On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti How Katie Herzog drank her way to sobriety
Oct 30, 2025
Katie Herzog, a journalist and author, shares her tumultuous 20-year journey with alcohol, delving into her early experiences and the realization of her problem drinking. She reveals her struggles with traditional sobriety methods, including AA, and how discovering the Sinclair method, which uses naltrexone, offered her a new path. Dr. Joseph Volpicelli, an addiction specialist, discusses the science behind naltrexone and the reasons it remains underutilized. Together, they explore the complexities of addiction, medication, and personal recovery stories.
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Early Drinking Became A Life Definer
- Katie Herzog started drinking around age 12–13 and became socially defined by alcohol through college and her twenties.
- That early normalization led to two decades where alcohol controlled her life despite periods of apparent fun.
Decades Of On‑Again, Off‑Again Attempts
- Katie describes a 20-year on-again, off-again struggle where she repeatedly tried and failed to sustain sobriety.
- She attended AA, saw psychiatrists, and experienced vacillating denial without losing the mental obsession.
Magazine Article Sparked A New Approach
- Katie discovered The Sinclair Method via a 2015 Atlantic article and was struck because it allowed drinking while treating addiction.
- That idea felt revolutionary and prompted her to try naltrexone again later.
