When It Comes to Women, I’m Keeping Up

When It Comes to Women, I’m Keeping Up

Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of growth, regret and awkward male behaviour, all told with a sharp comic edge. In this Untoxicated Podcast episode, Matt Salis reads his essay “When It Comes to Women, I’m Keeping Up” from his Underlying Issues series, showing that sobriety doesn’t magically fix the mess in someone’s head.

You’ll hear Matt contrast his own spectacularly daft boyhood and manhood antics with the extraordinary social, educational and political progress of women over the last fifty years. While women achieve “financial independence, sexual autonomy, intellectual equality, and educational superiority,” Matt offers stories of nearly entombing a neighbourhood kid in DIY quicksand, concussing himself on a bike, shocking himself silly on vending machines, shining torches into oncoming traffic, and driving a stolen RV through a fast-food drive-through while drunk.

The humour is dark and self-deprecating, but it’s rooted in his ongoing recovery work: “the alcohol might be long gone, but I’m still working on those underlying issues.” By stacking his own immature escapades against milestones like women becoming heads of state, CEOs, sports icons and cultural powerhouses, he highlights a serious theme beneath the laughs – men and boys are struggling, and that struggle doesn’t vanish with abstinence.

Matt also talks about technology as “a distraction,” pointing out how porn, gaming and smartphones help keep men stuck, even as women no longer need men in the traditional sense. The style is conversational, sarcastic and brutally honest, making it especially relatable for people in recovery who recognise that quitting drinking is only the start of the job.

If you’re curious how underlying issues, gender expectations and recovery can collide in one hilarious yet uncomfortable essay, this is one to queue up next.