Sacred Nonsense

Olive Kirkpatrick ✜ Paperheart Bureau
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  • Social Sciences
  • Bimonthly

Hosted and recorded on the disturbed soil of the evangelical Southeast, Sacred Nonsense is an audio series by Olive Kirkpatrick from the Paperheart Bureau. Follow the stories people tell about drugs, recovery, grief, care, and belonging, then ask what those stories let us see and what they let us leave out. This is a place for the person still using, the person counting days, the person on medication, the grieving friend, the peer worker, the survivors left behind, and the skeptic willing to look again. Nobody has to become a perfect recovery story to be worth protecting. New episodes appear here and in most podcast apps. Expect essays, conversations, witness accounts, questions for the people building systems, and occasional glitches in the paperwork. Companion writing and receipts live at https://sacrednonsense.substack.com/ ❥ ALL HEART ARE SACRED. (all of 'em. even yours.) sacrednonsense.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Sep 24

    spools ∞ podcast ep. 6

    spools · sacred nonsense! • an episode on overdose awarenessas a child, olive sat beneath a florist table where the same spools of ribbon were cut for corsages and caskets. twenty-five years after the first overdose awareness day, she asks what happened to the politics after the ribbon. the episode moves from naloxone and medication access to a composite story about someone afraid to seek emergency care, parents handed a podium before they had room to grieve, and the distance we keep from people while they are alive and using. olive names the grief of diminished possibility: watching a person’s ordinary days and possible futures shrink before anyone lights a candle. she leaves some uncomfortable questions about who benefits, who belongs, and what it might cost to stay close to the people we can't bear to lose. content note: overdose, grief, medical mistreatment, incarceration, and drug use. using alone? SafeSpot: 800-972-0590. Never Use Alone: 800-484-3731 or 877-696-1996. both are free 24/7 spotting lines; their emergency responses differ. details: https://safe-spot.me/how-it-works/ and https://neverusealone.com/. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

    spools ∞ podcast ep. 6

  2. Aug 2

    paperweights ∞ podcast ep. 5

    the paperweight · sacred nonsense, PH-SN-005 what kind of participation actually changes a life? not seeing someone clearly — staying with them, past the point where staying makes sense. a reflection on paperweights and a young woman named jessica, opening overdose awareness month but probably not the way you expected. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Jul 8

    paper skin ∞ podcast ep. 4

    🎙️ paper skin — paper is evidence. it’s not reality. before we’re ever here at all, there's a paper trail. we’re on sonograms on fridges and in car visors. this whole episode is a slow mozy (mosie?) toward what happens when a culture forgets that. when a diagnosis stops being a door and starts being a sentence. when a mugshot outlives the person in it. when a sobriety date gets treated like the whole recovery instead of the one data point it actually is, in a much weirder, much longer story. that’s where the actual point lives. not “syringes good,” and also not “if people just saw the research they’d change” — the point is the much quieter chain / line-up of shaky dominos underneath all of it. attention becomes perception > perception becomes participation. perception doesn’t determine behavior, it determines what behaviors are even on the menu. if i can’t perceive someone’s humanity, compassion is unavailable to me–not bc i’m cruel, it’s unavailable because the door isn’t even on the wall i’m looking at. as far as harm reduction goes in the broader discourse: naloxone doesn’t make anyone choose recovery. it makes recovery possible. it keeps somebody alive long enough for willingness to show up uninvited, on its own timeline… which is the only timeline that has ever actually worked. from my paper heart to yours, olive thanks for listening/reading. this post is public-please share with the ones you love. 📎 filed under: harm reduction philosophy, spiritual abuse, high-control groups, purity culture, grief literacy, pattern recognition, sacred nonsense podcast, paperheart bureau, sober supremacy, trauma-informed storytelling This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

  4. May 15

    paper trails ∞ podcast ep. 3

    there are official records, and then there are true ones. this Fool's Journey begins with paperwork: birth certificates, adoption documents, salon name tags, state forms, grant reporting, intake systems, binders, signatures. it’s about versions of ourselves that institutional language can't really fully contain. and the fibers that I remember anyway. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

    paper trails ∞ podcast ep. 3

  5. Mar 14

    🎙️ i have a theory about harm reductionists — sacred nonsense | paperheart bureau | no. 01

    I Have a Theory About Harm Reductionists An incomplete list of things that are art! A serenity prayer nobody assigned you. A theory about harm reductionists that had to come out sideways, because that's the only way truth moves when you've been holding it too long. This is the first dispatch from Sacred Nonsense — a space where harm reduction, astrology, grief literacy, and the irreducible logic of a curb at 3 AM get filed in the same drawer. Where we call the work what it is, even when the grant application didn't have that box. In this episode: what ruins your eyes (in the good way). What 12-step probably got right and what it built on top of it. A prayer from Target. Curb logic. The Paperheart Bureau. And why a poet with forty pairs of glasses accidentally mapped the whole machine and then waited in the front row for someone to say it out loud. Welcome. I've been waiting for you too. Sacred Nonsense is a Paperheart Bureau podcast. Hosted by Olive Kirkpatrick. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Season 1, Episode 1 Trailer

    one-minute welcome to sacred nonsense

    Sacred Nonsense | Trailer We're all on the edge of something. This project starts there. Curb Logic is my preferred name for the the idea that a lot of us are out here at 3 a.m., in the dark, figuring it out without a roadmap. And when your eyes adjust, you start noticing other people doing the same thing. The nurse on her smoke break. The dealer who keeps Narcan in his console. People looking out for each other in ways that don't get counted. Shame kills people quietly before anything else does. This project takes that seriously. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sacrednonsense.substack.com/subscribe

    one-minute welcome to sacred nonsense
  • 1 Trailer
    5 Episodes

Trailer

About

Hosted and recorded on the disturbed soil of the evangelical Southeast, Sacred Nonsense is an audio series by Olive Kirkpatrick from the Paperheart Bureau. Follow the stories people tell about drugs, recovery, grief, care, and belonging, then ask what those stories let us see and what they let us leave out. This is a place for the person still using, the person counting days, the person on medication, the grieving friend, the peer worker, the survivors left behind, and the skeptic willing to look again. Nobody has to become a perfect recovery story to be worth protecting. New episodes appear here and in most podcast apps. Expect essays, conversations, witness accounts, questions for the people building systems, and occasional glitches in the paperwork. Companion writing and receipts live at https://sacrednonsense.substack.com/ ❥ ALL HEART ARE SACRED. (all of 'em. even yours.) sacrednonsense.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Olive Kirkpatrick ✜ Paperheart Bureau
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Olive (A. Hebert) ✦ Sacred Systems, LLC
  • Show Website
    Sacred Nonsense