This Sober October and Halloween, don’t ghost your emotions — meet them with curiosity and compassion in a cozy, supportive environment.

👻 No tricks, pressure, or ghosting emotions. Enter our space to breathe, feel, and be kind to yourself.

✨ Join hosts Bar Nun and Sprout Society for a two-part exploratory journey to build genuine human connection through vulnerability, play, and somatic processing in an inclusive, substance-free space.

• 🧘 Four incredible facilitators will lead immersive, guided small-group experiences and discussion.
• 🖌️ Use behavioral tools and self-expression to unmask and alchemize real feel “scaries” we often carry alone (anxieties, unsaid thoughts, conflict, awkwardness, and heavy feelings like shame) into emotional honesty, safety, self-trust, humor, and creativity.
• 🥂 Enjoy non-alc beverages while exploring the hard things together in a respectful, judgment-free zone.
• 🧛 Get in the spirit and don your fave Halloween costume! Also no pressure if you come as you are.

🎟️ You can register for one or two sessions, please sign up for both dates if you intend to attend both.

💖 Leave feeling lighter, seen, and anchored within community.

• 🧩 Gentle on-ramps: Warm hosts and fun, low-stakes prompt cards or game will make breaking the ice effortless.
• 👥 Small-group pairings: Every workshop is built around pairs or intimate circles so you build rapport without feeling put on the spot in front of everyone. Our exercises help attendees leave with new friends.
• 🤝 📲 Connection time: Whether solo or with a friend, sober, sober-curious, or just seeking good company without liquid courage, you won’t just sit and listen, you will have opportunities to connect! We dedicate breaks throughout for open mingling and contact swaps.

🎟️ Donation-based with RSVP

Recommended minimum donation is $15 (without fees) per event and helps support our continued community work.

‼️ Note: Even if you can’t make it, RSVP for free to be notified first of our upcoming events.

🗓️ Program Breakdown

🎭 October 8: Unmasking and belonging

• 🦹 Jennie Kogan, LCSW of Bravely Belong guides us through a small-group exercise to meet our dark or hidden side — give your beloved angsty, judgy, badass part permission to feel, speak, and be in a safer than usual way and get to a space of clarity on the other side.
• 🤡 Sasha Raskin of A Beautiful Mess transforms social fear through the liberating art of clowning. Through interactive play, red-nose energy, and lighthearted exercise, she guides us in stripping away shame, embracing failure, and discovering how delightful it is to lean into awkward vulnerability to build trust.

🧘 October 22: Expression and stillness

• 🎨 Rachel Long of Buzzkill NYC leads a playful, low-pressure creative exercise designed to help us connect through shared self-expression and arts-inspired conversation. You’ll build courage in channeling and sharing emotions within community.
• 🔔 Trish McCormick of Yule Glow Wellness draws experience from the Khmer concept yŏl (“to understand”) in providing a choice-centered sound meditation and breathwork journey. Together, we celebrate our progress and observe what we carry without judgment. Share a collective breath to wind down for the evening.

About our hosts

• 🌱 Sprout Society is a nonprofit community hub + DIY space in Bushwick for creativity, community, and care. Drop in, co-work, gather, host, take a class, find your people. Anyone is welcome through our doors, regardless of what they’re going through or what they can afford.
• 🍹 The Bar Nun Life brings people together through non-alcoholic experiences focused on wellness, art, technology, and vegetarian dining.

About our non-alcoholic drink sponsors

Based on product availability, get excited to try:

• 🧪 All the Bitter are small batch, award-winning cocktail bitters made with organic herbs designed to easily provide depth and balanced complexity to drinks.
• 🌾 Asahi 0.0% Super Dry delivers a crisp, hoppy, and flowery beer for the familiar, light, and refreshing experience that Japan’s original No. 1 beer is known for.
• 🍄 High Ground Elixirs are low calorie, vegan, fruit-flavored sparkling beverages inflused with adaptogenic mushrooms for mood balancing without the mushroom taste.
• 🍷 Jøyus offers a range of award-winning de-alcoholized wines grown in the Pacific Northwest that are vegan, gluten-free, and low calorie.
• 🌊 Pentire Drinks is a UK-based certified B-corp that naturally distills whole plants to create coastal flavors inspired spirits and canned cocktails.
• 🍸 Per Se was founded by a couple looking for sophisticated ready-to-drink options that were entirely juice and tea-based to support modern, active lifestyles.
• 🥃 Roots Divino offers award-winning vermouth proudly crafted with Greek ingredients for unique notes of wormwood, lemon, and Mediterranean herbs.
• 🥂 SemiPlume is an elevated, dry champagne-like sparkling that features sencha, yuzu, fig, and other complex tea and juice flavors. It’s also all natural, no added sugar, vegan, and gluten-free.
• 🪵 The Pathfinder offers a fermented hemp and root spirit and ready-to-drink cocktails that deliver earthy, bittersweet intensity inspired by ancient apothecary elixirs with a modern, edgy twist.
• 🌿 Three Spirit offers functional spirit elixirs and wine alternatives designed by plant scientists and bartenders to enhance your mood, rhythm, and mind throughout the day and night.

🛡️ Space and safety commitment

This is a beginner/introductory experience. All identities, emotional states, and experience levels are welcome. Come exactly as you are—whether energetic, quiet, nervous, or tired. There is no pressure to share more than you are comfortable with.

To hold a brave and welcoming environment, all participants are required to respect others, their boundaries, and their personal space. We are dedicated to maintaining a conscious, consensual, and supportive community space for all participants.

Disclaimer: Speakers, activities, and sponsors are subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances, including weather conditions, transportation issues, local events, etc. By RSVPing, you acknowledge that you are attending voluntarily and assume all risks associated with this event.