When you’re coming off of an addiction, you need to find healthy habits to satisfy your addictive behaviors. Exercise, meditation, and group therapy are popular activities. But writing is another activity that checks many boxes. It’s therapeutic, fills your time, and helps you to make sense of your past. Author Mathia M. Lindgaard is one former addict who has replaced his addictions with writing. Below is my interview with Lindgaard about his novel inspired by true events, Drunk Drivers.
About Drunk Drivers
Author link (links will open in a new tab)
Links to buy
Genres: Romance, psychological, based on true events, fiction
Book summary
Drunk Drivers is my story with drug addiction, self-identity and generally the relationship you have with yourself. It’s written as fictive novella and draws only references from my life. Drunk Drivers is a gritty exploration of the psyche of a young Los Angeles addict who desperately tries to find fulfilment in drugs, sex and alcohol as his pursuit ultimately drags him deeper into the dark aspects of his own mind.
Book excerpt
I was walking through the gate. On the other side, the proud consumers of schedule 1 narcotics met me. Drinking, snorting, suffocating – enforcing they’re vanity. 1. Class vanity. This could very well be a night of mine. I felt on home-turf. A world so fragile. A world so familiar. A world where you believed in the curse of living forever and the deep desire for nevermore. The fascinating satisfaction there was in thoughts of endless desire and a life of eternity. Where you can drink till you puke. Fuck till you are dickless. Snort till you remember; when the night’s over you are going to wake up and be drawn to your deliberate path while your mind is suffocating and neck strangled. The misbelief of a road. Because roads lead somewhere. You are in a circle. As if you were a strapped down psychopath being transported back and forth. Prison to prison. You believe that your destiny is determined. Unhappy with desires of the uniquely extravagant. So lonely but comfortably manifested to the belief that a king, a legend can only be deprived his last breath but not his life nor his legacy. I walked into a mirage of the Garden of Eden. Where there were no Gods. Only fiends. Where there were no despair in enjoying the goods from the Tree of Life. Where desire was encouraged and the disrupting ends of meeting satisfaction wasn’t seen frown upon. Where the snake was the king and his legacy enormous.
Talking Shop
What do you want readers to take away from your book?
I wrote the book as a reminder for myself when I got too far regarding my own addiction. So, I really want the reader to get an idea of how the mind, my mind, works when you’re abusing drugs to escape from reality. I want to open up the conversation about addiction and mental health because I think many people struggles with it in their own way.
Name a fact or detail about your story that readers will never know is there.
Drunk Drivers was written as a self-explorative experience of my own addiction, and what I felt right to free myself from my own patterns.
What’s the best review/compliment that you’ve received about your book?
That it puts everything into perspective. Even though, it’s a classic expression, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. There’s much more beneath the surface.
What is a fun or strange source of inspiration that ended up in your book?
I honestly got most of my inspiration through songs. Especially rock/punk songs from the early 90’s. These songs has just made such a deep impression on me, and bands like Nirvana has really had a major influence on me.
How long did it take to write your book from the day you got the idea to write it to the day you published it?
Well, when I got the idea that I wanted to write a book, I spent two months forming the idea. And after I knew what I wanted to write about, I actually put the book away for more than year, because I felt like I hadn’t lived or experienced the whole story yet. So, it took me over a year to research, if you can say it like that. Then I wrote the whole script in a couple of months. And then another year and half to edit the book with Olympia Publishers’ editors before it got published in November 2020.
How long have you considered yourself a writer? Did you have any formal training, or is it something you learned as you went?
I think I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve only considered myself a songwriter from when I was 16, even though I started writing poetry etc. when I was 12. But I didn’t feel like an author before the book got published, and I’m still not even sure if I’d even consider myself a real writer now.
If you don’t make a living exclusively writing, what is your day job? How, in any way, does it relate to your life as a writer?
I’m studying marketing and economics while being a songwriter on the side. So, books has always been a way of coping with fear, anxiety, depression and whatever goes on inside of me emotionally or in my mind.
What were your expectations for writing and publishing your first book? Have they changed now that you’ve written your book?
I never really had any, it just sort of happened. It just felt right in the moment, and I’m truly addicted to following my heart and curiosity. And somehow I was fortunate enough that a publisher saw value in my work, and now I’m here. But having my first book published really ignited more ideas, so there’ll definitely be more to come. I’m already half through my second book, so it’s just a matter of time now.
Do you have a writing ritual, odd habits, or superstitions?
I have some really weird habits and rituals haha. Poetry has always come to me as something beyond me, and it has always been game of listening to me. Suddenly, a feeling just passes me, like a shooting star passing through the sky, and if I don’t drop everything I’m doing and becomes the funnel for the story, I’ll miss it and I might never see it again. But when I grab it, the whole story just floods out of me immediately. And then it becomes a game for me of how I can make the deepest impression on the people who will read it. Also, I write in three stages; idea, scripting and perfecting. I never just “hit it” the first time. There’s too many variables for me to do so. And I believe I have to nurture a relationship with the story for it to take its full form.
Are any of your characters inspired by real life people?
Every character is either directly based on real people or is a combination of different people put down into one character.
How well do you handle criticism, either while writing, editing, or reviews? Do you ever use that criticism to change your story?
I love criticism. It’s fun for me to listen to what people think. I’m an unexperienced reader, which makes me an unexperienced writer. So, getting feedback is just an awesome experience. Plus, it’s art, it’s not like there’s a correct answer. I don’t necessarily use the feedback, but always take it into consideration.
What is the most fun part about writing? The most difficult?
The most fun part is the idea making. Creating the concept. The most difficult part is to make the concept shine as clearly as I want to throughout the whole story.
What skills have you acquired or information have you learned from writing?
I’m a stoic, so it has definitely made me better at journaling. But writing always came naturally with me, so it has never been a difficult challenge for me.
Did you consult with any professionals or people who lived through a particular event to help you craft your story?
No, everything is based on my own story and my own point of view.
What is your most stereotypical writer trait? Your least stereotypical?
Biggest coffee addict haha. Also, spiking my coffee with whiskey was a clear trait in writing Drunk Drivers – just to keep it as authentic as possible. I was still addicted when I wrote the book, so I also got high every time I wrote, which was both natural and difficult. My new book is totally different story. I just needed Drunk Drivers to as authentic to me as well, so when I finished the last page, I knew I could put that part of life “behind me.” Even though, that’s much easier said than done.
“What If” Scenarios
If your book ever becomes a movie and you get final say over the cast, which actors would you hire to play your characters?
Machine Gun Kelly as the main character, no doubt. I’d also want Zoe Kravitz to be a part of it. Margot Robbie or Meagan Good would also be two actors I would love to have as one of the main characters.
If you could have one person that you admire, living or dead, read your book, who would it be?
Charles Bukowski. Definitely. Just because of the deep connection with drugs, sexual attraction, the thought process and so forth.
A wealthy reader buys 100 copies of your book and tells you to hand them out to anyone you wish. Who do you give them to?
Movie producers. I’m so visual, and every story I ever wrote was always pictured as a movie in my own mind. So, definitely movie producers. Especially, Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese.
You’re offered a contract to rewrite your book in another genre. Which genre do you choose and why?
Psychological thriller. Just because I’m absolutely in love with this genre. I’m obsessed with contradicting feelings that questions our own morality and mortality, and anything extreme. It’s just so much more excited for me.
Your book becomes a best seller. What do you do next?
Nothing I’m not already doing. The accolades will never compare to what I’m gifted with in the process of writing it.
What is one thing you would give up writing to have (or to have back)?
Movies. Definitely movies. Or becoming a professional musician, because that’s my lifelong dream. But I’m still working on that part, so probably movies.
You have the means to hire a full time assistant to help you with your writing. What tasks do you give them to do?
Find me people to talk to. Building relationships with people who can open up the conversation and give me a new perspective. That’s one of the most exciting things about art – opening up the conversation.
You have final say over who reads the audio book version of your story. Who do you choose?
Isn’t it almost always Morgan Freeman?
What famous artist or photographer would you want to create or capture your book cover image?
Haris Nukem. He’s way of combining the extreme and finding beauty in the darkness, is just so rare and mind-blowing to me.
Just for Fun
What legacy do you want to leave behind?
I’m always thinking about this, and it changes so much. But ultimately, I just want to make an impact on someone. Change the way we view the world starting by changing the way we view ourselves.
One year of your life you’d like to relive or do over.
I’m not sure which year it would be, and it might sound so depressing haha. But the one that was most painful. I have just never grown so much by facing these dark paths in my life, and that momentum that comes from it, that intense presence and being so clear on what matters is just something you can’t find elsewhere.
A movie or a piece of music that changed your life.
Fight Club definitely changed my life, and it made me feel more normal. Because Vincent represents an alternate personality. And musically, everything Nirvana made, but especially “Heart-Shaped Box.”
A book that you recommend everyone reads.
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins or The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle. Understanding these two books will absolutely change your life’s course forever.
The topic you can’t shut up about and the topic you wish everyone would shut up about.
High performance and mindset. I can drive people absolutely nuts with constantly wanting to improve myself haha.
And I’m not sure there’s a specific topic that drives me nuts to hear about because I’m just too curious about everything, but I conversation I can’t stand is everything involving self-pity. Probably because I’ve had so much of it myself and learned it was the biggest waste of my life.
Buy it!
Buy a copy of Drunk Drivers here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.
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