Alysse Bryson is the founder and publisher of The Sober Curator, redefining modern sobriety as aspirational, entertaining, and culturally significant. Sober since 2006, she’s a former media executive turned cultural voice proving the comeback is always better than the origin story.
Coming out and getting sober are the same move: telling the truth out loud before you know how the room will take it. These are the Pride gifts that honor both. Eleven alcohol-free, queer-loving finds, mostly small-business and plenty of them sober-owned. Recover out loud, shop proud.
Napping is my hobby and I am genuinely exceptional at it. Here is why Rest’s Evercool cooling sheets earned a permanent spot in my bed, why I reordered at full price before coffee, and why good sleep is recovery infrastructure at any stage of sobriety.
I’ve been alcohol-free for twenty years, so anything promising a “buzz” gets the side-eye. Then Kavayn showed up. Here’s what noble kava actually tastes like, the iced coffee hack I didn’t see coming, and the question every sober reader asks first: does kava even count?
Nineteen sober pop culture words walked into a 15×15 grid. Your job is to find them before they find you.June’s Sober Search is hiding celebrities, TV shows, music terms, film references, and a few TSC-specific words inside a grid that is equal parts entertainment trivia and sober culture deep dive. Some words are sitting right there waiting to be circled. Others went backwards and diagonal specifically to test your commitment. What’s Hiding in There A Seattle rapper who turned relapse into raw honesty. A Showtime family that made dysfunction feel like a documentary. The book genre that turned personal recovery…
Summer blockbuster season is here. But instead of buying a movie ticket, we made you a crossword.June’s Clued In is our biggest pop culture puzzle yet. Thirteen clues covering the actors who got sober and got better, the TV shows that made addiction impossible to ignore, the rappers who turned recovery into art, and the cultural moments that proved sobriety is not the opposite of fun. It is the plot twist. The Lineup This puzzle reads like a sober hall of fame. You’ll find an A-list actor who credited sobriety with saving his career (and then starred in a movie…
I sat down at 8 p.m. and did not move until the credits rolled at 3 a.m. Apple TV’s Imperfect Women is a glossy, knotty thriller about three women, one murder, and everyone quietly addicted to something. The critics shrugged. I lost a whole Saturday night and regret nothing.
The internet swears his ageless face is a blood ritual. The truth is less supernatural and more interesting: Rob Lowe has been sober since 1990, and the story behind that decision says more about staying than quitting.
In this Sober Spotlight interview, Oskar of DEPTOS shares how recovery, mental health, fatherhood, and the rooms inspired his music — including the powerful lyric, “You don’t have to die to stop living this way.”
Brené Brown marked 30 years sober on The Curiosity Shop with Adam Grant. On foreboding joy, selective numbing, and why she still can’t watch The Office.
There is a bit in Hacks season three where a DJ (Daughter of Deborah Vance) deadpans that she got sober by watching The Amazing Race. No sponsor, no rehab, no rock bottom in a parking lot. Just a reality competition show and a will to live. I laughed out loud, posted the clip, and then asked you all a question on Instagram: what show or movie did you actually watch in early sobriety that helped you get sober? (Peep the clip HERE) The answers came in fast. Mom. 90 Day Fiancé. Lost. RuPaul’s Drag Race. And it cracked something open…
Anna David’s Legacy Launch Pad Publishing is helping entrepreneurs, media personalities, and recovery voices turn their stories into books. Here are the Quit Lit and recovery titles from Legacy Launch Pad that belong on your sober bookshelf.
It’s 7:30 a.m. on Halloween, 2017. While most parents are arguing about whether a sexy witch costume is age-appropriate and stress-eating mini Snickers before the kids wake up, Jessica Simpson was reaching for her first drink of the day. We’ll get to what happened next. But first — I need to tell you something. In my early sobriety, I was obsessed with Jessica Simpson’s shoe collection. The heels. The wedges. I stomped all over Seattle in them for the first several years of my sober life, convinced that if I could just walk confidently enough in a pair of Jessica…
It is 11:47 p.m. on a Monday and I am on my laptop talking to a robot about ad strategy. Twenty years sober and I have a new obsession: Claude lives in my laptop and I am not even a little bit interested in quitting. We made t-shirts about it.
I recently packed my emotional baggage, pop culture references, and very sober opinions and headed over to the Recovery Rocks podcast for a conversation with bestselling authors and longtime sober friends Anna David and Lisa Smith. And yes, we brought snacks. Metaphorically. But still. Hosted by Anna David, author of Party Girl, and Lisa Smith, author of the award-winning memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar, Recovery Rocks is the kind of recovery podcast that knows sobriety is not one long inspirational quote over a sunset. It is first dates, weddings, awkward dances, breakups, reinvention, identity shifts, friendship, and occasionally…
There is a version of sober content that is essentially homework. A reading list of recovery memoirs. A podcast subscription you feel obligated to finish. A quote graphic on Instagram you save and never read. This is not that. This is the actual, opinionated, regularly-updated guide to entertainment we recommend at The Sober Curator. Some of it is about sobriety. Most of it is just good. The point is, all of it makes a sober Tuesday more interesting than it has any right to be. Updated 2026. Sober TV Worth Your Time We watch a lot of TV at The…
Twenty years. One Diet Coke. One very glittery gift bag. The AB That’s Me Birthday Kit is live at Sober AF Bottle Shop in Tacoma — and yes, they ship.
It is 9:47 on a Tuesday in May. You have eleven years sober. You also have nothing to do. The kid is asleep. Your partner is watching something you do not care about. You already took your magnesium. There is a pint of Halo Top in the freezer that you do not actually want. The dog is fine. Tomorrow’s meetings can wait. Everything is, technically, great. You are bored out of your mind. This is the sober moment nobody warned you about. Not the white-knuckle first ninety days. Not the holiday parties with the in-laws. The Tuesday. The flat, gray,…
Cameron Whitcomb does a backflip on stage. Not metaphorically. Literally. The 22-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter launches himself into the air mid-performance, lands it, and keeps singing. It is the kind of move that makes you think: this kid has nothing to lose and everything to prove. He also got sober at 20, watched his best friend nearly die from an overdose, and then brought his father and brothers into recovery with him. He taught himself guitar, posted songs daily on the internet, and eventually signed with Atlantic Records. Tonight he returns to the American Idol finale stage — the same show…
There is a specific kind of comfort that comes from finding out an actor you love has been sober since 1998. It is not exactly a “we did it Joe” moment, but it is close. You are watching them at Cannes, at the Met Gala, at the Oscars after-party, and you know they are not nursing a vodka soda for show. They are just there. This list exists for that exact feeling. And because every January, someone famous announces they are alcohol-free and the internet collectively goes “wait, them too?” and we have to update the spreadsheet again. Last updated:…
You know exactly how the old script went. Friday hit, someone said “happy hour,” and suddenly it was 2 a.m., your phone was on 7 percent, and your dignity was on 0. The bar tab felt like a crime scene. The next morning, your only souvenir was anxiety and a blurry montage of choices you didn’t actually choose. Now you’re sober, or sober-curious, and Friday still shows up demanding a storyline. Your social muscle memory yells shots, but your nervous system is quietly begging, please no. You’re not boring. You’re just in between scripts. The old one doesn’t fit, and the new…
The waiter has now asked me three times. “Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine? We have a really great by-the-glass list tonight.” Yes. I’m sure. I’ve been sure for 20 years. I was sure when you asked me when we sat down. I was sure when you brought the bread basket. And I’ll be sure again in roughly 90 seconds when the table next to us orders a bottle and you swing back over to triple-check. This is the part of going out to dinner that nobody warns you about when you get sober. You expect…
On May 1, 2026, I hit 20 years sober. Twenty. Years. The kind of milestone that used to feel mathematically impossible when I was 30 years old and white-knuckling my way through my first 90 days, convinced I’d never have a personality, a love life, or a Friday night again. (I’m still waiting on the love life part, but I’ve got the personality and Friday night plans in spades.) Twenty years deserves more than a plastic chip rattling around in a junk drawer next to a Costco rewards card and three random AAA batteries. Enter Cindy Kaye. What Annum Actually…
Last week my best friend Amy Liz Harrison celebrated her 15-year soberversary, and we did what any two sober women in their right minds would do. We went to a Mahjong party. To clarify, neither of us had ever played Mahjong. Not once. We were not invited to the party as players. We rolled into the Sober AF bottle shop on a Thursday afternoon — sober ladies who lunch, except instead of lunching, we were apparently about to eat tiles. The Mahjong party was being hosted by Local Mixer Washington, a group that organizes meetups for introverts, extroverts, karaoke nights, and apparently,…
She was high when she said yes. In the spring of 2018, Lena Dunham got engaged to a childhood friend a month after their first kiss. She was on a rotation of pain pills, Klonopin, and weed. She said yes. She doesn’t get into the rest of the proposal in Famesick, her second memoir. She doesn’t get into it because she doesn’t really remember it. Eight years later, she remembers what she missed. Famesick, released April 14, 2026, is the first book Lena Dunham has written sober. Her first memoir, 2014’s Not That Kind of Girl, was written from inside…
Mental Health Awareness Month called. It wants you to find 19 words. This month’s Sober Search is packed with the wellness terms, brain chemicals, recovery practices, and self-care essentials that make sober life actually work. Not the Instagram version of wellness where someone lights a candle and calls it healing. The real version. The one that involves therapy, sweat, setting boundaries, and occasionally ugly crying in your car before going inside and being fine. All 19 of those words are hiding in a 15×15 grid. Some are sitting right there in plain sight. Others are backwards, diagonal, or tucked into…
Two months in and Clued In is becoming a habit. The good kind. The kind your therapist would approve of. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, which means this entire crossword was built around the science, the practices, and the lifestyle choices that keep sober minds and bodies running on all cylinders. No filler clues this month. Every single answer is something you’ve either experienced firsthand, Googled at 2 AM, or discussed in a session you’re still processing. What You’re Walking Into Thirteen clues spanning the full spectrum of sober wellness. We’ve got neurotransmitters your brain is finally producing on…
I binged all ten episodes of Running Point Season 2 (Netflix) in less than twelve hours. I am not even a little bit sorry about it. Here is how it went down. I sat down, hit play, and the only time I moved was to get from the bathtub to the bed. The first three episodes happened while I was soaking in a hot bubble bath, iPad propped on the edge, completely checked out from the noise of the world. Then I migrated to my bed in cozy pajamas, cozy sheets, iPad in my lap, and Bella, my chubby Boston…
Jim Norton Has Been Sober for Over 30 Years. He’ll Be the First to Tell You It Didn’t Fix Everything. His whole career is built on saying the stuff most people only think in a shame spiral at 3 a.m. Jim Norton is one of the most respected voices in stand-up comedy — not because he’s the most polished or the most mainstream, but because he goes to places most comedians won’t. The darkness in his material is not performed. It’s reported. He has lived enough of it to fill several careers, and he got sober before most of it…
Rufi Thorpe came to BACKSTAGE. Here is the five-minute clip, the conversation that broke the room, and the answer I am still thinking about.
Two weeks ago, I was outside a concert at The Moore Theatre in downtown Seattle, begging a 20-something to blow cigarette smoke in my face. That’s where we’re starting. We’ll get to the jelly sandals. I’m two weeks shy of 20 years sober. My anniversary is May 1. That means when you’re reading this I’m clocking in at 19 years and roughly 50 weeks. Close enough to taste it. Far enough away that life still gets to hand me a pop quiz every once in a while. This one came wrapped in rubber. 🎤Listen to this article in Alysse’s voice…
