Author: Alysse Bryson

Pumpkin season is upon us, and if you’re looking for a creative, alcohol-free way to spend your autumn afternoons, why not try your hand at decoupage floral pumpkins? This delightful craft transforms ordinary pumpkins into beautiful pieces of art you can proudly display around your home. Perfect for natural and fake pumpkins, this DIY project is suitable for all ages and offers a beautiful way to celebrate Sober October and November Gratitude Month. Why Decoupage Floral Pumpkins? Decoupage pumpkins are an ideal way to merge your love for crafting with seasonal decor. They provide a sophisticated twist on traditional pumpkin…

Silvery gifted me their Restcool silver-infused cooling sheets. I unboxed them in 4K with the mic off, then walked them down the hall to my parents. Here’s what two people in their 80s had to say, plus the 100-night trial fine print.

Every October, half the internet learns what it’s like to hold a club soda at a party. Contributor Kim Parsley and Senior Contributor Justin Lamb have been doing this for years, and they review every NA drink on this site. Sober October as a gateway drug, the breweries that didn’t make it, and what to pour this fall.

That’s the real gift of AI, and I said so on tape: it’s not the output. It’s that the excuses got out of the way. The blank page. The eight years of “I’ll start next week.”

Most NA wine is doing an impression of wine. Karviva Unwined skipped the audition. I tried the Rosé and the Malbec. Here’s my honest take.

Some people pack light. Founder Alysse Bryson packs rhinestones. During a sober girls’ getaway in La Jolla, Pantone postcards, notebooks and a pile of craft supplies became an easy evening activity that let everyone feel like an artist.

In the fourth grade, Paulina Pinsky was cast as Miss Piggy on Ice. At eight, she was praying to Elvis before skating competitions. By her twenties, she was smoking weed every day and telling everyone it was medicine.
Now she’s almost five years sober, writes the Substack newsletters Newly Sober and Process Over Product, and she’s our newest Sober Curator contributor, bringing something we haven’t covered enough: marijuana addiction. Alysse and Tamar talk with her about Muppets, Graceland, and the rhetoric that kept her high.

Puffin Drinkwear and Liquid Death made seven Halloween-ready outfits for your can, from a faux-leather biker jacket to a Grim Reaper robe. Here’s my honest take.

Golf without the 19th hole. Après-ski without the hangover. Racing at nationals nine days before turning one year sober. Meet Corey Davis of Soba Golf, Ben Coombes of Soberski and electric skateboarder Bianca Criaco, the three sober athletes joined BACKSTAGE earlier this month and now you get to check out the replay.

Sober October deserves a cookie plate. Meet PNW Cookie Co., a family-recipe-born brand serving vegan, gluten-free sweets with plenty of personality.

Centralia, Washington, has a medieval tavern with zero alcohol, house-made jun kombucha, fir-needle soda and a standing welcome for your D&D party. Here’s why Owl & Cedar is a fun I-5 pit stop.

Inside the meeting: coffee, chips, miracles. Outside: a semicircle with 150 years of combined sobriety destroying a pack of Marlboros. It’s time we talked about the parking lot.

Tana Mongeau is two years sober, and she says year two was harder than year one. On her Brand Safe podcast, she explains why quitting alcohol was only the start.

He got sober at his own bachelor party. In Ibiza. Now he’s putting world-class alcohol-free drinks in the best bars on the planet. This is what sobriety looks like when it walks into Claridge’s and takes a seat.

The alcohol-free industry just got a school. Sans Bar founder Chris Marshall launches Sans Bar Institute to bring research, benchmarks and standards to a maturing NA category, and its first class is a founder-led tasting series called Taste Lab.

At the fourth annual Birdies for Bridges, the moment belonged to Sully: 20 years old, three years sober, and now a peer counselor at the same teen recovery program that once showed up for her. This is why we show up.

This week’s guest is Ben Coombes, founder of Soberski and our newest contributor. Ben worked ski seasons in the Alps, where the day-one rule is you can ski, work, or drink, but not all three. He always dropped the skiing. So he tried quitting drinking in the least likely place on earth, a ski resort in season, and figured if it worked there it would work anywhere. It did.

Lucy Hale is four and a half years sober, and on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose she gets honest about blackouts, choosing rehab over the Grand Ole Opry and the three-sentence advice she’d give anyone thinking about getting sober.

Sober October is the one month the rest of the world borrows our lifestyle. Here are 21 gifts for your sober and sober-curious crew, from a Bill W. pillow to giant disco candy corn.

🎧 NEW EPISODE: Gray Area Drinking with the Hosts of Sober & Lit with Ruby Williams and Susan Larkin on RAIN meditation, reclaiming the word sober, mommy wine culture from the inside, the 13-ounce pour, the NA wines they bring to parties, and why the medical community has no grid for the space between fine and full-blown.

ZYN went from Scandinavian import to gas-station icon, but there’s a difference between a nicotine product you keep using and one designed to get you free. We compare Jones and ZYN head to head.

The Sober Mom Collective built Grounded for exactly that mom. It’s a three-month program for women who understand both recovery and motherhood, and it’s built on the belief that nobody should have to figure out either one alone.

FLOW Gummies promise clean energy and focus from Lion’s Mane and botanicals, zero cannabinoids included. I put them through a real workweek of deadlines, podcast recordings, and 3 p.m. fog. Here’s my honest take, including the THC-Free conversation sober readers actually deserve.

Amanda Chen built TOMONOTOMO, an agave spirit made the traditional way. No shortcuts, no extracts. Fire, copper, and patience. Contributor Kim Parsley reviewed the Tobalá in Happy Every Hour back in May and it is delicious. This week, Amanda told us how she got from behind the bar to behind the still.

Laura Clery’s What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Hotter is a funny, vulnerable and occasionally uncomfortable account of divorce, single motherhood, dating and staying sober when life refuses to follow the script.

You’re finally wide awake for your own life. So what do you want to do with all these hours you used to drink through? A cheat sheet for sober nights, from the golden-hour pre-game to the midnight movie, with zero drink pressure and zero FOMO.

Rooms full of people with serious sobriety are chain-vaping in the parking lot, and nobody talks about it. Here’s how to quit nicotine using the recovery muscles you already built, one minute at a time.

We opened this one up to everybody. Members, readers, the sober curious, the person who found us through a Brad Pitt comment section. This is what a Wednesday morning BACKSTAGE looks like, and Suzanne Warye was the perfect guest to show it off. Suzanne is the author of The Sober Shift, host of The Sober Mom Life podcast, and the woman who once spent a full five minutes with me on the podcast talking about ALF. On Sept. 16 she came BACKSTAGE to talk about the paperback relaunch of her book. We got there eventually. First we had to get…

Emily and Lindsay Stetzer built Presently Bracelets so the thing your therapist told you is on your wrist when your brain goes blank. OCD, anxiety, sobriety.

Theo Von never set out to become a recovery podcaster, but some of the most honest conversations about addiction and sobriety keep happening on This Past Weekend. These standout episodes from the past two years deliver vulnerability, unexpected wisdom and plenty of gang-gang energy.