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.

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.

From Wham! fangirling to sober reinvention, Senior Contributor Amy Liz Harrison finds plenty to love in Janey Lee Grace’s memoir. This four-sobees review explores music, midlife and the many versions of ourselves we bring along for the ride.

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.

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 joining BACKSTAGE live on Oct. 6.

Same songs. Entirely different relationship with the lyrics. Senior Contributor Amy Liz Harrison revisits 26 tracks that take on new meaning in sobriety, from karaoke staples to songs that suddenly sound suspiciously like your sponsor. Your recovery era has a soundtrack. Naturally, Journey made the cut.

Senior Contributor Tony Harte reviews John Callahan’s fiercely irreverent memoir, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Callahan’s story dismantles the idea that one devastating consequence automatically produces sobriety—or that recovery turns every complicated person into an inspirational hero.

🎧 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.

Senior Contributor Tony Harte reviews Euphoric Recall, Aidan Martin’s unflinching memoir about growing up in Scotland, surviving trauma and finding recovery from addiction. The book challenges the selective memories that can make past substance use appear safer and more appealing than it really was.

Why is it that society often labels a woman’s enthusiasm as ‘too much’? Contributor Julianne Griffin dives into this phenomenon with her latest piece, ‘Nobody Has Ever Been Allowed to Like Something This Much.’ From friendship bracelets to recovery, she shares how this judgmental gaze has shadowed her joys. Let’s celebrate our passions, no matter how big or small! What makes your heart sing—no matter what others think?

Megan A. Schikora’s A Woman in Pink examines what happens when love, loyalty and the desire to save someone begin to look dangerously like self-abandonment.

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.

Nearly 30 years after hearing Anthony Hopkins speak at a Los Angeles recovery meeting, Senior Contributor Lane Kennedy revisits that experience through his memoir, We Did OK, Kid. As Hopkins celebrates 50 years sober, Lane reflects on why getting sober is only the beginning—and what it really means to stay.

Senior Contributor Tony Harte reviews The Acts of Kenny Lambert by Kurt Rasmussen, an introspective novel about alcoholism, identity and one man’s uneasy entrance into recovery. Despite uneven pacing and an unresolved spiritual conflict, its final act delivers a compelling portrait of self-deception and change.

We opened this one up to everybody. Members, readers, the sober curious, the person who found us through a Brad…

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.

In her latest piece, Contributor & Swift Steps Founder Julianne Griffin shares a poignant reflection on betrayal and addiction, inspired by Taylor Swift’s “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” Through a personal lens, she explores the loud silence that follows someone who disappears from your life. Julianne’s story reminds us of the unexpected ways sobriety can manifest in pop culture, and how music often narrates our deepest struggles. How has music helped you through tough times?

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.

Chelsea Clinton’s health misinformation podcast takes on alcohol myths with Columbia epidemiologist Dr. Katherine Keyes. Spoiler: the red wine study does not survive, and the data on high-achieving women and drinking will stop you mid-scroll.

That book in your head isn’t writing itself. Tawny Lara’s fall writing room runs Tuesdays and Thursdays, September 22 through November 19, with guided prompts, focused writing time, and a community of writers who get it.

After Hayden Panettiere’s death at 36, Contributor Carolyn Bunn returned to “This Is Me: A Reckoning” with a different perspective. As a woman in long-term sobriety who has also chosen not to have children, she reflects on addiction, postpartum depression, motherhood, identity and the complicated gaps we sometimes leave in our own stories.

Simon Dyson threw Ironman medals in a shoebox, drank to fix what could not be fixed, and got sober after a stranger prayed for him at Notre Dame. Then he rode 852 kilometers across the Karoo and came home with a farm to build for his son Billy.

Al Tapper never drank. His college roommate never stopped. Sixty years after Walt Disney fired that roommate from a Disneyland ice cream parlor, the story is a song in Tapper’s new Off-Broadway musical memoir, and Sober Curator readers get 20% off tickets.

Panel scores, fulls and halves only: “Running Point” S2 got a 3.5, “Your Friends & Neighbors” S2 got a 4.5, “Imperfect Women” got a 3.5. Senior Contributor Lane Kennedy tried to file a 4.75 and is now on strike. Which one did we get wrong? Give us your Sobees score and one sentence of evidence.

Aerosmith accidentally invented recovery coaching in the 1980s. Forty years later, coach Stephanie Hazard wrote the first mainstream book about it. Our #QUITLIT review of Making Sobriety Stick, including the Sobees score and the one chapter written for readers with decades of sobriety.

Before you surrender to pumpkin spice and sweater weather, late summer still has something to say. Senior Contributor Anne Marie Cribbin shares six Celtic-inspired practices for honoring the first harvest, staying present in sobriety and enjoying the season that’s actually here — peaches, cicadas, warm evenings and all.

After losing 105 pounds in his first nine months of sobriety, Justin Kinney looked like a recovery success story. Behind the transformation, however, were no rest days, too little food and a relationship with exercise that had become increasingly compulsive. He reflects on what it took to redefine fitness, discipline and true recovery.