{"id":51663,"date":"2026-08-07T06:47:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T06:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51663"},"modified":"2026-08-07T06:47:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T06:47:53","slug":"i-have-an-ego-that-needs-to-be-put-in-check-ex-gawker-editor-aj-daulerio-on-life-after-addiction-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=51663","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I have an ego that needs to be put in check\u2019: ex-Gawker editor AJ Daulerio on life after addiction | Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span>AJ Daulerio: \u2018The Small Bow is a living amends for whatever version of me came before on the internet.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Storm Santos\/Contour RA by Getty Images<\/p>\n

Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry anthology, then a passage from one of his daily wisdom readers (his go-to is a heavily annotated copy of Leo Tolstoy\u2019s A Calendar of Wisdom); writing his Fear of the Day and gratitude list, then sharing his spiritual takeaway in a note to his three kids.<\/p>\n

After a banana and coffee, Daulerio trains Brazilian jujitsu before hitting a 9.45am meditation at Besant Lodge \u2013 a community center just below the Hollywood sign that once served as a meeting place for mid-century mystics \u2013 immediately followed by him leading a recovery meeting of his own through Zoom.<\/p>\n

He goes to personal therapy at 11.15am, picks up his kids in the afternoon and spends the rest of the evening with them and his wife, giving him just a few hours at night to work on his advice column for Slate and the two books he\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI know there\u2019s a good way of self-promoting, I\u2019m just wary of my intentions a lot of the timeAJ Daulerio<\/p>\n

This is in addition to emotional sobriety step work (cultivating inner peace after the drinking stops) on Zoom on Wednesday nights, an Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting every Friday morning, Alcoholics Anonymous on Sundays, couples therapy every other week, and a quarterly meeting with his psychiatrist to refine his cocktail of psychotropic medications, including a mood stabilizer (Lamictal) and an antipsychotic (Zyprexa), to treat his bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have an ego that needs to be put in check all the time,\u201d Daulerio tells me. \u201cHalf of my recovery is dedicated to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daulerio celebrated 10 years of sobriety this July, a joyous capstone to a tumultuous decade-plus that saw Daulerio go from digital media visionary as editor of Gawker to broke, disgraced and the man most responsible for the site\u2019s demise.<\/p>\n

Daulerio has re-emerged in recent years, again as a media innovator \u2013 not as the cutthroat, traffic-obsessed editor reputation he garnered at Gawker, but as the gentle, deeply pensive and contrite author of The Small Bow, the newsletter he created in 2018 to chronicle his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, and his attempts to reclaim his life as a changed man.<\/p>\n

Today Daulerio maintains a rigorous recovery regimen to battle the twin demons that once fueled his self-destructive impulses: the lonesomeness that led him to seek companionship in dive bars among other strange drunks, and the ego that convinced him he had it all under control, despite signs to the opposite.<\/p>\n

Daulerio has built a devout following by writing about his recovery program in unsparingly honest, vulnerable first-person essays in The Small Bow, and he now wants to grow the company into a multiplatform media company that provides wisdom and guidance to people struggling with addictions of all kinds.<\/p>\n

But therein lies Daulerio\u2019s existential dilemma: how to build a successful media business without sacrificing the spiritual practice that made his second act possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I have to get comfortable with and better at, because I do believe in what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Daulerio says between bites of his cheeseburger. \u201cI know there\u2019s a good way of self-promoting, I\u2019m just wary of my intentions a lot of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

One needs a certain amount of irrational self-confidence to start any business, especially in print media, an industry that has been in steady decline since Daulerio first became a journalist in 2000. Then there\u2019s the self-promotion required to grow a business, even as it risks inflating the ego that fueled his fall from grace and that he\u2019s worked so hard to keep in check.<\/p>\n

That The Small Bow is built almost entirely around Daulerio\u2019s personal experience makes this all the more difficult.<\/p>\n

In Daulerio\u2019s favor is his unmatched skill at growing digital media properties. It\u2019s what propelled him to success as the editor of the now defunct Gawker Media \u2013 and also what led to his and the company\u2019s downfall.<\/p>\n

The Small Bow uses lots of religious iconography in its branding: pen and colored pencil illustrations of demons and angels drawn by Edith Zimmerman, a writer and artist who has also found sobriety \u2013 and they serve as an easy metaphor for the tension between Daulerio\u2019s professional ambitions and his personal recovery: the demon whispering in one ear to revert to his old tricks and grow The Small Bow by any means necessary, and the angel whispering in the other to preserve what\u2019s made The Small Bow so resonant with readers undergoing their own struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you sell something that is supposed to be genuine?\u201d he asks me rhetorically. As with his sobriety, all he can do is forge ahead and attempt to achieve this seemingly irreconcilable balancing act, one day at a time. \u201cWhat are the other options?\u201d<\/p>\n

The last 10 years of Daulerio\u2019s life have been an exercise in being humbled. Few figures in recent history have had their rise and fall scrutinized as intensely by the media. His exploits have been the subject of two Netflix documentaries, glossy magazine profiles, and countless reports and thought pieces on sound journalistic practice and the limits of first amendment freedoms.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI had the ability to get people to tell me things they weren\u2019t supposed toAJ Daulerio<\/p>\n

But long before he was media\u2019s enfant terrible, he was one of the most promising young talents in 2000s digital journalism.<\/p>\n

Daulerio started in journalism in 1998, covering city council meetings for the East Brunswick Sentinel in New Jersey. His initial dream was to be a music producer \u2013 he was simultaneously interning at a recording studio \u2013 or, saving that, a music critic. But he quickly exhibited a preternatural talent for landing scoops, a skill that would become his MO as he ascended the highest echelons of the digital publishing industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the ability to get people to tell me things they weren\u2019t supposed to,\u201d Daulerio says. \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t have strict deadlines, I could hang out with the council members.\u201d A former college classmate of Daulerio\u2019s worked the same beat for a competing newspaper, and Daulerio delighted in beating him to stories. \u201cI loved it. I was weirdly competitive in a way that\u2019s good for reporting. I\u2019ve never been competitive in anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being a diehard Philly sports fan, Daulerio was a feckless athlete himself, much to the embarrassment of his father (a topic Daulerio frequently visits in his Small Bow columns). \u201cI grew up playing sports, but I never knew how to win. In the journalism world, I knew how to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Daulerio shuffled through writing and editing gigs in New York and Philadelphia \u2013 including stints at the trade publications Bond Buyer and American Lawyer Media; men\u2019s lifestyle newsletter Thrillist; and Philadelphia magazine \u2013 before landing a senior editor job at Deadspin, Gawker\u2019s sports vertical, in 2008. Just months later, he was promoted to editor for the entire site.<\/p>\n

Then Daulerio published photos of former New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre\u2019s penis, and his life trajectory was forever altered.<\/p>\n

In August 2010, Daulerio published a Deadspin post alleging that Favre had sent lewd voicemails and pictures of his penis to the Jets sideline reporter Jenn Sterger. Two months later, Daulerio published the illicit photos, purportedly from Favre, in a video montage, with Favre\u2019s voicemails providing the soundtrack.<\/p>\n

The story generated millions of page views for Deadspin and months of headlines across the wider sports media ecosystem, cementing the three-person sports blog as a player on the national stage and Daulerio as a fearless journalist on the vanguard of a new era of digital journalism. \u201cSo many NFL reporters had known about [Favre\u2019s behavior] the whole time and wouldn\u2019t cover it,\u201d Daulerio says. (Favre admitted to leaving the voicemails but denied sending lewd photos.)<\/p>\n

Professional and personal accolades showered over Daulerio. He did the Today show (while drunk, stoned and on Adderall). Nick Denton, Gawker Media\u2019s founder and CEO, rewarded Daulerio with a raise, three more Deadspin staff writers and a freelance budget.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI would go to a bar on Thursday and come out of it on MondayAJ Daulerio<\/p>\n

Daulerio was spotlighted in a GQ profile and became a star of the New York City media scene. \u201cA friend of mine from high school came to a Gawker office rooftop party,\u201d Daulerio recalls. \u201cHe watched me walk into this place and he was like, \u2018I feel like I\u2019m with Don Corleone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the success and recognition Daulerio had always coveted. He had dreamed about having his glossy portrait photo featured in Forbes\u2019 30 Under 30 list. And yet all the attention \u2013 and criticism \u2013 made him uncomfortable. \u201cI did not like my full-time job to be a punching bag for all the heels on the internet,\u201d he says. \u201cOn the other hand, I had been treading water for 10 years in online journalism, and now I had attention and career options.\u201d After the GQ story, \u201cthere was no reversing who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he climbed the ranks of the media industry, Daulerio was also feeding a drinking habit that would land him in rehab. He drank six nights a week, rotating through a familiar circuit of bars near work in the Bowery (Congee Village, Professor Thom\u2019s) and, on weekends, in Williamsburg (Dardy Bar). Some Saturdays he would post up at a bar at 11am, down 10 beers and five shots, stay until close and then do cocaine with his newly formed friends. \u201cI would just live in these places,\u201d Daulerio says. \u201cI was a binger. I would go to a bar on Thursday and come out of it on Monday \u2026 There was never really a plan other than to stay for as long as I possibly could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drinking was a way to treat the \u201cfree-floating loneliness\u201d Daulerio had lived with since he was a child, he says. \u201cIt was fun to do cocaine with strangers until 4.30 in the morning. That felt like home to me \u2026 It would be silly to blame [my addiction] on anything other than I never felt normal or at ease, and I\u2019m always battling that and probably always will.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was one of the most successful editors in the burgeoning digital publishing industry, but he couldn\u2019t afford an apartment because his credit was so bad. He bounced between friends\u2019 couches.<\/p>\n

His cavalier editorial philosophy came under fire at the same time. To critics, Gawker became emblematic of a new wave of digital journalists who prioritized the almighty click and page view without any consideration for journalistic ethics or basic human decency.<\/p>\n

Publishing the Favre story, for instance, meant burning Sterger, the recipient of the reportedly unsolicited \u201cdong shots\u201d (Daulerio\u2019s words), who had explicitly asked to not be included in the story. (Daulerio bought the photos and voicemails from a third party for $12,000.) He even published Sterger\u2019s request to leave her out of it.<\/p>\n

Daulerio now says he wishes he had broken the Favre scoop without mentioning her.<\/p>\n

Later, when the Gawker empire imploded, a narrative emerged that Daulerio\u2019s alcohol and drug use was largely to blame for the editorial decisions that led to its collapse, a premise Daulerio wholly rejects. \u201cA lot of good things were happening when things were bad,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Such as Deadspin\u2019s immense growth. In just three years under Daulerio\u2019s tenure, Deadspin\u2019s traffic tripled, as the site continued to break raunchy, irreverent scoops \u2013 former New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan filming foot fetish videos starring his wife; photos of Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton drunk and shirtless, licking whipped cream off a woman\u2019s breasts in a Tempe, Arizona, bar, despite supposedly being sober; and ESPN Horndog Dossier, a collection of unconfirmed rumors about rampant illicit sexual behavior at \u201cthe Worldwide Leader in Sports\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was even some genuine investigative reporting mixed in with the scuzzy gossip, such as leaked financial documents exposing the creative accounting techniques that Major League Baseball franchises employ to boost profits.<\/p>\n

Denton named Daulerio editor of Gawker.com, Gawker Media\u2019s flagship site, in late 2011. The following fall, Daulerio approved publication of a sex tape starring the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan. Hogan filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker just two weeks later, a legal action that would bankrupt Gawker and force its sale, and temporarily ruin Daulerio\u2019s life and career. (It was later revealed that Hogan\u2019s suit was financed by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who harbored a grudge against Gawker Media ever since it outed him as gay in 2007.)<\/p>\n

Hogan won a $140m judgment in March 2016 against Gawker, including $100,000 in punitive damages for Daulerio, a verdict that was largely blamed on Daulerio and his callous editorial ethos. (Gawker settled with Hogan for $31m, and Daulerio didn\u2019t have to pay the $100,000.)<\/p>\n

During the trial, Hogan\u2019s attorneys brought up how Daulerio once published a separate sex tape of two people who were not public figures, and how Daulerio initially dismissed the woman in the video when she requested its removal. (Daulerio implored her to \u201cnot make a big deal out of this\u201d.)<\/p>\n

The post was eventually deleted, and Daulerio says publishing it was the most regrettable moment of his career.<\/p>\n

The most damning moment in the trial was when Hogan\u2019s attorneys showed the courtroom a videotaped deposition of Daulerio from October 2013, in which a Hogan attorney asked Daulerio: \u201cCan you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they were a child,\u201d Daulerio replied.<\/p>\n

The lawyer pushed: \u201cUnder what age?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFour.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exchange sent \u201ca palpable sense of shock\u201d through the courtroom, according to the New York Times. There were audible gasps and groans. Daulerio says the comment was a sarcastic joke, \u201ca defense mechanism\u201d after getting frustrated with the interrogation, but it supported the plaintiff\u2019s portrayal of Daulerio as a heartless gossip-peddler who trafficked in the sordid details of people\u2019s personal lives, even when they had zero news value.<\/p>\n

Adding to Daulerio\u2019s embarrassment, the trial revealed he had a net worth of negative $35,000. The court froze the $1,500 he had in his bank account. The 2017 Netflix documentary Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press about the Hogan trial opens with Daulerio laughing as he reads a bank email informing him a $230m hold had been placed on his bank account.<\/p>\n

Daulerio can\u2019t recall how he felt during the trial. He dissociated. \u201cIt was so big and overwhelming, I just felt like I was a character in this thing,\u201d he says. The only part of the experience he can latch on to is the photo of him from the New York Times article. \u201cI feel like I know what that expression is: really helpless, but also in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Daulerio\u2019s professional life was put on trial, he was also trying to get sober. He first entered rehab in August 2015, seven months before the trial began, but quickly relapsed. \u201cTwo months later, I was back at it pretty hardcore,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Daulerio fully committed to sobriety on 15 July 2016, a month after Gawker filed for bankruptcy and put itself up for sale. \u201cJuly 15, 2016, was simply the day I decided to stop resisting and give up the warped idea that I could do my own modified version of sobriety, something akin to what I liked to call \u2018advanced moderation\u2019,\u201d he wrote in a recent Small Bow essay about his 10th anniversary of sobriety.<\/p>\n

What Daulerio still longed for in his early days of recovery was a way to process the experience the best way he knew how: through writing.<\/p>\n

The first piece Daulerio published after the trial was a 2017 first-person essay about his fraught relationship with his father for the now shuttered men\u2019s publication Mel.<\/p>\n

The piece had the pugnacious writing that made Deadspin so popular; Daulerio opens the essay recounting a physical fight with his father. But it also had the emotional vulnerability of an adult man trying to heal his daddy issues, told through the prism of past Father\u2019s Days. (I was a staff writer at Mel at that time, but did not work with Daulerio).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe piece was masculinity and neuroses laid bare, not in a self-pitying, \u2018woe is me\u2019 way, but in a curious way,\u201d former Mel editor-in-chief Josh Schollmeyer says. \u201cIf there\u2019s any difference between the pre- and post-trial AJ, it\u2019s AJ falling in love with his own mythology versus being who he really is, which is a master storyteller. That humility was apparent from the jump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The naked confessional style would become The Small Bow\u2019s signature. In the newsletter, Daulerio recounts his various sobriety efforts \u2013 AA meetings, therapy, meditation, psychiatry, stoicism, Buddhism \u2013 in oftentimes painful, but always heartfelt honesty.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, he wrote about moving his elderly mother into an assisted living facility in Florida near where he went to rehab. He also frequently writes about the spiritual blessings of being a family man; Daulerio and screenwriter Julieanne Smolinski married in 2018, and they have three children together in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

double quotation markHe has been through the level of public shame that I have. Few people have experienced thatJenn Sterger<\/p>\n

Some of the most powerful Small Bow entries are about Daulerio making amends \u2013 steps eight and nine in 12-step programs \u2013 to those he wronged during his years actively in addiction, such as making peace with Sterger.<\/p>\n

In a January 2020 essay, Daulerio revealed he and Sterger incidentally reconnected when he adopted a dog for his growing family. Sterger just so happened to work at the dog shelter Smolinski emailed, resulting in Daulerio and Sterger meeting at the LA diner House of Pies.<\/p>\n

She admitted that there are still uncomfortable days and awkward moments stemming from the Favre ordeal. There\u2019s still a version of her that exists in the internet\u2019s memory hole where she will never be a real person; she\u2019s just a plot point without context, without skin. But the thing that I did was more vicious. You see, I knew she was a real person \u2013 and I did what I did anyway. I didn\u2019t care if I destroyed her. That\u2019s just the type of person I was back then.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember how long we actually talked, but I remember we both walked out of there a little relieved like we\u2019d both just found a therapist who finally understood the excavation tools required to break new ground. Some hurts were still unreachable, though. Time takes time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sterger agreed to meet him out of curiosity: she wanted to understand why Daulerio betrayed her wishes and upended her life. \u201cI found a guy that had looked at himself in the mirror and really done a lot of hard work on himself \u2013 really examined why he had done the things that he had done, and realized the hurt that he had caused people,\u201d Sterger says.<\/p>\n

The two got along so well that they developed the unlikeliest of friendships. \u201cHe has been through the level of public shame that I have,\u201d Sterger says. \u201cFew people have experienced that.\u201d Sterger later appeared on The Small Bow podcast, where she and Daulerio publicly buried the hatchet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a concept in recovery of a living amends,\u201d Daulerio says. When a direct amends might inflict even more pain on the injured party, addicts in recovery are instructed to atone by simply living a good life. \u201cThe Small Bow is a living amends for whatever version of me came before on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newsletter has amassed 20,000 subscribers \u2013 about 2,000 of them paid, making him $72,000 a year \u2013 including some celebrities that have embraced the publication as a platform to discuss their own sobriety.<\/p>\n

Fans of the CBS talkshow The Talk and the Barstool Sports podcast Pardon My Take know Jerry O\u2019Connell as a happy-go-lucky actor with a goofy sense of humor, but on The Small Bow podcast in April, O\u2019Connell revealed he\u2019s been in recovery from alcoholism for 13 years.<\/p>\n

Going public about his sobriety took some convincing. O\u2019Connell got sober under the old-school AA mentality that treats anonymity as sacrosanct \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s right there in the title,\u201d he says \u2013 but made an exception because Daulerio had been so important to his own recovery. The two connected during the pandemic over their shared sobriety after O\u2019Connell, a longtime Deadspin fan, reached out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAJ has a new-school way of thinking, and that\u2019s why this venture is interesting,\u201d O\u2019Connell says of Daulerio\u2019s willingness to bare it all. \u201cThis is all uncharted territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was publicly drunk, so being publicly sober makes sense to me, and I like to talk about the many methods I go about to stay that way,\u201d Daulerio recently wrote in The Small Bow. \u201cBut recovery is a personal thing \u2013 how someone chooses to do it isn\u2019t my business.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation mark[Daulerio is] very self-effacing in a way that is honest, not trying to win brownie points by being self-effacingAlex Winter<\/p>\n

Actor and documentarian Alex Winter has a routine meetup with Daulerio at House of Pies, where they discuss recovery and fatherhood. Winter, too, discussed his recovery on an episode of The Small Bow, the only time he has appeared on a recovery podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always bristled a little bit at these kinds of recovery-forward podcasts,\u201d Winter says. \u201cI always worry about people getting very enthusiastic about getting sober. \u2026 Recovery is delicate. It\u2019s fragile. So I just feel for the people who expose themselves that way and hope that they\u2019re OK.\u201d What separates Daulerio, Winter says, is his radical candor. \u201cHe\u2019s very self-effacing in a way that is honest, not trying to win brownie points by being self-effacing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after Hogan died last July, Daulerio penned a Small Bow essay partially thanking the Hulkster for body-slamming his life and career. \u201cWithout that experience, there is no Small Bow, probably,\u201d Daulerio says. \u201cThat\u2019s how I choose to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI forgot to brush my teeth,\u201d Daulerio announces to The Small Bow production team, as he prepares to tape a new episode.<\/p>\n

Between fatherhood and his recovery routine, Daulerio\u2019s is more structured than ever, but chaos seeps in at times. After nearly three decades as a writer, he still gets bothered by commenters. He recently sent a snarky email response to a reader who criticized one of his Slate advice columns.<\/p>\n

double quotation markWhat I want to create a dialogue about is: you can stop drinking just because you don\u2019t like itRyan O\u2019Connell<\/p>\n

A current focus in his recovery is on improving his sleep. A night owl, Daulerio typically gets only five hours of sleep a night, staying up until the wee hours to watch violent action movies, often starring Jason Statham. He has started using a sleep mask and soothing ASMR sounds to help lull him into slumber.<\/p>\n

The podcast is integral to Daulerio\u2019s strategy for growing The Small Bow. His larger vision is something akin to a trade magazine for the recovery industry. He wants to sell subscriptions to recovery facilities \u2013 hospitals, clinics, rehabs, halfway houses \u2013 whose patients would then be able to access, and even contribute to, The Small Bow\u2019s archive of addiction-related content. \u201cA farm system for The Small Bow,\u201d he says, not unlike how Gawker recruited the wittiest contributors in its comments section to become paid staff writers.<\/p>\n

Daulerio piloted such a program with Divided Sky, the Ludlow, Vermont, drug rehab facility co-founded by the Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, whose appearance on The Small Bow podcast is the show\u2019s most popular to date.<\/p>\n

As The Small Bow has attracted more contributors, its scope has widened to include a broader array of addictions and mental health issues: sex, shopping, gambling, weed, depression, bipolar disorder. The internet itself.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s podcast taping is with writer Ryan O\u2019Connell, who\u2019s promoting his essay collection, Inspiration Porn \u2013 a welcome development for Daulerio, who wants The Small Bow to be a requisite stop on the memoir promotion circuit. Daulerio\u2019s own books, a compilation of essays about recovery called The Small Book, a play on AA\u2019s Big Book, and a memoir about his life post-Gawker trial, are scheduled to publish in 2027.<\/p>\n

Ryan O\u2019Connell\u2019s relationship with alcohol falls into the expanded definition of sobriety. He never hit \u201crock bottom\u201d because he quit before he could get there. \u201cIt\u2019s the only substance you get shamed for quitting,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I want to create a dialogue about is: you can stop drinking just because you don\u2019t like it. AJ is expanding recovery conversations to be about so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask Daulerio what success looks like to him now. On a personal level, it\u2019s spending quality time with his family, the spiritual opposite of when he would stay out all night to avoid going home.<\/p>\n

Professionally, success means rediscovering his love of writing, doing it consistently, and serving the recovery community he\u2019s cultivated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m never going to have the notoriety I had, but I really enjoy what I do know and learning how to write again,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the best work I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AJ Daulerio: \u2018The Small Bow is a living amends for whatever version of me came before on the internet.\u2019 Photograph: Storm Santos\/Contour RA by Getty Images Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3151,6039,25139,3523,15853,25138,337,205,356],"class_list":{"0":"post-51663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-check","10":"tag-daulerio","11":"tag-editor","12":"tag-ego","13":"tag-exgawker","14":"tag-life","15":"tag-media","16":"tag-put"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}