co-authored and released a book two weeks ago (that took ten years to write!), and it looked beguiling, so I asked him to send a copy to me; it was indeed beguiling, so I asked to have a conversation with him about it.
This was all an elaborate ruse for me to catch up with him – since we hadn’t talked in over a year – while using big words like “Dionysian”, “grotesque”, and “profilicity”.
Really, though, I enjoyed wandering through Owen’s head for 90 minutes, examining both the themes of the book and how they relate to his life in particular, as well as life in general.
I started by digging into his storied history in the European men’s work scene—from the Denmark-based Manifesto network to Borderland (Scandinavia’s Burning Man)—and how dionysian & tantric currents collided with Christian revivalism before the network ultimately fractured.
Owen covers how the 12-Step Program was an important circuit-breaker, interrupting the high-flying lifestyle he lived as a metal musician and amateur porn addict1 for a decade+. However, he came to see the program as too parochial to be a proper guide to sobriety.
I appreciate that in his book, he makes some fine distinctions between:
Abuse vs. Addiction
Becoming Sober vs. Being Sober
I especially appreciate that the tone and style of ContrAddiction is not based on overly medicalized academic jargon. Owen & Jonas instead approach addiction from the perspective of an artist & entrepreneur, respectively.
As it turns out, mechanistic views of human behavior and medicine can’t grapple with the fact that whether certain traits & behaviors are “maladaptive” is highly contextual.
We spend some time sketching out what a pragmatic, context-driven sobriety looks like – that can hold desire, risk, and responsibility without collapsing into puritanism. One cannot simply declare oneself “cured” and be born again.
The key lies in what Owen calls a “nomadology”: truth is found through motion, and especially through embodied, high-stakes practices – renunciative and transformative, not either/or – that push men to confront their circumstances head-on.
Finally, of course, we close out by discussing the “cyber element” expressed in the last chapter. What is sobriety in a hypermodern world where the LCD screens are always flickering? Why is it that horror is the only remaining genre that demonstrates originality?
(By the way, hypermoderism is not just a catchphrase; it has an actual definition that we interrogate)
If you enjoy this episode and want to harass engage with Owen more, check out his YouTube channel TechnoSocial, or the events he puts together at Dark Renaissance.
Haven’t we all, at this point?
