Author: Teresa Bergen

“Would you like a margarita?” the receptionist asked me as I checked into Hotel Valencia Riverwalk, my beautiful Spanish-style hotel in San Antonio. “What do you have that’s nonalcoholic?” I asked. “Oh, I could give you water,” she said. I had a weird moment of confusion. First, that’s not an equivalent trade. I mean, a delicious margarita versus water? Second, as someone who tries to avoid single-use plastic bottles, but who travels internationally to places that lack safe water supplies, my mind scrambled for a second. Where was I? “Uh, isn’t the tap water safe here?” I asked stupidly. Yes.…

Plants and flowers fill the cozy shop, which has beautiful wooden beams running across the ceiling. Shelves of delicious nonalcoholic drinks cover one wall. For plant-loving nondrinkers, Ever After’s pop-up shop inside Colibri Flowers is paradise. But pop-ups are, by nature, of limited duration — and now Portland’s NA bottle shop is looking for a permanent home.  Owner Ariel Dunitz-Johnson met me at a local Portland café to tell me about why Portland needs an NA bottle shop and dedicated sober space, and why they’re so passionate about bringing that to the community.  Dreaming of a bottle shop  Ariel grew…

Our little group of three visitors stood with Olger Leiva on a bridge over a rocky stream while he explained how glass frogs lay gelatinous sacks of tadpole eggs on the undersides of big leaves. When they hatch, the tiny tadpoles fall 20 feet into the water below. We amble up a trail where we watch industrious leafcutter ants carrying shiny green pieces of leaves on their back, ferrying them to their underground lair to feed a fungus. The ants eat the fungus, not the leaves. Olger walks in front, ready to gently guide snakes off the path with a…

If you were to stop into the Comfort Café in San Antonio looking for biscuits, your server might surprise you by bringing up addiction. Justin Motl could greet you with, “I’m Justin; I don’t know if I’ve served you before, but I’m celebrating seven years. So if you have any questions about me or anything about the program, please let me know.” “The program,” in this case, is SerenityStar, which operates a 6-month to a year peer-to-peer recovery center in Smithville, Texas, and sober residences around San Antonio. The nonprofit Comfort Café raises money to keep it all going. On…

Jennifer Siegel grew up being a ballerina. By the time she was 15, her chiropractor warned her that she was going to have a lifetime of pain if she didn’t find a better way to navigate her physical health. This led to yoga, which evolved into a whole series of healing work: massage, yoga therapy school in 2011, yoga teaching, and becoming a certified alcohol and drug counselor. I first met Jennifer more than ten years ago in Portland, Oregon, where she lives and works. I was struck by the creativity and thoughtfulness she brought to her yoga teaching. In…

In the late 1800s, you could land in a mental institution due to your religious excitement, syphilis, moral insanity, addiction, or for many other reasons. So when I heard that I could stay in a former asylum as a hotel guest—the same asylum I might have been thrown in 130 years ago as a drunk—I was eager to visit. That’s how I ended up at Buffalo’s Richardson Hotel for three nights in September. From there, I discovered many fun things for sober folks to do in New York’s second-largest city. Buffalo’s rise and fall and rise again Buffalo has a…

If you’ve ever read the 12 steps, the fifth niyama, or moral imperative of yoga, will look very familiar. Isvara pranidhana means surrendering to God. Just like “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” Ishvara means God or the supreme being. Pranidhana means to devote, dedicate, or surrender. The idea of surrendering to God is probably the biggest sticking point for people who enter 12-step programs. First, there’s the problem of believing this can be done. Then there’s the problem of doing it. If they’re stuck on three,…

“Welcome home,” the man says as I walk through the doors of the 1915 house in an attractive residential neighborhood of Akron, Ohio. This could sound insincere, coming from a stranger in a house you’ve never seen. But the greeting couldn’t be more heartfelt for all the folks who visit the former home of Dr. Bob, AA co-founder. Dr. Bob’s Home officially became a National Historic Landmark in 1985, 35 years after his death. The National Park Service recognizes this house as the birthplace of AA. Akron is where Bob Smith and Bill Wilson met. And Dr. Bob’s home is…

The fourth niyama, or ethical imperative of yoga, is svadhyaya, which means the study of the self and sacred texts. Members of 12-step groups will immediately see a correlation with yoga philosophy. The Big Book is the sacred text. And the fourth step might be the first time somebody has ever looked at themselves so closely—or at least the first time in a while. Have you ever run across people who are stuck on the fourth step? Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Argh! It’s dark and hideous and twisted in there! Our insides aren’t usually very…

Yoga’s third niyama, or ethical mandate, is tapas. This means burning zeal for practice. It refers to directing our greatest energies into our spiritual lives. Many of us are familiar with burning zeal in one way or another. This same sort of tireless energy can take a gazillion different forms. Olympic athletes, politicians, people who picket abortion clinics, scientists bent on cures, anorexics, Black Friday shoppers, and gamers who play the same game for 20 hours straight all demonstrate burning zeal for varying goals. Tapas is about harnessing that energy for spiritual practice. Saints from all religions have done this…

Yoga’s second niyama, or moral imperative, is santosha. This translates from Sanskrit as “contentment.” To be our happiest, we must cultivate contentment. That means appreciating what we have in our lives right now rather than using our energy, despairing that our lives aren’t different. Yogis avoid envying those who are richer, smarter, more talented, or better looking. We also try not to lament former versions of ourselves, including what we might have had before addiction kicked our butt. Maybe we had a big deal job, a good-looking partner, a family who thought the sun shone out our ass, plenty of…

When Andy Krumm quit drinking in January 2020, he worried that his social life would tank. But instead of staying out of nightlife hotspots, he decided to nudge them to make room for sober folks. This led to the formation of the production and events management company Sober One Six, a play on the 716 area code of his home in Buffalo, New York. Now Krumm puts on sober socials, drag shows, and other events for both the sober and queer communities. “I can showcase a sober person that can stand onstage with a microphone, be his goofy, weird self,…

“There’s just nothing better than a girls’ trip,” said travel advisor Michelle Plante, who is planning these two all-women sober trips for early 2025.

Should a sober person go to a place so in love with craft brewing that one of its nicknames is Beer City USA? Yes. Because beer is not the only thing Asheville is enthusiastic about. “People come to Asheville and find their passions,” Torin Kexel, who’s lived in Asheville for seven years, told me. “And they live them out, whether outdoor recreation like mountain biking, culinary entrepreneurialism, or music and art.” Kexel’s passion is introducing people to the city with his e-bike company, The Flying Bike. His whole family has also gotten involved in the old-time music community, with Kexel…

I once lived in a one-towel punk rock household where nobody ever took out our empty beer cans. We’d sit around the living room floor—we didn’t have much in the way of furniture—contemplating bags and bags of empties and fantasize about rigging a pulley system that would lower the cans three floors down to the street. But nobody was willing to get off their butt and carry them. I have no memories of housekeeping there, though we must have occasionally scrubbed the pot as we cooked our ramen noodles. One of my punk friends lived alone in a studio. Every…

Choose Life Sober Adventures is one of a handful of small companies specializing in group travel for non-drinkers. I’ve traveled twice with Choose Life, once on an action-packed trip to Costa Rica and once on a hike-filled journey to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley of Peru. We did all sorts of the usual fun adventure travel things like kayaking, ziplining, and eating at good restaurants. The Choose Life facilitator leads daily yoga classes and a nightly recovery meeting, which makes for faster bonding between participants than you’d see in your average group tour. I love the company and was…

I first heard about the Ette Hotel six months after it opened in June of 2022. An upscale, wellness-focused hotel, and proudly alcohol-free? I immediately knew I had to get there. I wasn’t exactly sure where Kissimmee, Florida, was or how to pronounce it (emphasis on the second syllable, it turns out), but I was scheming to go. How many times had I been to an alc-free property beside a church camp, a hippie oasis, or a retreat center screaming cult? Probably never. I finally got there in May of 2024. Kissimmee sprawls into Orlando, and I was surprised to…

Imagine you’re a 15-year-old girl, and you enter a room where a bunch of friends await you, gathered around a mirror laid flat on a table, a twinkle in their eyes. “Have a line!” they say. You do. “Have another!” They keep making you lines, and you keep snorting them. A little piece of your mind wonders why they aren’t partaking. But you ignore it because, well, more for you! You snort seven before your friends all lose it, rolling on the floor and laughing at you because you just did seven lines of Sweet’N Low. And they knew you’d…

When I entered Juniper, the rooftop bar at AC Hotel, to check out the mocktails, I was overwhelmed by florals. Gobs and gobs of fake flowers festooned every wall of the dimly lit space. Fortunately, floral is just the kind of overload I like. During a long weekend in Greenville, South Carolina, I noticed that the romance of the South was going on, from flowers to beautiful parks to the pink, yellow, and coral flounces of women’s clothing. This clean and friendly town has a way of winning over the hearts of visitors and converting them into residents. Greenville has…

Continuing with our study of yoga philosophy, this month’s column delves into the yama, or ethical restraint, of brahmacarya. You wake up naked with some guy, wearing nothing but a concha belt. Apparently, you had sex with him, but you have no idea whether it was consensual because you were blacked out the night before. As usual. Or you look at your one-night stand and think, never in a million years would I choose this person…but you did. Or the alcohol did. Now, you’re faced with the consequences. These scenarios are the opposite of this month’s yoga topic. The fourth…

My Uber driver oriented me to Tulsa as we drove from the airport to my downtown hotel. “People in Oklahoma get along even if they believe very different things because everybody respects American ideals and that piece of paper written by our founding fathers,” he said of the US constitution, “And especially the Bill of Rights.” I contemplated his eccentric facial hair and the blocky wooden cross hanging from his rear-view mirror, wondering what this city had in store for me. It turned out to be a nonstop parade of friendly people with, as my driver foretold, all different points…

Continuing with our study of yoga philosophy, this month’s column delves into the yama, or ethical restraint, of asteya. What’s the difference between a drug addict and an alcoholic? The alcoholic will steal your wallet and run. The addict will steal your wallet and help you look for it. I’ve often pondered this old joke, which portrays the blundering drunk and the wily addict as thieves. But either way, they’re both thieves. And that’s what this month’s yoga philosophy column is about: the yogic principle of asteya, or non-stealing. Are you a thief? Back when I got sober a loooong…

Chile is one of those countries you would need months to explore fully. Since it’s 2,653 miles long, this skinny country stretches through all sorts of geographic terrain, from one of the world’s driest places to jaw-dropping icy mountains. So, if you’re only going for 10 days, you’ll have to choose just a few places to explore. Here’s a peek into Chilean life via three places I visited in March this year. Atacama Desert I wasn’t sure what to expect from the enormous Atacama Desert in northern Chile near the Bolivian border. And it didn’t look like much when I…

Continuing with our study of yoga philosophy, this month’s column delves into the yama, or ethical restraint, of satya. The second of the moral restraints, or yamas, is satya, which means truth. We’re supposed to tell the truth. So, does this mean we should go around venting freely, giving voice to every thought, with no filter between lips and mind? No. Notice that satya falls under the list of restraints. This means that we speak the truth, but carefully. If you’re familiar with the twelve steps, this may sound very familiar. In the eighth step (building on work done in…

Yoga is more than poses. The word yoga means “to yoke.” In this case, we’re trying to yoke our own little souls to a cosmic consciousness. Yoga includes a whole body of philosophy, spiritual theory and ideas of how to live clear-headed, peaceful lives. This column goes beyond the physical practice of yoga for a peek into yoga philosophy and how it pertains to sobriety. We’ll start with understanding a series of ethical restraints called the yamas. These yamas improve our characters and personalities, making it easier for people to live with us. The first of the five yamas (look…

Bar owner Abby Ehmann opened a sober bar after her top two customers stopped drinking. “Customer one had a stroke. His doctor said, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much,’” Ehmann told me when I first visited Hekate Café and Elixir Lounge in 2023. Her second customer reevaluated his relationship with alcohol during the pandemic, and realized it was a dead end. Ehmann asked herself how she could recreate the community she had at Lucky, her regular bar, but without the alcohol. Eventually the idea turned into Hekate, which opened in early 2022. At first, they served only coffee and herbal elixirs,…

I’m about thirty feet in the air, balancing on a small swinging log when I stop to stare down at the alligator below. The huge, wide reptile basks in Florida’s mild winter sunshine. Around me, roseate spoonbills nest in the treetops. It’s a viewpoint you can only get from the ropes and zip line course called Crocodile Crossing at the Saint Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. People have been coming here for thrilling encounters with massive reptiles since 1893, making it one of the state’s oldest attractions. But soaring over gator pits on a zip-line gives a perspective that would…

“Would you like a rum punch?” the receptionist asked first thing as I checked into South Beach Hotel. I was in Barbados, the birthplace of rum and known for Mount Gay Distillery, which dates back to 1703. Instead of getting sensitive and protective, like I sometimes still do, and brusquely saying no, I asked if they had anything nonalcoholic. Which of course they do—I hardly invented nondrinking. I sat in the sunny lobby with a glass of sweet fruit punch, the first of many nonalcoholic alternatives I would drink during five days in the land of rum. Sure, there’s a…

In downtown Loreto, the church bell rings every 15 minutes, day and night. It’s a gentle background sound during the night that I can sleep through if I’m already asleep. But at six AM, the bells go wild, bursting into a whole song. Must mean it’s time to haul my carcass out of bed and hurry the few blocks to the waterfront to catch the sunrise. It would be a shame to miss the sun coming up over the malecon, the 1.7-mile walkway along the beach. This fishing town in Baja del Sur, population 10,000, is lively in the morning.…

The hike took seven hours, and we gained 1800 feet of elevation in the first three. Huffing and puffing, we climbed through cloud forest, passing orchids, ferns and a glorious waterfall. Sometimes we walked on dirt trail, sometimes we climbed old, uneven Inca stone steps. The last 52 were so steep we had to crawl. At last, we reached the Sun Gate and saw it in the distance: Machu Picchu! Our little group of sober hikers had survived the arduous climb and could reap the reward of visiting this 15th century archeological site. It was the pinnacle of a wonderful…