Author: Alysse Bryson

Skylar sent us two gourmand fragrances from the collection curated by Leah Kateb, the Love Island USA star turned Chief Creative Officer. We expected to love the cake one. We were wrong, and the twist involves being single forever.

Sober travel is the upgrade, not the consolation prize. Episode 6 has the airport hacks, the costume trips, and your invite to Cover Story, our first-ever retreat in Scottsdale.

We went to OCDcon 2026 in Seattle expecting free pens and left obsessed with Presently, a brand built by two sisters with OCD who turned real therapy tools into bracelets, keychains, and mirror clings. Skims-level neutrals, CBT-backed phrases, zero toxic positivity. Here’s why we’re hyping them on purpose.

Alysse Bryson is hosting her first retreat with Evolve Retreats. Cover Story runs October 15 to 18 at the Kimpton Miralina in Paradise Valley, Arizona: four days of sunrise walks, sound healing, a professional photo shoot with Barbie Hull, and a live Sober Curator podcast recording in the desert. Early-bird pricing ends August 21.

Tiffany Jenkins flew across the country to accept the IOCDF’s 2026 Illumination Award and forgot to pack her clothes. The Sober Curator was at OCD Con 2026 in Seattle for all of it: the movie question everyone wants answered, worry scripts and hot dogs, the psych ward story she tells with zero filter, and a mother from Georgia turning unimaginable loss into a movement at the intersection of OCD and addiction.

The HER: Heal. Empower. Recover. podcast launches Aug. 2 at Inlet Theatre in Port Moody with comedy, a podcasting panel, a live recording and alcohol-free drinks. The evening will also raise funds for SHE RECOVERS and support its global recovery community.

Monica Madrid once danced on Soul Train, chased a record deal that ultimately went to Tupac Shakur and spent decades working in the mortgage industry. After getting sober at 40, navigating grief and listening to an inner voice that told her to teach football, she created Football Is Sexy—and discovered an entirely new purpose.

Comedian Stefanie Wilder-Taylor built a sobriety podcast that refuses to lecture. Alysse Bryson sat down with her this week. Here’s why Drunk-ish deserves a spot in your podcast rotation, and a few story hooks we’re not giving away.

I went to Seattle to dog-sit for four days. I came home with a $500 ice habit and absolutely zero regrets. Somewhere between day two and day four, a nugget ice maker humming on my friends’ kitchen counter rewired my entire beverage life. The GE Profile Opal 2.0 is the reason I now have strong opinions about ice texture, a side tank, and a very understanding mother.

I panic-bought two cases of the wrong Celsius flavor, and instead of admitting defeat, I invented the Dirty Shirley’s sober cousin. Four ingredients, a comically large tumbler, and zero regrets. Here’s the recipe.

A Notre Dame professor has spent six years asking his students one question: why do you drink like that? What he found didn’t come from the bar. It came from every movie and TV show we grew up watching. Ted Mandell joins us for a Backstage conversation that gets Sarah, Anne Marie, Tamar and me genuinely fired up, and you are going to want to hear all of it.

Alysse Bryson reviews Sunsets Are The New Happy Hour, Kristin Horstman’s weekly podcast on gray-area drinking and nervous-system regulation. A friend’s show, a fair read, and a recommendation for anyone curious, new, or bored at year twelve.

I saw “Union County” as a 15-minute short back in 2020, before Will Poulter and Noah Centineo ever signed on. Now it’s a Sundance feature opening August 14, and it still gets rural recovery right.

Somehow it took me years to find The Small Bow, A.J. Daulerio’s recovery newsletter, podcast, and daily meeting community. Or its crossover column with Oldster Magazine, “Ask a Sober Oldster,” now 35 installments deep. Consider this your formal introduction.

Some sober merch whispers. Soberminds screams, in the best way. Meet the graffiti artist and founder building a sober streetwear brand out of loss, grit, and a crown hoodie you’ll actually want to wear.

Laurie Woolever spent fifteen-plus years as the right hand to two of food media’s most complicated men, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, while quietly falling apart behind the scenes. Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Care and Feeding, finally tells the story she couldn’t tell then. Closing in on nine years sober, she’s proof the most interesting thing about her was never the famous men on her resume.

Alysse Bryson sits down with The Mindshift Podcast to talk about her 2006 sobriety moment, why “sober” does not automatically mean “present,” and how The Sober Curator became the home for people who are done with Day 1 content. Also featured: jelly Birkenstocks, a Muppet cameo debate, and one very memorable choir concert.

Senior Sober Curator Contributor Justin Lamb has reviewed more than 130 non-alcoholic beers for The Sober Curator since 2021. These are his ten best of 2026, spanning Double IPAs, pilsners, hazy NEIPAs, nitro stouts, and a peanut butter milk dark that deserves its own fan club. Find your perfect pour, then take the quiz to make it official.

You know the feeling when you walk into a room and immediately know: these are my people. On Episode 3, I asked our contributors one simple question, why The Sober Curator, and what came back was funnier, messier, and more honest than I expected.

Stephen King has been sober for almost 40 years, and he still doesn’t remember writing an entire novel. Here’s the garbage bag intervention that started it, the fear that got proven wrong, and the 40-plus books that came after.

A wine brand just became the official sponsor of a sober dance tour, and that tells you everything about where this culture is headed. Giesen 0% is pouring at Daybreaker’s “Let’s Be Friends” stops all summer, and we’ve got every city on the calendar.

Quitting drinking doesn’t mean quitting the accessory habit. It just changes what’s in your hand. Here’s why WanderFull’s crossbody bags finally built something for the “still carrying a drink everywhere” life.

The original printer’s copy of Alcoholics Anonymous just sold at Christie’s for an estimated one to two million dollars. The Stepping Stones Foundation, the National Historic Landmark home of Bill and Lois Wilson in Katonah, New York, won the bid. It is going back to exactly where it belongs.

Most sober spaces ask you to show up and talk about the hard part. Backstage with The Sober Curator asks you to show up and actually have fun. Media Nights, Studio Nights, Edutainment Nights, and a community of people who get exactly what you’re building. Ever wonder what’s beyond the typical sober meeting? Backstage with The Sober Curator is what’s beyond it. This isn’t a support group with better branding. It’s a membership community where creativity, entertainment, and zero-proof living collide — and it’s exactly the kind of room Alysse built The Sober Curator to create in the first place.…

People started DMing Alysse after Season 1 saying they’d finally found a sober podcast that didn’t make them feel like they were in trouble. That’s the whole thing, right there. That’s what this show is. Season 2 is what happens next. The Sober Life on the Other Side The Sober Curator has always been about living sober, not just getting there. Season 2 leans into that harder than ever. Alysse Bryson and Tamar Routly are back in front of the mic, and this season they’re going places Season 1 only teased. Mindful binging is in the mix — engaging with…

Ashley McBryde’s NA-forward Redemption Bar is crossing the border this July with its first-ever Canadian pop-up at Cavendish Beach Music Festival in Prince Edward Island. For anyone who has ever loved live music and dreaded the drinking culture surrounding it, this one is for you.

My desk has a sexy red Rachel Zoe lipstick lamp, a monitor covered in stickers from people I love, a Diet Coke, and a keyboard in a shade that makes me genuinely happy before I have typed a single word. I did not plan any of this. I just kept choosing things that felt like me. Turns out that is the whole strategy.

Former Marlboro Menthol Lights smoker. Twenty years sober. And apparently still capable of being ambushed by a Hulu documentary and a ghost craving I thought I’d buried a decade ago. Here is what happened when Cyclone Pods showed up at exactly the right moment.

I listened to the audiobook on Audible, in Austin’s own voice, while I was packing up my house and cleaning out decades of accumulated life. Austin Rampt’s One Last Hit is eight rehab programs, a decade of active addiction, and one of the more honest addiction memoirs you will find. 3.5 out of 5 Sobees.

If you know what the Big Book is to you, you already felt something when you read that it is going to auction at Christie’s on July 1. The original 167-page working manuscript, with Bill Wilson’s handwriting in the margins, is estimated at $1 to $2 million. The Irsay family is selling it last. Intentionally.