Sloan Krosley on Grieving a Friend | Rex Chapman Talks Bouncing Back from Addiction

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My guest tonight is the best selling author whose new book is called Grief Is for People. Please welcome, Sloan Crosley.

All Right, how you feeling?

I feel pretty great. How do you feel?

I feel great. I'm excited to talk with you. This book is beautiful and wonderful. You write before this book a lot of essays involving humor. This is a memoir involving loss and grief with a lot of humor in it.

I laugh.

But how do you strike that balance between grief and laughing.

I know, I believe I'm here talking about the sad book.

No, I think that the sort of topography of grief that everyone experiences. The people you miss, you miss because they're so specific. And in this case, the person I miss was very dark and very funny, And so you have both my cylinder of humor going and his going at the same time.

You mentioned Russell, But really, when you start this book, it's about being burglarized.

I know, so many bad things.

So many bad things happen. Again, there's a lot of laughing. There is a lot of laughing for real, for real, I mean. But one of the most interesting parts of the book is how it turns, and tell me a little bit about how you approach that from being robbed to then this next bad thing that happened.

Yeah, so basically, in June June twenty seventh of twenty nineteen, I left my apartment for one hour to get a hand X ray.

So I took all my rings off, right, I mean, what are you going to do?

And came home to find all my jewelry gone, burgerized and not particularly flashy, just gone.

And then a month.

Later, my dearest friend unfortunately died by suicide. So that first loss obviously became the sort of more minor precursor to the second loss. But I, as a human being, I am deeply unlucky, but as a in this case, I am.

But as a.

Writer of this book, I knew this is a suspenseful story about grief, and it's a funny story about grief, and I don't think you get a lot of those.

Yeah, And it's easy to grieve at first for these items, yeah right, I mean, if you have sucked, it sucks. I mean it's you know, we had some winter coats stolen, and I'm almost embarrassed.

Winter coats I am sorry exactly exactly.

It is humorous in a way, but also you feel violated, you feel mad, and then as soon as anything real happens, you go that's the important thing.

Yes, well, it's also the only commonality that these two losses have is the sudden nature of them. It just felt like a real demarcation of before and after, which you don't always get with grief.

Tell me about Russell.

You tell a lot of in the book, but a national television please share Russell.

Anyone would about their friend. So I used to work in book publishing. He hired me. I worked for him for ten years. He was a wildly generous, funny, brilliant, brilliant publicist and deeply inappropriate. I'm really hesitant to repeat some of the lines in the book, but you know, he fits sort of less and less I think in a world that he had helped built in a way.

Right, right, You know, the world has changed, the world has changed.

But he was just a just a wonderful, well read human being who really was almost like, you know, he's my partner in crime. Yeah, I felt like that people have that with work relationships and friends.

I love when you talk about some of his quote unquote offensive whatever they were, remarks, actions. I mean he sent you an email once as your cats or something that a whole account, the whole account.

Yeah, I would say, like, Mommy, why are you wearing the same thing you wore yesterday?

Mommy won and you come home last night? Right, this is my boss.

Just so that's so awesome.

I mean also like my dear, wonderful friend.

Yeah. And what HR doesn't get is won't kill them? Right, Well, it's it's when someone is gone.

It's these hilarious sometimes they cross the line moments that we think about and we laugh about.

Yes, and now, having said that, I'm not trying to be permissive over some of the behavior that he exhibited it. But also it didn't come those things that we're talking about, didn't. They weren't attached to, you know, sort of abuses of power or lording sex over people or anything like that.

He fought for everyone's raises.

You know, you talk about lack of self help books or grieving groups for loss of a friend.

Yes, why is that?

Well, I would say, it's not like anyone was trying to take my grief away from me.

You know. Nobody was like, what, you don't get to grieve too bad?

Just a friend, get over to.

Sit in the corner.

No, but it just felt like the structure of life, of the self help books, of the internet is very much loss of a spouse, loss of a child, God forbid, you know, loss of a parent. And so, in addition to being so confused and hurt by his death, I had this sort of extra patina of thinking, do I ever write to this how much I'm trying.

To get purchase? How much of it is mine?

And it turns out about two hundred pages worth is mine.

It's it can feel very serious, but there's humor. And are you looking for the humor?

Or?

Are you a person who writes your truth? The world your and humor?

Is there this whole thing?

Yeah?

Yeah, that no, I mean it is the truth is a ziety.

I'm asking not for them because I'm curious, because it's like, do you try to be funny?

Yeah?

Not for them? Do you try to be funny in this serious situation.

No, no, I don't.

I think that what I have and what I imagine you have as well, in replace of poetry, maybe our analogies and observations and sort of this abject exasperation at the world. And that's how I see and describe the world. So the humor, you know, in my more traditional humor essays, there's a better sort of alignment I suppose between the topic and how I'm telling the story. With a green book, I think it hopefully gives the book more texture and or will offend massive amounts of people.

No, well, it's not as an excellent read.

Why are why are we afraid to say grief? Why are we afraid to talk about it? I find talking about death, especially in North American culture.

It's I keep it down. Why tell me the answer to this existential question?

Oh, that that's why you're doing specifically.

But you have a good input on you have a good.

Thought on how to speak to people who are.

Grieving or so, I why sorry? On why it is that we talk about it so little? Why is there a little bit of an air right now? Mission Because there's grief and there's states.

Well, especially the kind of the kind of death this is is very scary. When we say, we don't necessarily say your cancer a cancer. Would you say a suicide or your suicide his suicide.

It's like we give it.

It's like hot coal, and we give it back to the dead and as fast as you possibly can.

And I think because we're frightened for ourselves, as we well should be.

But I think the only way around that is to discuss it more and to talk about it and to be asked questions about it. You know, in the wake of Russell's death, people would often say did you know which I personally don't have the best reaction to you, because I don't know if it's for me or for him.

But I want to talk about what should you say?

Well, I mean, first of all, you should say whatever the hell you want to say, as long as it's I'm not trying to police people's reaction to grief, as long as it's authentic and it's sincere and not just sort of rubber necking it a horror story and using your grief for this. I think you should just go with declarative statements you did in the way, well sort of where you said you know you said, tell me about him. I wish I knew him. It must have

That's that's beautiful.

I've heard you say part of grief is becoming on the side of the living.

Once again, explain that to me.

Well, if you've ever grieved someone, you know that. Especially right away. There's this sort of almost embarrassing thing I felt, which is I was receiving all of these wonderful condolences and I felt like I was ill equipped or did not have the shelving to accept them, because everybody had committed the sin of not being able to bring my friend back, and I just wanted to do whatever he wanted to do.

So we had a memorial service.

I turned into what I call in the book a funeral zilla, where.

I was just like, is it hard to shut down Fifth Avenue for an hour?

Maybe we should? Why are these programs not bound with ribbon? Where is the gold lead?

You know?

And I'm like, Okay, somebody needed to sort of pull me aside and say, you know, he's not going to be going to the memorial service, And honestly, at that moment, no, I did not know that, right.

So is it like changing that focus to back to present tense.

Yeah, yes, and also change into what he would want, do you know, Because again, even and especially with someone who dies by suicide, they are more than their last act of free will. And we had an entire friendship and an entire life together where I know that he wanted more from me than to just focus on him.

Yeah, it's a beautiful book.

You will laugh, you will think, I promise you, But it's also a tribute to your friend Russell.

Thank you for chatting with us very much. I appreciate it.

Grief is, Grief is for people, is available now, Sloan Crosley, everybody, and we're.

Gonna take a quick break and then we work back after this. Thank you, Thank you.

My guest Tonight is a University of Kentucky basketball legend and an NBA shooting star who has written a memoir called It's Hard for Me to Live with Me. Please welcome Rex Chatman.

A right, A right, this book, you lay it out. You are.

I know you from basketball, some people know you from social media.

You have a podcast. In this book.

You talk about your addiction, your recovery, how difficult was it for you to write that?

People have been telling me I should write a book for a long time. I never really understood why. And then Seth Davis, the guy who co wrote the author, who co wrote the book with me.

I've known Seth a long time. He called me up.

I had a level of comfort that I don't know that I had with a lot of other people, and we started the process. We started it probably I told somebody today, I think it was like two years ago. It was like four years ago, because about a year in set said, hey, man, I've got another project. That's kind of time since do you mind? I said, no, I don't like talking about this anyway, So take all the time you want. I said, sure, what is it?

And I laughed.

I said, that's the sweetest thing ever that you think I might outlive sister Jeane.

So anyway, there were.

Man, I resonated with so much of this. You're incredibly honest.

One of the things that jumped out at me was you broke the rules and oftentimes the law a lot before kind of the big bottom.

I mean, there was cheating in school. There was cheating on.

Your gunnings at the law you right, There was driving with a suspended license. There was breaking tons of curfews. I mean, I mean every single rule breaker.

But then it really.

Seemed like it all crashed in twenty fourteen when you get arrested for stealing from an apple store?

Is that right?

No?

Not you, okay? But I mean, by the way, I didn't just bring you out here. Yeah, I'm asking a question that I should get to it.

The perks of being an athlete and being a successful athlete, is that.

What allowed you to cut?

I think so just talking about it in the green room really with Larry Hughes, my as Simon and Schuster guy. My last two years of high school, I have dyslexia, and I didn't know any of that though. I just knew higher math and science and all that stuff. I would sort of check out, like how are you guys getting this?

This is not easy?

And then I'm being told it's kind of common sense, and I just kind of I quit. I'm not going to be a math teacher. Why do I need to know this? And so that was and then I'd cheat. But my last two.

Years of high school, I just left school early after.

Lunch, and because I was a good basketball player, like even in high school. Well, they can't afford to sit me, right, what kind of craziness this is?

That?

But I left and the only time I got in trouble, assistant principal called me.

In one day after school. For two years, I've.

Done this, and I thought I was in trouble, and he said, listen, Rex, I don't mind you going home after lunch, but don't be washing your car out there when the school buses are coming by.

This also shows.

How good you were at basketball well, because you know, maybe I could put up seven points, but if I skipped school, they're like, hey, cost, you're not that good.

Yeah, listen, man, you played tennis and played at a very high level.

Going and playing you know you did well.

He really did.

He went to Illinois and played tennis. And anybody that goes to college and plays a sport Division one, Division two, especially, that's all your time, That's right. I didn't really have the I didn't have that probably the capacity for the school part of it, but I was having to go every day, and I remember sitting in because it takes all your time, and for me, back in the day. We can only play basketball like three four hours a

It's such a complicated class, and uh, and I'd be sitting there and thinking, well, Reggie Miller, Clyde Drexler, Michael Jordan, Ron Harper, all these guys are are working out right now, and I'm stuck in this class, and it's my only avenue to get where they are, and I have to do.

What is being told. You know, probably cheating on my.

Tests weren't the best thing, but I only did that once.

But as I read this, it, man, you worked hard.

You know you were you know you were going I was a nice buy, Yeah, but you were getting a key to the gym at night and having you and your buddy and having a rebound for you. I mean you you might.

Have been a rule breaker. That was the only thing that I had. That was the only thing I felt like I could control. And no, I worked at it. I was obsessed by it. I told someone earlier. I used to wake up at midnight on the East Coast. Yeah, I'd fall asleep, wake up just in a sweat, thinking my guy, Gerald Madkins, somebody I know out in La my grade.

It's at the park.

Right now, it's nine o'clock. I need to do some push ups. Let me go run a mile. I'll come back and go to bed like obsessed like that. Somebody's working harder and I can't allow that.

So that same.

Level of commitment, that stubbornness, that anxiety over working, How do you does that help you in recovery or in a way?

Is it like, is it hard to go to recovery because I'm a bad mother. I can beat this.

I know I can beat I think that's probably the mindset that got me there, right. No, I for sure went through, you know, very first, when I started taking vic it in or oxy contin. I just remember one day, very vividly, thinking, oh can I cuss?

You can cuss? I think already?

Can I say say? Okay? I thought to myself, off shit, No, I thought you.

Played against Michael Jordan.

You've heard I've heard it all.

But I was thinking, all of a sudden, you know, I was taking this medicine. It was saying take it once every whatever, all this and where I'm making that call. All of a sudden one day it just flipped where that medicine was telling me when to take it, and before I know it, Oh, I was only supposed to take three today.

Now I'm the four, and now I'm the five.

And then I'd get to seven or eight and I go, this is an issue, man, and I'd cut it down to four or five and then guess what, maybe an argum or whatever and there and then that was from the time I was fifteen or sixteen year old, though, I started having some depression and whatnot and really started coping that way then because I didn't know how to cope, I would, well, I would sneak off to the racetrack all the time bet horses.

That was what my dad and I always did. I just thought it was normal.

He talks a lot about in this book, you know, not just the pills, but also a horse.

Ray.

Yeah.

I liked basketball. I love thoroughbred racing.

So and the only horses these people know are the ones in Central park Y. I like those.

Let's talk about because as you're talking, and you know, you discuss before games in high school, you always would vomit and yeah as a nerve. And then but then you also talked about how your dad, who was a basketball coach, would do this as well.

See this wasn't that, Yes, yes, yeah, he used to be a coach and I would be in his locker rooms before games.

He'd give his pep talk and they'd.

Go in the restroom, stick his fingers down his throat and throw up, and a lot of times it was dry heaves and I just hear him in there. But that was how you got ready for a game. I don't know if he did that when he played. I just know he did it. We never talked about it, but then I started doing it well. I did it out of nerves. He brought his whole team to watch, like a third.

Grade game of mine. I didn't know they were coming.

I went out on the court, puked everywhere at mid court, I mean big throw up, and they cleaned it up.

I felt like Superman. After that.

I was ready to go. And from that moment, I was a regular puker. I puked every single game from third grade till my second or third year in the NBA. And then I was just like and I would stick my fingers down my throat if I was playing bad, one of my teammates might be like BRO did you stick your fingers on your throat in there.

And throw up. But I'm reading this and I didn't realize that.

I think it's crazy.

This is anxiety, man, And it's also your dad had a similar situation. And when did you face that when.

Out of rehab?

Last time twenty fourteen. I've been cleaned for nine years. I'm not the model.

I smoke marijuana.

I yeah, but I used medical marijuana. I have cores like from time to time. Nine years clean from opioids, I think I really started delving.

I hit. I was broke. I was broken.

I'd embarrass myself, my family, my kids, my ex wife, all of my friends and my friend's kids that looked up to me. I felt like, man, if you're going to live, you better start tackling some of why you do the things you do.

Dad is in here a lot.

Yeah, tough on you.

I mean, one night time you scored forty points, you come home.

Dad's gonna like me.

And he was mad that he didn't play better defense. Yeah, and I played collegiate.

Tennis my dad.

Sometimes I think, you know, if you would have been harder on me, I could have been a better pro.

Well, And I'm thinking well, which one is.

I don't want that, but I also wouldn't mind made a couple more bucks playing tennis, right, So what's the balance, dude?

I don't know.

Okay, I don't know because, to be honest, like, I never in my life my dad played professional basketball.

I played college I never in.

My life, my whole life was on the floor with my dad playing basketball. He never rebounded for me. He never did any of that stuff. Also, I didn't want him to do that.

I was focused on what I was doing.

I was watching his teams, watching everything he did, listening to everything. I was absorbing it. And I think he knew that I was. I honestly think he knew that I would be too nice if and maybe fizzle out as a college player or whatever. He knew I had the talent. The problem is I did very much similar things with my own son, and he didn't have the same talent.

He was way tougher than I.

Was, but I treated him almost like my dad treated me. Sometimes I was better, but still I would. I think that's what we're all trying to do a little better than our parents. But it's a hard balance. And you know, I becoming a professional basketball player was a dream come true. And it's the one thing my dad like as it's complicated. I love him to death. I appreciate everything he's done for me. My mom the same way.

Are there some things I wish we'd have done differently? Yeah? Who's not that way?

I mean my mom's here, you know.

And yeah, and.

There's on and on black woman history.

Now that's right. Yeah, And here's a list of things she should have done better. That's a job, that's a joke, you know them.

What do you have to say to people listening who might be middle school phenom in a sport, or high school phenom and a sport. Everything's in front of them, it seems like, and there's a reality.

Of this that you have lived.

What do you say to somebody who might be in the throes of addiction right now?

Do you have a message or a thought?

Man?

I guess it's really just find somebody to talk to. I had so much pride that, you know, I was this King Rex type thing, this image, and I had so much pride about.

Not living up to anything.

I had all these secret, you know, insecurities, and you know, your pride can get in the way a lot and Once you let that move a little bit, then you can start to see a light at the end of

That's a great message. Thank you for this book. I loved it. Give the Man Next content everybody.

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