Everyone here at Points wishes you a very happy new year and the best in 2020. This is a particularly intriguing holiday for drug and alcohol historians, since it’s by far the holiday that most heartily celebrates intoxication. We’ll be discussing that more in a bit, but today we want to focus on positive changes the entire Points staff is hoping to make in the new year. With that, I bring you the Points’ official list of New Year’s Resolutions. May 2020 be as good to you as we hope it will be to us!
David Guba: New Year’s Resolutions – My fiancée and I are doing a 1/12 resolution and attempting to go intoxicant free (no alcohol, coffee, or cannabis) from Jan 2- February 2, and I’d like to have a second book contract inked by jan 1 2021 (or at least a finished proposal and be fishing)
Stefano Tijerina: Stefano will be writing and running more and worrying less about the insignificant material world that surrounds us all.
Sarah Siff: My resolution has to do with teaching. I tried a couple of changes in my demeanor over the past semester, and I want to make them permanent. Mostly, I want to look for opportunities to be kind and caring toward my students, to try to keep in mind that they often feel homesick and alienated. I think they miss their parents and the feeling of someone watching out for them and feeling fond of them. So I’m going to remember to do that more, along with generally being happier, more positive, in the classroom.
Jeremy Milloy: This year I plan to consume less, and thus waste less. I plan to spend less time looking at a screen. I also want to complete my book proposal, an article I’m writing about the British Columbia’s 1970s plan to coerce patients into compulsory abstinence treatment, and another article I’m looking at about Bon Accord, a very different type of therapeutic community/supported work experiment in 1960s Ontario. I also want to keep learning how to read the tarot and play Go. I wish everyone in the Points community a very happy and healthy 2020!
Jordan Mylet: 1) Commit to memory key cooking and baking fundamentals, as well as some fancy techniques. 2) Figure out a weekly research and writing schedule, 3) Stick to that schedule.
Robert Beach: I have a joke about how the only time I ever achieved a New Year’s Resolution was the year that I finally cancelled the $10 auto-withdraw from Planet Fitness…one of my many failed resolutions from the early 2010s. I don’t do well with Resolutions. But things are changing for me on a personal and professional level, and it’s time to be a bit more resolute from now on. So now, to void my 2019 Resolution (which was to renounce Resolutions once and for all), my 2020 Resolutions:
1. Marry my fiancée, Amber Boothe.
2. Finish and defend my dissertation.
3. After some work-related delays in late 2019, start my podcast.
4. Watch as New York finally legalizes marijuana.
5. Convince as many people as possible to vote against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, thereby preventing or delaying the irrevocable decline of humanity on earth.
It’s sure to be an interesting year.
Emily Dufton: I welcomed my second child on 12/27/19, so my resolution for 2020 is to keep two kids alive. That, and to work on the manuscript of my second book, the history of how medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder became a commercial industry, which is due to the University of Chicago Press in July 2021.
Happy New Year, Points Readers!