Author: Contributor to The Sober Curator

Taylor Swift’s ever-evolving fashion throughout her eccentric eras has been captivating. What’s remarkable is how her audience has transformed alongside her. Initially, she was embraced by innocent nine-year-old girls drawn to her catchy tunes and relatable lyrics. Fast forward to today, and her fan base has matured into a diverse crowd of 30+-year-old women capable of treating her concerts like adult outings. This evolution mirrors Taylor’s artistic growth, and it signifies her bond with her fans, who have navigated life’s twists and turns with her. Now, they attend her shows for the music and as an opportunity to savor an…

Amy Liz Harrison is the bestselling author of two memoirs, “Eternally Expecting: A Mom of Eight Gets Sober and Gives Birth to a Whole New Life…Her Own” and “Eternally Awkward: A Future Mom of Eight Reflects on Mysteries of Anxiety, ADHD, and Coming of Age in the 80’s.” As a mother and a writer, Harrison felt inspired to create the “Kiss Your Brain” series of children’s books in 2023. This series tackles the big mental health topics her family—and all families—face. With five stories written from a child’s point of view, this series addresses substance abuse, eating disorders, and other…

It’s hard to find a celebrity as misunderstood as Britney Spears. Plagued by paparazzi and invasive interviewers, the negative press surrounding Spears has created an echo chamber of speculation and negativity spanning her 30 years in the spotlight. So, when it was announced that her memoir would be published following the end of her 13-year conservatorship and censorship, Britney fans rejoiced everywhere. The Woman in Me, published in October 2023, is Britney’s testimony–a chance to set the record straight. After over a decade of an abusive conservatorship, censorship, and lack of access to her social media, through which she lost…

In The Lower Power, Michele Miller’s upcoming addiction fiction novel, there’s a new drug running rampant in New York. If you try it once, you’ll be hopelessly addicted. It invades your mind, takes over your life, and puts you totally under its control. People are abandoning their families and committing violent atrocities. The city is under siege, while the corrupt police force looks the other way. This sounds familiar to anyone who lived through the crack epidemic in New York in the ‘80s, but Miller adds a supernatural twist to her story. There’s an entity who personifies the drug. He…

For as long as I can remember (over 30 years), I drank alcohol every day. Beer being my biggest drink of choice. Most of that time I was a functioning drinker… go to work, do what I needed to do for the day, then come home in the evening and put down 6 or 8 beers and relax. I have always struggled with anxiety and depression, so this was my way of letting go and feeling ok for the night. This was the way I was for years, and to me, it worked. But the last few years I started…

Hey there, jet-setting teetotalers! As we gear up for the holiday hustle, it’s time to face the harsh reality that travel is about to become a major player in our lives. Whether you’re navigating the open road, riding the rails, or braving the skies, the journey can be tough. Now, for most people, airports are just a blip on the holiday radar – a necessary evil in the pursuit of festive joy. But for us champions of sobriety, airports are like the ultimate obstacle course filled with temptation at every turn. I mean, c’mon! Bars, cocktail-slinging restaurants, and duty-free stores…

I found out after reading Cherry that the book was semi-autobiographical and that Walker wrote it from prison. That makes sense. The world he describes—inside and outside his mind—feels too vivid and authentic to be pure fiction. He was a middle-class white kid who loved drugs and booze (and women) from the start. They helped him escape his mind, which was not a happy place to reside, even though his circumstances weren’t bad. He signs up for the Army because he can’t think of anything better to do, and ends up working as a medic in the Gulf War for…

It’s Fall, Y’all! How sick are you of hearing that? Are you equipped with your pumpkin spice lattes, plaid, and some decorative item that reads “spooky season?” (I admit that I literally have all these things because I am basic.) Fall is fun and exciting because it visually represents change. No inner work needed! See those leaves? They are different colors now. You did it! You made it through another season. Despite the obvious differences in the seasons, Fall is also a time of transition, not just in terms of weather and scenery but also in our own personal journeys.…

Birthdays are an excellent opportunity for self-reflection, goal setting, and health resets. Kind of like a “personal New Year’s Eve,” it feels like a fresh start. My 35th birthday is right around the corner, so naturally, I have been consumed with the “Who the fuck am I?” questions I am flooded with whenever one of my trips around the sun is ending. My mother also reminded me that I will be closer to 50 than 20 the day after my birthday, so that’s great…thanks mom. As I’ve been pondering just who the fuck I am, I’ve been reflecting a lot…

Rachel is one of those alcoholics who has lost her job but gets dressed and takes the train to the city every day anyway, pretending to go to work so that people don’t think anything is wrong. She’s been doing this for about a year while she runs out of money and tests the patience of everyone in her life. Her circumstances are bad, but the climate in her head has become unbearable, so she lives in a fantasy world, imagining lives for the people she sees out the train window every day. She gives them names and elaborate back…

During our journey to recover from alcohol use, it is only natural that a lot of stagnated energy will be released as we let go of our addictive behaviors. Citrus essential oils can offer powerful support in the release of stagnated energy from our bodies, and they can encourage a healthier, more vibrant flow of energy throughout.  Let’s explore the potential energetic power of four specific Citrus essential oils. BERGAMOT (Citrus bergamia) All citrus oils are inherently uplifting, but what sets Bergamot apart is that it is also extremely calming.  This can make the use of Bergamot essential oil a…

Hey! What do you get when you cross members of the Phellowship (a group of sober Phish fans) with die-hard Packer fans? You get Section Yellow, the only sanctioned, fan-driven sober resource and ambassadors’ group in the NFL. In this video, I chat with Section Yellow’s founders John Plageman and Thomas Doughman about their experiences in getting the group started, the strength they’ve received from sober fans and their allies, and the hope to expand sober acceptance in an area where drinking is not just part of the culture, it’s often the whole thing. And we talk a bit about…

I found this book on a list of addiction-themed novels, but it is not what I would categorize as “addiction fiction,” since the main character isn’t an addict or alcoholic, and addiction is not a central theme. Chappie (later Bone) smokes a lot of weed, has a birth father and friends who are drug addicts and a stepfather who is an alcoholic, commits tons of crimes, was abused as a child, yet he never develops anything resembling an addiction. I kept waiting for it to happen, and was my primary motivation at times to keep reading, but instead this turned…

A little over two years ago, an email arrived that sparked an exhilaration within me, an individual on the path to sobriety, and a fervent sports enthusiast. The message conveyed that I had secured two tickets to a minor league baseball game, and these were no ordinary tickets—they granted access to the all-you-can-eat-and-drink section. The prospect of indulging in an endless flow of beverages aligned seamlessly with my history, yet this time, it was profoundly different. Die Hard (Sober) Sports Fan Those who know me are aware that I live and die by my support for the Milwaukee Brewers. I…

Ashley Ryan is a podcast host, an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and personality who illuminates the little-understood aspects of philosophy, theology, history, and Western esotericism. Ashley has been a partitioner of the occult for over half her life working with candle magick, Tarot Cards, and Ceremonial Magick. After earning her BA in Philosophy and Theology, she was a professional ghost hunter/tour guide for two years. In 2019, Ashley began her online occult identity as her persona “Pythian Priestess” garnering thousands of followers and international press. Ashley Ryan is sharing her special Magical Mocktails for those looking to explore and expand their consciousness…

This is a beautifully written book that is quite different from the usual action-packed “Addiction Fiction” thrillers and crime stories I’ve reviewed so far. It was Leslie Jamison’s debut novel. The narrative is split between the first-person perspectives of Stella and her estranged aunt Tilly, a lifelong alcoholic and former prostitute who lives in isolation in the middle of the Arizona desert. The voices of these two characters combine to paint a picture of the family’s suffering across generations. Relationship and addiction problems run in the family, although they manifest very differently across the narrators and other characters. Stella suffers…

Lawrence Block has written 22 books featuring Matthew Scudder, his ex-cop/unlicensed private detective. Eight Million Ways to Die is the fifth in the series. I started here because I’m an Addiction Fiction nerd and this is the volume in which Scudder admits to being an alcoholic. Eight Million Ways to Die The book was published in 1982. It’s a time capsule that took me back to the New York City I knew as a kid. The subways were badly vandalized and covered in graffiti back then, taxis wouldn’t go north of 125th Street, and drug dealers ran Bryant Park. Pay…

I never thought this would happen. The milk sloshed in the Yeti mug in the cup holder in my car. I was driving like crazy to yet another mandatory UA drug test at the lab. It was 2018, and I enrolled in a program for nurses with substance use issues and committed to random UA a few times a month. This was willingly and begrudgingly to save my license from being restricted. I had downloaded an app on my phone that I would check in every weekday to see my fate. Had I been selected to UA today? The other…

The path to sobriety can be extremely challenging, but it’s also very rewarding. It’s a journey that demands coping mechanisms to deal with overwhelming emotions, and yet, you can find tremendous comfort in your new way of life. Aromatherapy can help you feel more in control of your experience because it offers very specific therapeutic benefits to support you through the ups and downs of the process. How Essential Oils Work Essential oils, the heart, and soul of aromatherapy, are composed of specific chemical compounds that indicate their distinctive benefits. When you inhale an essential oil, its molecules are swiftly “read” by the…

Season 2 of The Bear on Hulu takes a deeper dive into AlAnon gives us more insight on the cousins and delivers the fun in dysfunction.

Anyone who reads crime fiction is familiar with the alcoholic ex-cop private investigator character. Randy Chalmers is an ex-cop who gets sober and makes millions as an architect, but when his sponsor dies of an apparent overdose he steps into the role. He goes around town, roughing people up, shaking them down for information and trying to find out what happened and who was at fault. Deep down, Randy knows that it was his own fault – at least partially. Life got good for him in sobriety. He got busy and drifted away from AA and his sponsor. If he…

This is the first book by Michele Miller that I have read, and it was excellent. It starts as a hard-core zombie story set in NYC, with a great cast of characters. There are all of the requisite guts, gore, and brains splattering…. It is not my usual genre, but it is brilliantly done. The recovery aspect of the story is barely mentioned in the first few chapters. It comes on slowly and naturally. Eventually, the cast figures out that alcoholics and addicts are “immune” from the zombie disease (the Walking Dead can’t smell them), so they are ultimately the…

I recently reached the one-year milestone and thought of my journey. I also thought of the people who helped get me here. My wife, my sponsor, and a few friends I met along the way in recovery. One thing that struck me was that my journey, although my own, was not alone. As an Army veteran, like many, I struggle with PTSD. With that comes feelings of isolation and anxiety once you leave the military family you’ve known most of your adult life. The feeling that it’s you against the world.  This bottle or pill may numb you long enough…

I’m Lindsay, and I live in Knoxville, TN – well, Maryville, pronounced mur-vull, a smaller town between Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’ve been alcohol-free since June 2021, and I’m just now breaking out into the world of mocktails, NA beers, sober safe spaces, and socializing sober. Thankfully, being sober in Knoxville comes with an amazingly supportive sober community – complete with a sober bar, designated sober safe space coffee shop, and recovery-centric weekly yoga classes. When I started running the @soberinknoxville Instagram page, I didn’t know it would bring me in contact with the kind of…

Juniper Waller is a singer, songwriter, and vocal empowerment coach from Oakland, CA. Her main musical project is her funk-soul band, The Gold Souls. Juniper comes from a long line of singer-songwriters and also has a background in holistic healing, social justice work, and poetry. She has been sober since October of 2018, and much of her journey has been about learning to create in recovery. Juniper is also a vocal empowerment coach and breathwork guide helping people free their voices through guided vocalization and meditation practices. Through her business Voice Body Spirit, Juniper supports people in reclaiming their voices from past…

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of chronic disease and premature mortality. Considering how much harm it does to the human body, smoking cessation is the best way to minimize the risk of illness and early death. The National Cancer Institute’s report on quitting highlights how stopping smoking can significantly reduce the risk of cancer and lung disease— cutting the risk of lung cancer by 30% to 50% after ten years compared to people who continue to smoke. In addition, cutting cigarettes out can improve cardiovascular health and fertility. However, it can be challenging to quit cigarettes due to their…

Based on Cheryl Strayed’s best seller, Hulu’s Tiny Beautiful Things is a highly relatable journey through self discovery

The Creative Sober is a community of sober and sober-curious creatives looking to connect with others who are navigating sobriety, health, and spiritual awareness. The foundation of the Creative Sober is our

The Creative Sober is a community of sober and sober-curious creatives looking to connect with others who are navigating sobriety, health, and spiritual awareness. The foundation of The Creative Sober is our stories and keeping an open mind toward recovery. Creative expression is a fundamental part of what we put into the world. It takes real courage to share this with others. Duality and Art – Interview with Cate Blanchard, The Sober Painter After stopping drinking in 2019, @thesoberpainter from Manchester, UK, decided to swap a pint glass for a paintbrush and hasn’t stopped since! Naming pieces after the numbered days of their…

Cinco de Mayo may have a bad reputation as a “drinking holiday,” but in the Valley of the Sun, there are many ways to celebrate sans alcohol! Check out this curated list of fun sober activities to do by Contributor Kristin Horstman, Founder of Brighten Your Life Coaching. Sober Cinco De Mayo Events Worth Checking Out! Fetching Dog Fetching Dog is a locally owned, family pet food, toys and supplies store. Owners, Becci and Bryce Scott have been involved in animal rescue work, here in the valley, since the mid 1990s. You can stop by their new Barkery cafe all…