Two Sides of the Same Fire

Over the next three months, Antedote is hosting a written dialogue between two people who sit on different sides of the same fire. I’m writing as a treatment professional in mental health and substance use, as well as a father and a son; shaped by years inside recovery spaces. Lisa Katona Smith, M.Ed., a TEDx […]

Individuation in an Age Without Villages

Something troubling is happening to young men today. Many remain tethered to their parents well into adulthood, not only financially but emotionally. And the tether isn’t soft. It is tight, conflicted, and often angry. We see young men caught in a paradox: dependent on their families, yet resentful of the very dependence that sustains them. […]

Failure to Launch, Part III: The Age of Uncertainty

Let’s start with a jarring truth: young adults—not teens—are currently the most psychologically distressed age group in America. According to a Harvard Graduate School of Education survey, young people between the ages of 18 and 25 report the highest rates of anxiety and depression across the population. Thirty-six percent of them experience significant anxiety. Twenty-nine […]

Failure to Launch, Part II: The Inheritance of Avoidance

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Our young adults are stunted—arrested in their development—not because they lack potential, but because the people raising them often lack the psychological and emotional range to guide them through the friction of becoming. Put simply: the kids are stunted because the parents are. There’s an old dog training saying: “If the […]

Failure To Launch Coaching at Antedote

Travis gets home late in his parents’ range rover puffing the roach of a blunt. He flicks it out the window where it sizzles on the street in a puddle of run off from the midnight sprinkler. He parks in the garage then sneaks up stairs. Why go quietly? Everyone in the family knows the […]