that was basically Paula, come back to me,
and you know what, she didn't go back then, and

(13:00):
she went on with her life as she should. Yes,
absolutely absolutely, So let's talk more about the situation after
a quick break, and we're back. As we said earlier

(13:20):
in the episode, several news outlets kind of could not
wait to bring up Ariana Grande when discussing what happened
with mac Miller. I saw articles that were like Ariana
Grande x Comma Rapper Mac Miller Comma dead from apparent
drug overdose, and you know when she when he died,
her name immediately almost almost at the same time started

(13:41):
trending on Twitter. And so it just goes to show
how quick people are too attach. I'm not even dating anymore,
but to attach a woman to a man's behavior when
something like this happens. It's like I was listening to
the podcast Keep It, which if you don't listen to
Keep It, it's really good, you should. But we were saying,
you know, it's a woman's responsibility to have a conscious

(14:03):
for men, because if women don't have conscious is no
one will have a conscience. It's like it's like just
assumed that, oh, if something happens with a man, it's
going to be a woman who you know, who is
at fault or to blame in some capacity. Yeah, and
that kind of reminds me of like if successes and

(14:25):
then men can take take responsibility for that, but failures, um,
then it's the woman, well, the woman that should have
been behind like supporting. And it reminds me of our
poor performing males video game. Yeah, hashtag pre performing males.
It's true. And again, part of it I think is

(14:48):
is a I can sort of forgive a nineteen year
old Mac Miller fan for this because you're young, and
lord knows, I had, you know, dumb misconceptions when I
was young. But I really, when I look at media,
I want to say, what are you do doing? Adults
who work at media companies should know better. The TMZ
article following his death basically blamed their breakup for his
spiral into addiction. They even included a line that they

(15:09):
edited he quote had trouble recently with substance abuse in
the wake of his breakup with Ariana Grande And that's so,
so gross, and I would expect adults who run media
companies to know better. After his death, Arianna actually had
to disable the comments on her Instagram because her Instagram
and Twitter were flooded with gross sexist comments like this

(15:32):
is your fault, you flag you cheated on him with
Pete Davidson. You know, I hope you're happy. And the
saddest thing, like she posted this really really sad Instagram
picture of him where she had to have the comments disabled,
and it just made me so sad. You know, this
is someone that she clearly loved. When they split, they
had a very amicable split where and she kept saying,

(15:53):
because he's my best friend, I love him, I love him,
you know, I hope he gets better. I wanted to
get better and praying for him to get better, and
not even being able to grieve in peace because people
are too busy blotting her social media with really disgusting
comment about how she's a whore who cheated on him. Yeah,
that's awful. That's to deal with that on top of

(16:14):
on top of your grief, I can't imagine. And to
have people I've always found people are kind of judgmental
about how you grieve and like how you perform grief.
And to have so many people on that largest scale
judging you for what you're doing or not doing, or

(16:36):
what is your fault, what's not your fault is that's awful.
It is awful. And again, this is someone who is young,
This is someone who would survive. I keep keep going
back to this, but who survived a very traumatic event
not that long ago, you know, a mass shooting at
one of her concerts while she was on stage. Like,

(16:56):
I don't know, I just I feel like we expect
celebrit ease to be these larger than life figures and
we forget that they're human, and nothings would have illustrates
that more than when they're grieving. I think that you're
exactly right, and Ariana Grande is not the first celebrity
to be treated this way at all. Rolling Stone calls
it the Yoko effect. Quote. Fan claims such as the

(17:19):
stem from the most dangerous branch of pop cultures, continuous
fascination with the so called Yoko effect, and it's desire
to connect female partners to actions they may not comprehend.
These claims and conspiracies, often solely perpetrated by the most
toxically masculine factions of fandoms, sometimes never disappear. Even Courtney

(17:39):
Love is still fielding social media comments and blog conspiracy
theories that she not only was the reason Kurt Cobain
became addicted to heroine she was not, but also that
she had actually murdered him and faked his suicide also untrue.
Cobain died two decades before these social media platforms even existed.
Yet the fact that Love's comments can still attract a

(18:01):
rogue claim like this speaks volumes the way society continues
to expect women to be caretakers for the men in
their lives and reacts with fury when they apparently cannot
absorb their partner's pain. It's so upsetting. The Courtney Love thing,
I think is an especially upsetting thing, and when I
have a lot of personal connection to is someone who

(18:21):
is a big fan of them. Both Courtney Love and
Francis Bean Cobain actually had to go to court with
one of these conspiracy theorists. In a Seattle court ruled
that pictures from the scene of Kurt Cobain's death would
remain sealed from the public. Conspiracy theorist Richard Lee sued
the city over the release of the images. Court documents

(18:42):
states that the images depict quote Kurt's body as it
lay in the family residents after he was shot in
the head. Cobain's next of kind and previously testified in
the case. In April, Seen Love gave a statement accusingly
of trying to exploit Cobain's death, which he claims to
have been investigating for more than twenty three years. Love
said that he stopped and harassed her, her family, and
her friends for many, many many years. On more than

(19:03):
one particular occasion. Mr Lee even filmed himself chasing a
limo for several miles that he thought she was a
passenger in Mr Lee's actions make me fear for my safety,
she said. Um, yes, Courtney love is probably one of
my biggest problematic faiths. Um, I'm a pretty big fan.
I was also a big fan of Nirvana, And I

(19:24):
remember I think I was in sixth grade when Kurt
Cobain died, and I definitely I was eleven or twelve,
so I was very young. But I definitely did blame
her for his death. Like I was that person who
was like, oh, Kurt, Courtney killed Kurt, and Kurt would
still be alive of Courtney if Courtney hadn't gotten involved

(19:45):
with him. And this was because I was young, you know,
I didn't I didn't have any understanding. What was going on.
The narrative at the time with with super fans of
Nirvanna and Kurt Cobain was that Kurt Cobain was this
sort of delicate genius who was sort of too pure
for this world, and Courtney was this awful person who

(20:06):
was really troubled and sort of got him into all
this all these bad situations, and that I think that
myth persists today, and it's very gendered. Never mind the
fact that both Kurt and Courtney were you know, had
issues with addiction. They're both were living very similar lifestyles,
and so it's interesting that one of them gets to
be this you know, fallen angel even in death, and

(20:29):
the other is just sort of stuck to pick up
the pieces. And when I got it wasn't until I
got older than I realized. Wait a minute, Kurt Cobain
after his suicide, his wife, now a widow, had to
raise their kid alone and had to do it while
a lot of people were publicly and loudly speculating that
she murdered him. And that's really horrible, and you know,

(20:53):
we like it was one of those is one of
those things that I really it kind of forced me
to grow up because it's a very image her attitude.
That's like, oh, Courtney is so awful, and even though
she was doing the same things as she's terrible and
he's awesome, And you know, that's such an imature attitude.
It wasn' until I got older than I saw actually

(21:14):
she is a grieving widow who now has to raise
a child alone, and it's a bad situation. And people
who discount that are like living in a fantasy world.
They're not living in reality. It goes back to seeing
celebrities as people, as something more than this one dimensional thing.
Really this image that you you consume and then you

(21:36):
put all of your own stuff onto. I was I
liked Nirvana when I was younger, Um a lot too,
but I didn't know much about their personal lives because
I didn't have like TV that the first time I
heard of Courtney Love, it was with the implication that
she had killed him. That was like my first exposure

(21:58):
to her. There's an entire documentary about that. The premises
is that he that she had him murdered for money,
you know, like, like it's such a common thing. I
have to tell a quick story. I have a lot
of Courtney Love personal anecdotes. I will try to pare
it down because it will be a long podcast. But
the one that is most relevant is that I was

(22:20):
once at a bar and basically were like play cole
and the bartender was like, no, Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain,
So my friends have a drink in his space. Good
for your friends, Yeah, shout out to Anne and wasn't
having it um No, but I think you're right. I
think it's about an inability to see celebrities as real people,

(22:45):
and they're just this thing that we consume and we
don't see their pain, we don't see their trauma, we
don't see their you know. And also I think it's
about addiction. It doesn't surprise me that all the people
that we're talking about today dealt with things like addiction
and depression. You know, we don't live in a country
where we're having thoughtful conversations about addiction, and it is

(23:07):
a problem. And I think that because of that, we're
gonna get we're getting nowhere on the issue. You know.
I think I'm happy to see that we're having a
more nuanced conversation about the opioid crisis. But frankly, the
only reason that we're doing that is because it's now
impacting White America, and that I think that's the only
reason why we're finally saying, hey, this is a problem.

(23:28):
We need to figure out how we're going to deal
with this because it's becoming a big issue. I'm happy
that we've that we've gotten there, but I have to
be clear on why I think it is. I think
that when opioids were impacting communities of color for so
long we just did nothing, and it was just, you know,
we were writing off entire generations of black and brown
folks and thinking nothing of it. And even with that
being the case, I'm still so happy that we're getting

(23:49):
to a point where we're saying, hey, we need a
more compassionate solution other than just lacking people up and
letting them die. You know. Yes, Um, I think we've
fundamentally misunderstand it addiction probably, I mean still do, but
for a long time. Um, And I'm hoping that we're
moving away from that and that we can start to

(24:12):
change people's perceptions around it, because I just think there
there's so much that we get wrong about addiction. And
of course, unfortunately, of course there we have another example
of Elliott Smith, where it's similar, Um, fans or people
believe that his suicide was not actually a suicide, but

(24:34):
that he was murdered by his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, following
an argument. In a statement she gave to MTV, she said,
although she hasn't been charged with a crimer questioned recently
by police, she feels like a suspect in the court
of public opinion quote. Up until now, I've chosen to
remain silent because I want to maintain some sense of

(24:54):
privacy for Elliott and his family and myself and this
really difficult time, and I want people to know that
I'm not keeping quiet because I have anything to hide.
If I was a suspect, I would have heard from
the investigators for one thing. Another is that his sister
and his parents and everyone close to him knows the truth,
so I'm not worried about it. Yeah, I loved Elliot

(25:15):
Smith and still do. Um that one was interesting to
me because Elliot Smith's entire uvra is about struggling with depression.
So this idea, you know, people conspiracy theorists are like, oh,
he spelled his name wrong in the suicide letter, and
they have all of these reasons why they believe he
couldn't have done it. And I also think that that
plays into this idea that we have around people who

(25:37):
are struggling, is that like, he couldn't have done it,
he wouldn't have done this. There has to be some
other reason. It has to be that he was murdered,
or it was the government, or this or that. And
I think sometimes we just don't want to accept that
someone could do this because it's so upsetting, but you know,
people do. People do, and I think that we I understand,

(26:00):
and the rush to say so and so would never
take the throw in life. They couldn't have done it again.
It just it just highlights me that we're not having
the right conversation when it comes to addiction and substance
abuse and mental health because you don't know what people
are dealing with. And I think that Elliott Smith's situation
really highlighted people's willingness to not confront that someone is struggling,

(26:25):
like his entire musical career is basically about his struggles.
I was introduced to Elliott Smith via The Royal Tin
and Bombs when a song of his is used when
one of the characters is trying to kill himself. Yeah,
needle in the hay, right, I mean he wasn't. I
don't think it should come as a massive surprise that

(26:46):
he would make that choice, as horrible as it is.
You know, I think that people are willing to confront
that and who are you know say that there must
be some other explanation. Are sort of and not understanding
that this person that you in whose music you enjoyed
is a flawed human being and that's okay. Yeah, um,

(27:10):
we we have a little bit more for you, but
we're going to pause for one more quick break for
word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor.

(27:31):
So this is an issue that's that's personal for me.
I have been in relationships with people who are struggling
with both addiction issues, substance abuse issues, and kind of
overall mental health issues. And in the conversations that people
were having around Ariana Grande, I just really really identified
with what they said about her and how she probably felt.

(27:53):
I think it happens for people of all genders, right.
I think that when you are in a relationship or
a friendship or a family relationship with someone who was struggling,
there is it can be any gender who has sort
of unfairly given this burden of carrying the weight of
that person's recovery, and that's not fair. So I don't
I don't think it's necessarily a gender issue, but I

(28:13):
do think that as women, we are more likely to
be unfairly saddled with, you know, someone else's overall well being.
And I felt that very acutely in these relationships, you know,
I would have friends that would say things like, oh, well,
you know, aren't you afraid if you leave them that
they'll that they'll spiral out of control, or it's so

(28:35):
it's so lucky they have you to keep them on track.
I mean, it really made me feel like my entire
role in our relationship was to help them get sober
or help them get better. That I was only in
this relationship to be, you know, a cheerleader for that
person's recovery. And of course, when you're with someone who
has who has issues, you want them to get better.

(28:55):
But unless you've been in a situation, it's very hard
to describe. You basically kind of lose part of your
identity after a while, or at least I did, where
my our entire relationship functioned as a structure to help
the other person get better, and that like the only
conversations that we had were about them getting better and recovery,
and that like we weren't the kind of things, the

(29:16):
kind of reasons that you get into a romantic relationship for,
you know, feeling comfort and feeling happy and feeling stable
and feeling loved and feeling you know, safe, all of that,
all of that was gone. The only thing that the
only reason that our relationship function was to help them
get better, and any other thing that you might have
wanted was completely secondary to that first thing. And I

(29:40):
think that it's really admirable when someone supports their partner
through something tough. But if if that is, you know,
not something that you can do, and if you are
losing yourself of the process, and if you are not happy,
and if you are being unfairly burdened, and if you're
like just if it's if it's just not something you
can do with at a certain point you're like, listen,
I'm not professional. I can do I can only do

(30:02):
so much as your partner. It's okay to say I
love you, but this is my boundary. And I want
to see you get better, and I hope that you
get better, and I'm praying for you, but I can't
go on like this, like I can't manacle myself to
your struggles anymore. Yeah, it's a lot of work, and
it sucks because you do feel At least when I've

(30:24):
been in these situations, I felt um a pressure to
stay and almost like I was failing or I wasn't
doing enough. Um, but yeah, you're not a professional, and
relationship shouldn't be one, at least in my opinion, it
shouldn't be one of permanently caretaking. Like if that's what
the relationship is, if that's what it becomes, then that

(30:50):
is a lot to ask of one person, and it
is for your own health. It is pretty essential that
you all that boundary and that you are able to
say I can't be this for you, like we have
to find another solution or this isn't gonna work exactly.

(31:13):
And I think that is what this situation shows us
is that you know, Ariana Grande is not a mental
health professional. She's got a drug counselor she couldn't Nothing
that she could do was going to help mac Miller
get better. You know, addiction is an illness, Like you
can't get someone sober for them. They have to get

(31:34):
themselves ober. You can support them, you can do an intervention,
you can do all of these things that might help,
but at the end of the day, they have to
get somewhere for them. They can't get clean for you. Yeah,
we need to shift the conversation so that we're talking
about addiction and um, no one is responsible for the

(31:56):
behavior of someone else, and it isn't anyone's job to
fix anyone else's problems. So we need to we need
to have a paradigm shift around this whole thing exactly.
UM Promises Treatment Center had this page on their website
called three things you can and can't do to help
an addicted loved one. They make it very clear if
your loved one has an addiction, you can't make them

(32:17):
get better. You can stage their invention and you may
be successful, but you cannot force someone with a substance
of these problem to quit. Even in states that allow
involuntary treatment, you can't make someone gets ober. You also
can't do the work of recovery for them. Even if
a loved one goes to drug rehab, you can't do
the work of recovery for them, and you can't prevent
our relapse. And lastly, you can't accept behavior that violates

(32:39):
your boundaries. To avoid enabling loved ones, you have to
set boundaries. And once you've laid out your boundaries, allowing
them to be violated destroys your credibility and perpetuates your
loved ones addiction. And that's really what I have found.
I had to learn it the hard way, where when
you know someone I was close to continue to relapse,

(33:00):
I would I would feel like, oh God, I have
messed up, Like I let them down to the point
where we were no longer assigning agency to the person.
It was. It was just me and you know, friends
and family, but we all were doing this dance where
that person was absolved of all of their actions and
it just fell on all of us when they slipped up.

(33:22):
And of course if you are struggling with addiction, you
might slip up, even if even after you get sober. Um,
it just wasn't a healthy situation. And understanding that boundary
it was really important. And I'm glad that Ariana Grande,
even at such a young age, established that boundary because
she deserves to be happy. You know, you don't deserve
to have your entire life become about taking care of

(33:42):
somebody else is not yourself. Yeah, Um, I feel like
Ariana Grande, keep on keep on rocking. If you ever
want to be on the show, you know you know
where to find us. If this is something that you're
dealing with. Listeners, Um, we do have a number that

(34:02):
you can call. It's s A. M. H. S a
S National Helpline and the number is one eight hundred
six six to help, and help is four three five seven,
So that's one six six to four three five seven. Yeah.
So please, if you're if this sounds like you, if
you're struggling and you're trying to support somebody who needs

(34:23):
serious help, kudos. Remember that you're doing something admirable, but
there is only so much you can do, and be
gentle with yourself. And that was something else that I
found is that when someone when I was a someone
who was struggling, a lot of people were very quick
to be like, oh, how how are you? How is he?
How is he? And I don't I don't think I
got that. I don't think anyone ever talked to me

(34:45):
and said you're doing good, like how are you doing?
It was always how are they doing? Like? It was
always just so focused on the other person, and to
the point where I felt like my needs were just
like nothing. And so I'm here to tell you, if
you are in a position where you are providing this
kind of support for somebody, your needs are important. Don't
ignore them. Bridgets pretty wise listeners. I would heed her words. Okay,

(35:10):
so this is the end of this this episode, but
we still have listener. Maile Kaylor wrote, I've thought about
writing in after several semi recent episodes, but the episode
on women's pleasure pushed me over the edge because I
wrote an essay on that topic for reproductive health class
I took last fall. Sexual health and pleasure are probably

(35:33):
the feminist issues that I am most passionate about. I
do sexual health research, and I am starting a PhD
program this year so I can keep doing sexual health
research forever. It's unfair that society at large only discusses
the negatives of sexual activity. For young females, STI is pregnancy,
that your first time is supposed to hurt, that if
you have sex too soon, too much, you're a slat,

(35:55):
on and on and on and on. But for young
males it's the complete opposite. You need to have sex
a lot of it to be masculine. Having sex is fun,
your pleasure matters, Masturbation is normal and okay, on and
on and on and on. This just leads to pretty
much everyone having unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex, and
lots of women having unfun, unhealthy, and unsafe sexual experiences.

(36:16):
Even further, these unhealthy ideas are forced fed to us
for so long that they become this insidious thing lurking
in our subconscious, so that even if we get woke
about the gender pleasure disparity, they can still negatively impact
our sexual experiences. Multiple times I've hooked up with a
new guy, I found myself settling for a fun but
unsatisfying experience because I'm uncomfortable asking for what I want

(36:38):
and or telling the guy that I didn't orgasm and
in response to something that, if I remember correctly, bridgets
in the episode, I totally agree that mutual orgasm shouldn't
be the singular ultimate goal of having sex. As long
as it's between consenting adults, sex can be whatever people
wanted to be. Unfortunately, there's a lot more women out
there than men wanting an orgasm and not getting one,
which really sucks. I guess I'll end my rent there

(37:01):
and try to coherently sum up my thoughts into something
resembling a thesis. There's a long way to go before
we'll reach true gender parity, but I firmly believe that
once women everywhere can appreciate and take charge of their
own sexuality and pleasure, we will be one huge step closer,
agreed Kayla and Uum. She attached her essay and it

(37:22):
was great and I loved it. I love that you're
devoting like your PhD to this is so fantastic. Yeah, kudos,
thank you for writing in. Julie writes, I have been
going through the archive and about a year ago, I
listened to the episode Surfer Girls. I was inspired by
this episode to use surfing as another way to dismantle

(37:43):
the patriarchy by entering into another arena where it often
feels like a boys club. I did not really know
how to swim, but this spring I signed up for
an all women's surfing camp and I spent two months
learning how to swim and becoming proficient at it. I
am happy to report that I've spent the last two
months surfing in Portugal and Hawaii, feelings somewhat comfortable in
the water and in the lineup. When asked at surf

(38:04):
camp why I came, I explained that I listened to
a podcast about how surfing was originally a support of equality,
and I am trying to contribute to the movement to
bring it back to that place. Every time a freezing
wave Portugal is not that warm, but hit me in
the face and pushed me back to the shore. I
would shout you patriarchy and dive back in, Julie, this
makes me so happy. This is speaking to my soul. Um.

(38:26):
I also did a surf camp. It was amazing. I
wasn't the best at it, and I'm I like to swim,
but I'm not the strongest swimmer, and it does I
mean learning about the history of surfing. It was a
support of equality and if you are all interested in surving,
you should do it it. I will say it is
a frustrating sport. And then at least for me, I
spent hours and hours and hours surfing to have five

(38:50):
glorious minutes standing up on the board, and when I
finally did it, it was beautiful and wonderful. But it
is so fun and it's very freeing. And I'm so glad,
Julie that you wrote in. I hope I see you
out on the beach sometime, and I hope that we
can the patriarchy via surfing together. I love it. I
love it. Thanks to both of them for writing in.

(39:10):
If you would like to write to as you can,
our email is mom Stuff at Housta works dot com,
and you can find us on the social media is
or on Instagram Stuff I've Never Told You, and on
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And thanks as always for
our producer Andrew Howard