Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's me Stephanie Wilder Tailor. This is Drunkish
the podcast. But you knew that the goal of this
podcast is to have fun conversations about sobriety without preaching.
Just keep it real and please please help me grow
and go rate and review if you have one minute.
I'm really excited about today's episode. I have Eleise Bryson.
She's got twenty years sober. She's the founder of the
Sober Curator, which is a lifestyle website all about sobriety.
They have stories, poetry, they talk about non alcoholic drink options,
they recommend quit lit books, and so much more. So
go check them out. We will get into all of
this and how she founded this website in the episode.
So here's a lease, and we are here with a lease.
Thank you so much for coming on the show with
short notice, and uh this is this is airing tomorrow,
so I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Well that is short notice. Thank you for having me, Stephanie.
I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't do a lot of it's not a lot
of bells and whistles on this podcast.
Speaker 4: I it's it's you pretty real. Yeah, live to you know,
live to tape, but edit.
Speaker 1: I let your story flow and let unless you say
some stuff that later.
Speaker 4: You're like, uh oh that has happened, said too much?
Speaker 3: That has happened. I unfortunately learned the hard way.
Speaker 2: One time I shared some stuff that my mom did
not know about me, and it was okay, like I
she shouldn't she should have known that about me, but
she should not have heard it from a podcast versus
me just telling her.
Speaker 3: So I learned that once.
Speaker 2: And then one time I shared some things about the
father of my child and like a day later, I
had to call the podcast or be like, I'm sorry,
you have to take that out, like or I'm going
to have to make amends and I don't want to
do that, so can we just take it out?
Speaker 3: So I have learned. I have learned.
Speaker 1: Yes, my friend and I wanted to come out with
a t shirt line that was something like I don't
have room for you on my tent step like you know, little.
Speaker 3: That's good, that's good.
Speaker 4: The only people you know if you know, you know.
Speaker 3: I love inside.
Speaker 2: I love inside bench bench bench talk or inside talk,
whatever it is.
Speaker 3: I love that I've been here for that all day long.
Speaker 1: One time I went to this meeting, and I called
my sponsor afterwards and I was so mad, and I said,
all these I shared at this I shared at this meeting,
and all these people were like, I said, I don't
just don't know if I'm an alcoholic. I'm just not sure,
Like I mean, I'm going to like I'm I'm I'm
staying sober, but I just don't know if I want
that label. And I said, all these people shared the well,
I know I'm an alcoholic, and I was I was like,
and they were directing that at me, they were judging me,
and I was like, I think I need to do
a ten step on the on the whole meeting.
Speaker 3: The whole room, the whole room is on the list tonight, folks.
Speaker 4: My sponsor said, or you just let it go.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, there's also that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, that would be a lot less work. So tell
me about yourself. You we we were just talking before
I hit record. You're twenty years sober.
Speaker 2: Just turned twenty yeah, May first to twenty twenty six first, Yeah,
because I'm telling you, cool kids get sober in May.
Speaker 3: Also in the other months, but there's just May is
a big month.
Speaker 2: Something must have happened or happens every May, because I
just noticed. You notice after enough decades, right when you're
in places at celebrate anniversary, birthdays, whatever you want to.
Speaker 3: Call it, Like some months have a lot more than others.
Speaker 2: Like January is another really big month, and that one's
kind of obvious as to why.
Speaker 3: But I've just noticed that May is a big month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's kind of hacked to get sober
in January.
Speaker 4: So I want it to be different, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say.
Speaker 2: So my date is May first, and that was before
May the fourth, be with you, and I'm a star
wars nerd so I'm a little like I contemplated one year.
I was like a little relapse, just a little three
day or like, so I could get the date that
I want.
Speaker 3: And then my sponsor at the time, she's.
Speaker 2: Like, was like, or you could just change your date,
like there's not like a date police, And I was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, but also but it wasn't that day.
Speaker 2: But I mean probably I had enough in my system
it could have been that day, like you know, but anyway,
I stuck with the OG date. But I do think
if I if I ever have to do it again,
I'm gonna be thoughtful about the date because you use
it so frequently, so it's an important day, like you know,
you know.
Speaker 1: When I first got sober. The truth is, I'm admitting
this to you for the first time. I don't know
if I've said this ever. The truth was that May
twenty second was the last time I got drunk.
Speaker 4: May twenty third actually my sobriety date.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but somehow in my head at the beginning, because
it makes sense, I was like, Okay, May twenty second,
that's my last. Then I finished drinking, and I just
never really it just never occurred to me for a
long for a couple of years, and then I was like,
you know, if you really think about it, I wasn't
sober on May twenty second.
Speaker 4: I was sober on May twenty third. But then I
was like, I was sort of it. That was my birthday.
Speaker 3: I'm going to change it.
Speaker 2: And I already got my birthday tattooed on my body,
so like there's kind of you know, I'm committed at
this point. And somebody asked me once what happens if
you do relapse, and I was like, you know, here's
the thing. I would just add the new date and
maybe put a thin line through the old date, because
me relapsing doesn't mean the old date didn't matter. It
mattered in a big, big, big, big big way, right,
So it doesn't. So that's the other thing about dates
is they can be important. You can lose them, and
they don't lose their importance because they're still part of
the journey, part of the process. And I say this
because one of my best friend's sons just got sober
and wait for it, his day is May the fourth,
and I was like, dude, I don't want to and
that means he's like not even sixty days sober at
this point, right, or just barely sixty days. And I
was like, dude, I don't want to put the pressure on,
but like, you have picked the best date and you
don't even know it. So just like, if you relapse,
I'm still gonna love you, I'm still gonna support you,
but I will probably have a resentment that you had
the best sober day of the year and you threw
it away.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope that helps him.
Speaker 3: I hope so too. Sure, right, the pressure, So.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about your story, like what
was going on more than twenty years ago, more.
Speaker 2: Than twenty years ago, so more than twenty years ago,
like twenty and a half years ago. I woke up,
I was I had I had gotten I woke up
I live in this I grew up in a small
town between Seattle and Portland, and I had moved back
there when I first had my son. Young single mom,
I got sober, I got not sober. I definitely did
not get sober at twenty. I got pregnant at twenty,
so young single mom. I had gone to college, lasted
in Seattle for like two years, and I was back
home immediately pregnant and trying to figure out my life.
Speaker 3: And then I fell into.
Speaker 2: A job in advertising at the local newspaper. And I'm
really good at it. I'm really good at talking. I'm
really good at talking people into things. I'm really good
like listening to what people need and then like, here's
the solution, and a salesperson that's over drinks. So it
was literally the perfect job for me until it wasn't right.
And so I woke up one day and I had
burned most of the bridges in this very small town,
and I was like, I got to get out of here.
And my kid's dad and his stepmom lived like north
of Seattle. So I was like, I'm gonna move to Seattle.
I'm gonna work for the Seattle Times, and I'll be
closer to his dad, and I'm just going to start
my life over.
Speaker 3: Because you know, those of us that deal with deep.
Speaker 2: Addictions, like we love the concept of a clean slate
and a do over, like right, We're obsessed with it.
Speaker 4: We have a name for it. We call it a geographic.
Speaker 3: Do call it a geographic?
Speaker 2: And so literally from the time I woke up that
morning and was like, I got to get out of
here because I had I had stirred up some major drama, right,
some major drama, and I.
Speaker 3: Was like, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 2: Thirty days later, like to the day I was in Seattle,
I had the job at the Seattle Times, and I
was starting over, right, And it was then in that
six month window that literally all emotional hell broke loose.
So I had had a lot of consequences from my
drinking over my career I started around sixteen, A lot
of consequences, A lot of shady things happened. I did
a lot of shady things, right, because when you put
your plate yourself in shady places with shady people, like
shady things will happen. But this six month, like the
last six months of my drinking career, nothing really shady
significant happened, other than because I had removed myself from
one environment and put myself in a new environment where
I didn't know very many people. My drinking at home
really escalated, like really escalated, because up until that point,
I was just the good time girl, right like I'll
go out any night of the week and we'll have
a great time, and I'm a lot of fun until
I'm not kind of girl. Right Well, now I'm I
got my son, I don't really know anybody, so.
Speaker 3: I'm drinking at home alone a lot.
Speaker 2: And that's where and I don't know, like I felt
it in my body, something shifted.
Speaker 3: I'd always been a blackout drinker.
Speaker 2: That was not new, And I had always been when
I start drinking, I can't stop.
Speaker 3: That was not new.
Speaker 2: But there was something else that shifted that I can't
I've never been able to like really like label properly.
It was I like I really lost control and and
then it was like I was I was breaking every
rule I had, Like I don't drink before eight pm,
or I don't drink on Tuesdays.
Speaker 3: That's not true. Daco Tuesday. I always drink on Taco.
Speaker 2: Tuesday Market, Like you know, I like it, just things
like like I know why, I really no longer had
a handle on it. And the I had started carpooling
with this woman I was working at the Seattle time.
Started carpooling with this woman. She was sober and if
we car pulled together. She also lived in the area
that I did, and it was a pretty healthy commute
into the city, like an hour each way, and we
would get free parking, and parking was expensive then. It's
expensive now, but it was expensive then, and I wanted
to save as much money as I.
Speaker 3: Could so I could buy my alcohol and the other
things I use with that.
Speaker 2: And so here I am stuck in the car with
a sober woman like two hours a day, five days
a week.
Speaker 3: And I didn't and didn't.
Speaker 2: She's not somebody at first I would have like chosen
to hang out with. But you spend that much time
with someone, you get to know them, or at least
she got to know me. Because I was monop monopolizing
the conversation as I'm doing right now. But I just
started telling her all of my junk right and she
would just sit there and listen to it, and she'd
be like, yeah, I know what that's like. I very similar.
If you ever want to know what I did, I'm
happy to like share it with you.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to take you to a meeting.
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, thanks, Like I don't even
really like you, so I don't want what you have,
but just keep listening to my stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, boring, just keep listening to my stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, time march on and that inevitable weekend came and
I called my sister and I was like, I really
can't do this anymore.
Speaker 3: This is really getting out of control. Like I could
see the end.
Speaker 2: I could see I hadn't lost anything. I also had
not gained anything. I think that's doesn't get talked about enough.
I think we talk a lot about what we lose,
but like all the things I didn't gain because I
couldn't because I was either drunk or hungover. Right, but
I could see that I was going to lose my house,
or lose my driver's license because I was definitely a
drunk driver, or lose my job or lose custody of
my kid. Like it was like it was all about
to tip and I somehow had this foresight like it
was going to go down badly. And I called my sister,
who was a chaplain at the time. She's a therapist
now specializing in drug and alcohol addiction. I like to
take credit for her career. She just never appreciates that.
So I think I really helped her find her way.
And she had me call one of those eight hundred
hotline numbers, which was in Seattle. It was inner group,
and you know, there was some really happy person on
the other side of the phone telling me to dump
out my alcohol. And I was like, you're crazy. I'm
not going to dump it out. I'll give it to
one of my friends. But like that's like I don't
even recycle, but I'm not doing that. Like that's crazy.
And so I called my sister back and I was like,
that didn't really work.
Speaker 3: You know, she wants me to jump out the alcohol.
I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2: And she's like, why don't you call the carpool lady
And I was like, uh, carpool lady.
Speaker 3: So I did.
Speaker 2: I called the carpool lady and Carpoolady took me to
my first meeting, which I of course hated.
Speaker 3: To be clear, it was an Alano club.
Speaker 4: I hated it.
Speaker 2: I hated it so much so then I made the
very quick decision of that's not for me. That's not
going to work, that doesn't work, it's not for me, right,
And so then that set me off on my little
adventure of interviewing going to different therapists. I went to
a couple of treatment centers and did like an intake form,
and weird, all of them were suggesting that I like
Sandra Bullock twenty eight Days.
Speaker 3: And I was like, listen, I'm a single mom.
Speaker 2: I have a career. I don't have time for that.
Like there has to be like is there a pill
or something you can give me? I love pills, Like
there's got to be like a pill, you know. And
they're like, no, no, have you tried? Have you tried
a twelve step room? And I was like, up, totally
did it and not for me? Right? And and she
then prodded, she was like, can you tell me a
little bit more why? And so as she prodded, I
gave my answers and she's like, well, there is there
is a there is a meeting here at the treatment
center for women only on Tuesday night.
Speaker 4: I was I knew, I was.
Speaker 1: I knew they were going to say, have you tried
a women's only meeting?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 2: And because women only, no, thanks, like men only sign
me up, you know, but like uh so I was
like uh, And she's like, listen, I think if you
tried this one.
Speaker 3: It's mostly for inpatient, which we still really.
Speaker 2: Commend you do, but the people that come through the
program and then come back like from outside, you could
come to it. And I was like, I'll keep that
in mind. And then she told me they had an
outpatient program, and I was like, I can do that.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna skip over in patient.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go straight to outpatient because I'm just so
advanced at everything in life. And I'm gonna wait till
summer break and my son will go stay with my
parents and then I will work during the day, I
will outpatient at night. I will see my son on
the weekends. I Am going to project manage my rock bottom,
right And they were like, this doesn't this is not
a good idea, but okay, if this is the only
and at this point. It was like we were like
in April, right, and so she was like, well, what
are you gonna do between now and then to not drink?
And I was just like, I'm gonna drink. What are
you talking about? Like, I don't have to not drink
for another like thirty days, Calm down, right, And that's
what she was like, again, the meeting will be here,
and I'm like I'll sure, okay. Well, then some time
went by, and then inevitably I had one of those
weekends of so much shame, guilt and shame.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was just telling this story the
other day of my last drink.
Speaker 2: If I had known that my last drink was going
to be my last drink, I would have done a
much better job, because my last drink is sad and pathetic.
It was a Sunday. I had been bend shrinking all
weekend and I woke up very hungover on the couch
and my son was watching SpongeBob. I can still see
the room very clearly. We had one of those really big, old,
the old school big screen TVs that were like just
as wide deep as they were wide, you know the
one I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And how old was your son at this time?
Speaker 3: It was nine at the time.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's almost thirty now, and I was looking around
immediately I woke up and I needed a drink right
And the only thing that was left over was this
warm bottle of opened wine or champagne. It was light
in color, so I don't remember now, and he had
the night before he had started filling it with gumballs,
trying to get me to stop drinking it. That was
my last drink is warm unopened or warm wine that
had been opened overnight.
Speaker 3: Filled with gumballs. Like that's sad, you know, it's sad.
Speaker 2: And so so I ended up going to one of
those meetings on that Tuesday night, and what do you know,
I heard my story over and over and over and
over and over, like every single woman had the like
exact details of my story.
Speaker 3: Not there were no like even variants.
Speaker 2: There was no wiggle room for me to be like, no,
you're not like them I had.
Speaker 3: I just really confronted the reality of, oh, you are
an alcoholic.
Speaker 2: I'm very comfortable with that word. Some people aren't, and
it's okay if you're not, I am. I am too,
But it takes like I wasn't.
Speaker 3: Then, right, I wasn't then, And I was like, you are.
Speaker 2: And and the thing is I had said it before,
but i'd said it like a badge of honor, as
like a joke, like yeah, I'm a professional drinker. Okay,
I never got paid to drink, to be clear. And
I was so overwhelmed. And I have told this story
many times before too, but I ran out of that meeting.
Speaker 3: I got in my car.
Speaker 2: I didn't stay to hold hands, I didn't stay to
put my chair away. I ran because I confronting reality
in public brings on emotions.
Speaker 3: Which I didn't know what to do with, and I
needed out.
Speaker 2: Like if one person had like looked at me funny
or tried to hug me, I would have completely lost
my shit. And I ran to the car, and I
was so mad at God. I grew up in a
Christian home. Both my grandfathers were pastors. I went to
a private Christian school where my mother was the teacher. Right,
so I don't have I don't have a problem with
the concept of God or a higher power. I was
really mad at God because I was like, Okay, you know,
I'm chubby, I'm single, I'm a single Mom, I'm.
Speaker 3: Barely living paycheck to paycheck, and.
Speaker 2: Now you want to take my vodka away, like you're
just mean, you know, you're just mean and you don't
care about me, to take the well the only thing
around that's been there for me, which is obviously not true,
but that's what I thought in my head. And as
I was driving back to my house, I was shaking
my fist at God, just like, if this is really it,
give me one more sign.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And as I'm demanding a sign from God, a ding
goes off in my car and it says.
Speaker 3: Perform service. And I was just like, I had to
pull over. I had to pull over.
Speaker 2: And yes, I know I needed an oil change, not
the point of the story. I was demanding a sign
and I got perform service. I also did not realize
how funny that line would be over the years, right, Obviously,
I had no idea. I pulled over to the side
of the road and I just something cracked open, like surrender.
I just cracked open and I started like you know
when you laugh through tears, and there's just booger and
laugh and crying, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Just sitting there and I'm just like, because.
Speaker 2: My God has a sense of humor. He was like, Okay,
she's demanding a sign.
Speaker 3: Let's give her one.
Speaker 2: See what she does next, right, And I was like,
what I mean, Okay, fine, you win, I'm done. I'll
do whatever. I will literally like, you're right, I'm done,
and just total surrender. And I wish there was some
way you could package that up and hand someone told
her total surrender, but unfortunately it's a very personal experience
that you just have to get to when you get
to it. In my that's what I believe. And as
I was sitting there surrendering and just like I give up, fine,
I will do whatever, I look back into the dash
and the perform service had gone away, and what came
back up was my cast tank and it showed I
was just a little bit below a quarter of a tank,
not quite yet on empty. And then what I heard,
as if there really was a person in the passenger seat,
which yes, I was hearing voices that is where I
was in my addiction. What I heard then was God saying,
you can do this.
Speaker 3: Now. The next time I come back for you, you
will be past empty.
Speaker 2: And I mean I heard it, and I was just
and that to me was my burning Bush moment. And
by the grace of God and a bunch of other things,
I haven't had a drink since that night, which was
April thirtieth, two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: So did you go back, did you go into treatment
into like a thirty day or did you continue?
Speaker 2: Did you stayed on my project management self will plan.
I did not go to the thirty day because I
still convinced myself I couldn't afford it, couldn't do it.
I had good insurance at the time, but I just
like I couldn't do it. But I did do outpatient
and I did start hanging out in church basements every
single day, and I did. I did everything everyone told
me to do, and you know what, it worked. I
did get sober and I did stay sober. But I
around year three or year four, I didn't want to drink.
I didn't want to live because what had happened is
I hadn't actually changed anything. I had managed to not
drink for three or four years. I had managed to
not put any drugs in my body for three or
four years. My career had taken off. Now I'm at
a magazine. I'm running this fancy magazine so I got
my dream job. By getting sober, great, I became a
raging workaholic, and I didn't change anything else, meaning I
was still making a lot of bad, questionable decisions with
my dating life. You know, there was still a lot.
I still was not managing money. Well, I was still like,
nothing really changed other than I wasn't drunk. And so
where that left me was actually more depressed and more
shamefull of shame, and more broken at year three or
four than I was a day three or four, right,
And that was scary to confront the I don't want
to live because I was a mom and I was
like and he was still like very young, you know,
he was like thirteen at the time, now four fourteen
at the time. And so that is what it took
for me to not only meet with a doctor and
a therapist and get on a plan medically, but I
also then actually stopped sitting in rooms and I started
doing step work. And step work is where my life changed.
That's where everything changed. But the workoholism continued. And where
that left me was at ten years sober, I had
emergency heart surgery. So at the age of forty, Yeah,
at the age of forty, and that is that was
a direct result of the alcoholic drugs I had put
in my body for sixteen years and then the stressful
life I was living for the next ten years. Right,
And so I have definitely one big walking cautionary tail.
Speaker 3: And I will say what happened then, even.
Speaker 2: Though I had worked the steps at that point a
couple of times, and I've been sponsoring lots of people,
and I will say, for me, helping other people through
their step work was more beneficial than me going through
it myself. And I stand by that to this day.
And that's why I will still help people to this day,
because I get so much out of it. And at
the end of the day, I'm still super selfish, but
almost dying at the age of forty, being wheeled into
emergency heart surgeries, you know, saying goodbye to my son,
saying goodbye to my parents, not knowing if I was
coming back out. That'll change your perspective on how you
do a lot of things. And so the last decade
has been trying to figure out a career with work
life balance, which I've done a really good improvement.
Speaker 3: There. Am I perfect?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 2: No do? I still tend to work too much sometimes, absolutely,
But I've got checks and balances in place, right, and
everything I was doing ten years ago for my recovery
I still do and a little bit more because I'm
of the camp that this is a progressive thing that
I'm not ever going to be cured from.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to define me, but it's progressive.
Speaker 2: Meaning if I were to pick up a drink today,
I believe I would be worse off today than I
was ten years ago, twenty years ago. So if this
thing is progressive, then I have to be progressive in
what I do for it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And for those of you that buy insurance policies, think
about why you buy insurance policies, right. You buy them
because it gives you a sense of protection. And I
love insurance policies. I will put insurance on anything. I've
got insurance on my dog, right, Like if I buy
an appliance and they're like, do you want insurance?
Speaker 3: Yes, I do.
Speaker 2: I want insurance on everything because it gives me the
sense of false control. But it also when things do
go sideways, it does help. And so I believe there's
a lot of things I have to do for my
insurance policy on my recovery and that I'll actually have
to come has to come first, because if I'm not
sober and work and being in recovery first and foremost,
none of the rest of it matters. I'm not a
good friend, I'm not a good daughter, I'm not a
good mom. You know, I'm not a good anything. If
I'm not working on constantly improving the areas that I
naturally gravitate towards big an asshole are being super selfish,
and so I am on a long journey. I'm definitely
not there yet. I've learned a lot of things. Unfortunately,
there's still a lot of things I seem to have
to keep repeating, which sucks. But I look if I
when I look back now, if I would have said, hey,
lease of twenty years ago, if you just do these
actually really simple things so I like to overcomplicate things,
If you just do these really simple, simple things repeatedly,
you're going to get all of this. I would have
never believed I would have had the life that I've
had over the last two decades twenty years ago, never
in a million years, And I wouldn't have dreamt big
enough for myself right the.
Speaker 3: Dreams I had were eh.
Speaker 2: The dreams I got were wow, you know, And so
I'm actually very excited to see what's next because in
a book somewhere it does say the best is yet
to come.
Speaker 1: So do you still work for a magazine, because I
know you've built you'r the Sober Curator, And I mean,
I want to hear, how long into sobriety did you
start working making your career about sobriety.
Speaker 3: So that's such a good question. I didn't for a
long time.
Speaker 2: So when I was at the magazine for a decade
and then I left and went to a TV station,
an NBCTV station in Seattle, and I worked on their
lifestyle shows. Oh wow, okay, And because we were producing
two lifestyle shows and one YouTube lifestyle show locally. So
that's the same thing. That's like taking a magazine and
bringing the content to life. And that was also during
a time where social media was shifting into more video content,
more and more and more video content. You know, we
weren't quite we were just we were just starting the
tiktoks of the world and the instagram reels of the world,
and YouTube was becoming much more mainstream and I was
it was I was there during the pandemic, and so
up until twenty twenty, I did not recover out loud
on the internet because I was told at the level
of press, radio, and film. And that's all what I
was told is press, radio and film.
Speaker 3: Right. So, but if you met me in person and
it came up.
Speaker 2: In an organic way that I could be helpful, I
wasn't shy about it, but I was most definitely not
putting it on a hat or a shirt or LinkedIn.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But then when the pandemic happened and we all many
of us got pushed to work from home, and I
was then given the gift of time. So I was
no longer commuting, I was no longer going to events,
I was no longer traveling. That's a lot of time
now just at home. And because I'm a heart survivor,
I was being extra extra cautious because in the early
days of COVID, we didn't know what we didn't know right, right, right,
So I was definitely the one wiping her groceries down. Yes,
I was that girl. And after we had been there
for a couple months and realized, oh, this is going
to be much longer than the three weeks, they told
us this is going to be We're going to be
here for a minute.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, you have two choices. You can
either finish watching the rest.
Speaker 2: Of Netflix, or you can do something with your time
that when this is over and we all come back
to the normal world, you feel proud of. And so
that is when I decided to launch the Sober Curator.
It was actually six years ago this week that I
sat down at my parents' dining room table and pulled
out my laptop and was like I had at this point.
I I had run a city magazine, I had worked
at a big TV station, but I was like the
boss of the people that were building the website and
doing the social media and writing the content and editing
the content. I wasn't doing any of those things, right,
I'm just the mouthpiece. But I was like, I should
be able to figure this out. So I taught myself WordPress,
and I taught myself graphic design, and I taught myself
how to write the way that I talked. So then
it kind of sounds like me. I mean, it does
sound like me. But then I knew like with this project,
because I knew what I wanted. I at that point
there was a sober community online, right, their sober influencers exist.
There was now a bunch of books, There was now
a bunch of podcasts, Great awesome love seeing that would
have used much of that in early sobriety. But as
a person at that point fifteen years sober, it didn't
speak to me as a woman in long term sobriety,
which I think anything with two digits is long term.
And so I was like, where is the space online
for people in long term recovery? Because we still have problems.
Things are still hard, life gets lifey. Our problems are
just classier, right and.
Speaker 3: So we and we yeh.
Speaker 2: So I just I couldn't find it, and so I
was like, you know what, I'm just gonna build it myself.
So that's what I did. I sat down at my
parents' dining room table. I mapped out a plan. I
launched the site by accident before it was ready. The
original name was The Sober Critic, which I thought was clever,
and then I was like, oh no, Like one week
in I was like, oh no, people are going to
think I'm criticizing the different path of recovery, which I'm not. Right,
I don't care, and so our whole thing is like,
I don't care how you get sober.
Speaker 3: I don't care why you get sober.
Speaker 2: I don't even care if you don't like the word sober,
but if you're not putting substances in your body on
purpose so that you can show up fully present and
just deal with the life, the life that can serve
to you, like I want to have a conversation with you,
and I want to keep you motivated. I want to
keep you inspired, I want to keep you entertained. Right,
And so, the Sober Curator is a lifestyle hub, and
we write a rout. We write about non alcoholic drinks,
all the kinds, except we don't cover the ones with
THHD in them because I am trying to hold space
for everyone, and I don't If you drink those, that's fine,
but I need to hold space for the people that don't, too, right,
so we don't. We were very intentional about what we
do and don't cover on the drink side, and the
drink side is not for everyone.
Speaker 3: Some people can be very triggered by that.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it's like to be in early
sobriety and have all those options because they didn't exist
when I was sober, but they probably would have been
triggery for me. I can have them now if I'm
out at a fancy dinner, I'm like, sure, I'll try
your mocktail off your menu.
Speaker 3: But am I making cocktails at home that are alcohol free?
I'm not. I'm drinking diet coke, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember a couple of years into the writ, No,
maybe it was really early. Maybe it was in my
first year. I remember going to a restaurant and ordering
Tremi sue and oh yeah, having a bite of it
and being like, oh, oh yeah, wow, this really tastes
like alcohol. And then I had a whole thing in
my head because I was like, well, you're not going
to get drunk off Terremi Sue or kids couldn't order it,
you know, but it still felt wrong and not awaken
the beast right, And I was like, well, it's still
tasting so much like alcohol that I'm very uncomfortable. So
I didn't eat it. And then I felt weird about
it and told my sponsor and she was like, you're fine.
It's about intention, and it is about yeah, but it
was a it was a kind of a little wake
up call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of like, oh, labels, Yeah, read labels and know
your body right, and I have had. I did that
once with a cherry Jubilee and it was just having
that one bite and I was like, oh oh, and I.
Speaker 3: Knew I wasn't going to get drunk off the dessert
right right right. And I probably even had like two
more bites.
Speaker 2: I know I didn't finish it, but I will say
it stayed in my mind for a couple of weeks,
and so that's all I needed to know to that
was the research I needed to know. It's not for you, right,
It's not for you. It's not worth it, It's not
worth the risk. We also write about we write about fashion,
we write about merchandise. I love finding sober business owners
that are doing their thing and maybe they're not recovering
out loud, but they just they're a sober business owner.
I want to I want to get to know them.
I want to help promote their companies because if given
the choice to do business with someone who's sober, I'm
going to pick them. Every time we cover travel, we
love covering travel and events. We have a very row
bust events and retreat calendar, and then entertainment is really
our stick. So we do a ton of book reviews,
podcast reviews, movie reviews, TV show reviews, music celebrities, anything
that is in pop culture that ends up in the
sober zeitgeist. I'm trying to like grab a hold of.
So a good example of this was at the beginning
of July, the original manuscript with Bill W's handwriting went
on sale at Christy's Auction in New York and it
has actually been purchased by the foundation that runs the
Bill and Lowis House wherever that is. That foundation has
actually purchased a manuscriptisodes now it's returned back to its
original owners, if you will. But that manuscript has been
in other people's eccentric rich people's eccentric collections for many
years and sold for many millions of dollars to the
different places. So that's something that's interesting to me, right,
It's interesting to me that that is still something that's
been preserved and archived, and it's interested to me the
hands that it's changed and the daughters. The man who
owned it passed away and so the daughters were selling
off a lot of his pieces of collection, but they
save that one for last, because that was the one
he was most important to him. I just think, you know,
these are things that are interesting, and that's what we're
trying to do with this number curator is to archive
this stuff in real time, so we can kind.
Speaker 3: Of archive what happened in the past.
Speaker 2: But we're also trying to like, we're not going to
be able to predict the future, but we're trying to
see where things are going.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Now we've got the layer of AI involved, and some
people are using AI in their sobriety tools. I have
yet to figure out how to have AI write my
fourth step, but you know that's fun.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you, like, what are a couple of
movies about sobriety. I'll tell you one of mine, Yeah,
one of my favorites. And I'll tell you one of
my favorite books. But I am a sucker for When
a Man Loves a Woman Meg Ryan, Andy Garcia. I'll
tell you why I love it so much, because I
feel like there have been a lot of movies about alcoholics,
and you know, or people who not necessarily alcoholic, but
people who are trying to be alcohol free. I kid
with I'm making a joke about some people don't want it.
We don't want to label ourselves. But you know, there's
been movies about addiction. Let's just say a lot of them,
and a lot of them have to do with And
this goes back to what we were talking about at
the beginning, about the getting sober and then once you
get sober, that's the goal, and then everybody lives happily
ever after. What I really liked about When a Man
Loves a Woman was that so Meg Ryan, you know,
is like a happy drunk, pretty pretty functional, except that
she's she's like us where you know, she has a
nice life, but she get when she drinks, she does
it too much, and you know, shit happens, and so
she falls through her shower. She hits her kid and
then falls through her shower door and the kid thinks
she's died, and it's very sad and she has to
go to rehab. And then when she gets out of rehab,
her husband, who's very hot Andy Garcia is really seems
to be being the greatest husband ever. He's very he
cares about her, he's trying to, you know, and she
gets the ick from her husband because now she's sober
and she's like, ough, he's so codependent. He's infantilizing me,
and she wants to just hang out with her edgy,
new sober friends, and she's mad and irritable. And then
Andy Garcia, whose name I forgot in the movie, so
we'll just call me Andy Garcia, is like, I like,
this is not okay, Like I would like to have
my wife not tell me her skin crawls when I
touch her, basically.
Speaker 4: And then they're gonna get a divorce. They're going to
get separated. And I was like, this is the dealing
with like.
Speaker 1: Real shit, Like it's not easy, the aftermath of getting sober,
like some stuff changes, it's hard, and that's the part
that's I think the some of the important story to
tell is how do you get through that and how
do you lean on your friends but also confront some
of your own issues. And I don't know, I thought
it was a really good movie.
Speaker 3: It's a really good movie. It's a classic for a
reason for sure.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, the way the alcohol is portrayed in movies
and TV shows is, you know, we either see the
traditional rock bottom in the first thirty days, but then
we never know what happens to them after that. I
also so at the Sobercurator. We have a private membership
if you will. All the content on the Sober Curator
is free, got almost three thousand pieces of content.
Speaker 3: Our newsletter is free.
Speaker 2: But earlier this year we started backstage with the Sober Curator,
which is it is a paid membership, but think of
it as like masterclass but interactive, and a podcast but interactive.
You come and you are learning something and oh, by
the way, everybody in the room happens to be sober
or they're a sober ally right. And so we recently
had Ted Mandel from Notre Dame is a professor at
Notre Dame and he teaches a class call a course
called Drunk on Film where he exposes the way that
Hollywood portray's alcohol in a way that it sets it
up to be not what it really is, you know,
glamorous and without consequence and whatever.
Speaker 3: And so he just came and.
Speaker 2: Took us through like a one hour version of his course,
and I have to tell you, I got so mad
watching it because I can see now the movies that
I watched in the nineties and the two thousands why
I was so influenced to drink the way that I did.
But then was baffled so that I had these consequences,
but the characters in the films didn't, you know, And
so that was a fascinating thing. What I'm hoping as
we're archiving all these reviews on is it a good
job of showing addiction? Is it too stereotypical? Like I
want to see more characters in films and movies that
have five years sober, ten years sober, fifteen years sober,
and it's part of the storyline, it doesn't have to
be the only part. And we're seeing that. So like
The Lincoln Lawyer, if you've watched that series, I think
it's on Netflix. He's a detective. No, he's an attorney,
excuse me, but he does a lot of detective work
for his cases. He's sober, and so once in a
while you'll hear him say something that is a language
that those of us that hang out in church basements
will pick up on. There was also a show that
came out. It had two seasons I believe, called Single
Drunk Female and Yes. The main character it was about
she was twenty seven. She lost her job because of
her drinking, and so the show follows her in the
first one year of her sobriety, and she goes to
twelve step rooms and her mom is super codependant and
her mom was Ali sheety. Her aunt is Molly Ringwald.
Like it's great, you know, but what the characters that
I actually identified with in that show were her sponsors.
In season one, her sponsor had ten years right. In
season two, her sponsor was actually played by Busy Phillips,
and she was twenty years sober, but she was a kleptomaniac,
you know. And so it was just like, that's what
I want to see because I've evolved in my recovery
journey and now I want the movies and the TV shows.
I want them to catch up. And so but in
order to have that happen, we have to be talking
about it, I think. And so that's what we look
for when we're looking for movies. I think my favorite,
though if I had to say my favorite of all time,
I could narrow it down to two. I'm always going
to vote twenty eight Days with Sander Bullet because to me,
that's a classic. I even during the pandemic, made a
Peep's diary of it. I thought it was very clever
and then and that one's just obviously she's drunk. She
goes to rehab for twenty eight days. That's the storyline,
she gets sober. We don't know what happens though afterwards.
So I would love to see twenty eight days later
two or something and now it's like her daughter has
to go to rehab.
Speaker 3: I think that would be a really great sequel.
Speaker 2: I've also loved Flight with Denzel Washington because there's a
few and Denzel Washington is ten years sober irl, and
so I do think if you pay attention to celebrities, actors,
actresses that are truly in addiction it have been through
addiction and are now sober, and you see them play
a character with addiction, they will play it better than
anybody ever can because they're drawing on lived experience. Jamie
Lee Curtis is another example. She plays an alcoholic mom
in The Bear and there's an episode I think it's
like season three years four, you know, the one where
she makes.
Speaker 4: Some mens yeah, uh huh yeah.
Speaker 2: Like there's that's she's drawing from lived experience. That is
I'm sorry, And she is an amazing actor. She's won awards,
but like, I don't believe in even even the best
actor on earth. If they don't have the lived experience,
they're not going to be able to do it the
same way. This is the hill I'm willing to die
on because I just think it makes a difference, right,
And so that's the kind of stuff that we love
stories like we learned from stories, and so that's why
I think it's very important that the stories start to evolve,
because I believe that recovery is evolving.
Speaker 1: Here's a book that I love that I read years
before I got sober, and I'm sure you love this
book too, But Drinking a love Story.
Speaker 3: It's a Caroline Nap Journal Library. You must, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read that book probably four or five times,
and you know, over the course of many many years.
I'm saying because, like I said, I read it before
I ever got sober. But wow, what a great book.
Not a perfect person no spoiler alert, she dies.
Speaker 4: So sad.
Speaker 1: Then I read a book by her best friend whose
name is Gail. Now I can't remember the book, but
it's about their friendship, which was a really beautiful book
that I liked very much.
Speaker 4: So what do you think?
Speaker 1: I mean, Like I said, before I hit record, you
were saying that you do you feel because I think
that sobriety has become much more trendy and many people
talking about it, which I appreciate. I think it's been normalized.
So when I got sober seventeen years ago, it was
still there was a lot of shame about especially for
me because I was a mom. So I don't know
if you know this book. So I had written a
book called Sippy Cups or Not for Chardonnay, which was
a huge book, and I talked a lot about drinking
in the book.
Speaker 4: This was not a book written sober.
Speaker 1: This was a book written by an alcoholic who was
trying to justify my drinking as being hilarious and a lifestyle.
You know, I did not know better. I started writing
the book when my daughter was only a few months old,
and I was an edgy, you know, comedian who was like,
I don't have to lose my personality.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I wasn't drinking as much as I probably portrayed in
the book. But the point is when I got sober
many years later, it became news because here's this person
who had written all about how great drinking as a
mom is and defending drinking and then all of a sudden,
I wasn't drinking, so the New York Times was interested.
Way too many people were interested, and I was very
newly sober. So by the time I was like six
months sober, I was doing interview.
Speaker 4: I was very certain that I was done drinking.
Speaker 1: I like you had the gift of desperation and was done.
So it wasn't even though I was still for the
first year like, I don't know if I'm a diagnosable
like alcoholic, like what is like? I still feel like
my drinking was different than other people's. I was doing
that for like the first year until I decided a
year in doesn't really matter. I don't want to drink,
and I don't want to drink more than I want
to go back to drinking, so who cares. I'll call
it alcoholic. I guess I'm an Alcohol'll call it that,
you know. And then I got used to that, and
it's totally fine with me now. And I appreciate the
word because I am a black and white thinker and
I need to think of myself as I need to
be somebody who's like, I can't drink not well, I
don't know, I might not be an alcoholic.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm just alcohol free.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's fine, But that, to me, that
implies that there's a chance that I might be able
to sneak in. Once I figured this all out and
I've done alcohol free for a while, I could reintroduce
alcohol and be different. And I just know I reached
a point where I was like, no, I'm just never
going to drink again. But my point that I was
going to make is that for a long time, it
was very difficult to do these like TV appearances, and
because I would get a lot of like shitty comments online,
or you know, when an article about me came out
in the New York Times, all the comments were like
she should have her kids taken away. And I feel
like we've made a lot of progress in being able
to share stories of the normalcy of just being a
sober person in the world and talking about some of
the things that you used to only hear in meetings.
I think have become accessible to regular people.
Speaker 4: Being able to listen to.
Speaker 1: A podcast like this and hearing what people's lives were
really like and hearing you talk about being a single
mom and drinking and having your son put gumballs in
your wine. That used to be the kind of thing
that could just fill people with shame and not want
to ever share.
Speaker 4: Something like that.
Speaker 1: And I think that now it's become not cool, I
don't want to say that, but normalized, so that people
who maybe struggle but are like I don't know if
I'm I don't know if I want to do all that,
like get sober, but they can start to hear themselves,
you know what I'm saying, without having to go to
rehab or make this giant leap into going to twelve
step meetings. If they don't think that's for them, don't
you think that this is kind of a very good
thing that I do grow many many more stories about
people being sober.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we rap, like, I will just say,
like I believe the type rises all boats and there's
a path for everyone.
Speaker 3: Some are more well traveled than others.
Speaker 2: But I think that you said something earlier on that
is the key point of all of it.
Speaker 3: It's your intention and what are your intentions?
Speaker 2: And then there is a medical side of it, like
some of us need medical help, right because in some
cases quitting cold Turkey can be very dangerous. So uh,
but I think that people are having conversations about it,
and people are rethinking drinking in the workplace. I've done
a lot of speaking around that, especially for people managers,
like if you're going to do team building culture building
activities and alcohol is involved, that's fine, but don't make
it the only activity and make sure there are other options, right,
And I'm not talking water and coffee and diet coke,
although I will drink a dit coke every time. Options
you know, they need to also have a pretty glass,
you know, don't make them feel like they're sitting at
the kids table.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1: I think that's it's important work, and I think that
being willing I'm just because I'm interested in the fact
that you started out being like I sh shouldn't be
public about this because anonymity for me, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't believe.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in that, and kind of didn't from
the beginning. Even though I got a lot of pushback
when I was on TV, I wasn't. I certainly wasn't
saying anything about how I did it.
Speaker 4: But I don't. I don't see anything wrong.
Speaker 1: I see everything right in being willing to share your
story in public because that's the only thing that makes
it accessible to other people. They have to see that
alcoholism isn't just you know, people drinking, you know, out
of a brown paper bag under a bridge somewhere. That
alcoholism is tons of people that you know that maybe
don't tell you that they're sober, but that if you
were at a party with them and they were. You
know what I'm saying, like so many of our friends.
I mean, you and I are sober, so we probably
talk about it.
Speaker 4: We're more open about it. And I think.
Speaker 1: That somehow I meet a lot of people that don't drink.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing, because.
Speaker 4: I'll say, everybody's talking about it's over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we think everybody's talking about it because we're talking
about it, and our algorithm is talking about it. But
people are not talking about it, not as much as
we think they are. And so that's why I think
we have to keep talking about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's easy to make that assumption, but then
you have to remember that your algorithm caters to everything
you put out and everything you consume, So it's just
going to give you more of that. It's going to
keep reinforcing. That's what the conversation is but it's but
it's it's not it's your algorithm. And so I do
think more people are talking about it than that we're
ten years ago. But I still think there's a big,
big hill to climb.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason that I started this podcast is because
there are there are other podcasts, but they are not
funny or you know, they're they're a little more earnest.
And when on my other podcasts, which is called for
crying out loud, I talked every time I talked about
being sober or sobriety. That's when I got the most
reactions people messaging me, people saying like, oh, it really
helped me when you're super honest about, you know, being
sober and you're honest about what it was like before,
And that made me go, well, maybe there is a
space for just straight up like let's tell our stories.
And so I think it's been helpful to people to
have that without lecturing, you know, without saying there's only
one way to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, Yeah, yeah, all.
Speaker 1: Right, well so will you find so we go to
the sober Curator Tellercurator, oh shit, yeap, the sober Curator
dot com.
Speaker 3: We have a newsletter called the Sober Sip.
Speaker 2: We sent it out on Mondays and Wednesdays and it
gives you a highlight of anything we've published in the
last week to keep it easy for you to make
sure you don't have any fomo and miss out on something.
We're on also social media platforms because we have to be.
Most of my traffic comes through search or comes through
the l MS, so but we are on social media
because if you're not there, people think it's weird, but
it's not really where our audience comes from. But we
do distribute all of our content through those channels. And
then yes, we have a group podcast. Season two just started.
We're on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, iHeart all the places, but
come hang out with us.
Speaker 3: We're up to some fun things.
Speaker 1: Okay, everybody. You'll find all the links in the description
of the episode. I would just thank you so much, Elise.
It's it's it's been a great episode. It's been great
talking to you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: It's done in lind