#RECOVEROUTLOUD
The opposite of addiction is connection. At The Sober Curator, we are a unique group of individuals that have connected online during the pandemic years to curate and create a hub of information for the recovery community. By sharing our stories, recovering out loud, and curating original content for the recovery community, we believe we are building the ultimate recovery lifestyle resource for those who have already decided to live a sober lifestyle.
We have over 120+ years of long-term recovery between us.
These are our stories.
CLASS OF 2006
Giving up alcohol has been the hardest and the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Side note: I’m a single mom, which has not been a cakewalk. The day was May 1st, 2006. I was coming off of a weekend bender with alcohol where I attempted to control my drinking. (Newsflash, I couldn’t.)
The next day, at the advice of a nurse at a local women’s rehabilitation center I’d previously met with, I did something crazy. With 24 shaky hours sober, I was detoxing and somehow had managed to not take a drink. Out of ideas of how to beat this thing, dreaming of tequila and tacos, I drove to my first women’s only meeting and caught alcoholism.
CLASS OF 2017
My name is Jay Chase, and I am a firm believer that recovery is something everyone deserves and can achieve. Indeed, as a man, born to rough childhood and being the only son of five, I’ve always had a strong passion for helping uplift others and inspire people to achieve self-confidence – but this wasn’t always something I necessarily applied to myself, which left me spiraling into a world of addiction and alcoholism. However, I knew that there had to be a better way…
CLASS OF 1996
Sobriety found me on Dec 31, 1996, and I say it found me because I wasn’t looking for it; I didn’t have a problem with alcohol; I loved drinking! I loved red wine, ice-cold vodka, and fricking margaritas, not altogether, but sometimes it happened that way as the night progressed. I never intended to blackout, but every time I took a drink, I blacked out, and then who knows what happened?
CLASS OF 2012
I had a great childhood growing up. I had a loving family, and fortunately, my upbringing didn’t consist of abuse or neglect like so many others who share my story of addiction. So, one could argue that I never had a reason to start numbing feelings in the first place. But regardless, when I got drunk for the first time, I fell in love.
CLASS OF 2014
It was the summer between my 7th and 8th-grade year, and I was spending a Friday night at my best friend’s house. She had a cute older brother, cable TV, a swimming pool in her backyard, and a four-pack of her mom’s Bartles & James wine coolers in the refrigerator. For anyone not around back then, B & J came in about 50 flavors and was the White Claw of the ’80s.
CLASS OF 2015
Analisa Six, your resident astrologer here to tell you my story of how I got sober. Since I am an astrologer, dates play a major role in my life. When reflecting upon pivotal moments in time that shape who we are, the art of astrology shows us what planets were aiding in those transitions in life at the time we were making those huge life-altering decisions. I wanted to include what was happening in my birth chart on my sober date because I believe it is why I was able to finally take a step towards alcohol-free living after many years of trying.
CLASS OF 2018
My interest in yoga and subsequent decision to do something totally out of character and get certified to teach yoga was how my cherry got popped into the wellness industry. Yet for a decade plus, I lived an incongruent life of professional yogi and high-functioning wino. Thursday – Saturday, I would be out late drinking either red wine or vodka tonics at the club (*I always loved how tonic glows under black lights), and then my Saturday and Sunday mornings we spent at the yoga studio doing back-to-back vinyasa flows to sweat out all the alcohol. Healthy? Hardly, but it is important not to discredit this massive step in the right direction my life was going.
CLASS OF 2009
When I looked around at the female jail block, where my pregnant ass now lay, I thought I was different from the rest and that I didn’t belong. The judgment was as strong as my terror. I didn’t know what these Indiana white trash hillbillies had done, but I certainly wasn’t going to find out. I wouldn’t be here long. The funny thing was, deep down (I mean, real deep down, under the alcoholic strata of protection), I hated myself. I sat paralyzed by ego manifesting in all its juxtaposing glory, feeling simultaneous ‘better than’ and ‘worse than’ the entire world.
CLASS OF 2019
On a flight home from Italy in February 2019, I had my final class of alcoholic wine – ever. I didn’t know it would be my last. I just knew I was tired. Drinking was something that had been so fun at one point. It was something that brought friends together; bottomless brunch mimosas, watching the football game at the bar, but those once fun benders had turned into a nightly routine I couldn’t kick. It wasn’t fun anymore, and I felt like shit.
CLASS OF 2011
Before I arrived in this life as an author, a podcaster, and a sober mom of eight, living in the suburbs of Seattle, my journey began as a bicentennial baby in Los Angeles. That means I was born in 1976, making me a proud member of Generation X.
CLASS OF 2007
I got sober after a judge gave me the choice of either jail for a year or rehab for three months. After 21 years of drinking and 16 years of drugs, on June 21st, 2007. I arrived at the Bay Area Recovery Center in Dickinson, Texas. I was there for three months and stayed two extra days; I did not want to leave. It was the best summer of my life, summer camp, and I finally became the man I am supposed to be.
CLASS OF 2016
Classy wine drinker. That was me. A classy connoisseur of wine. Franzia boxed wine from the very beginning to the very end of my drinking career. With the exception, of course, of the airplane-sized bottles at the real end. In the beginning, I felt my story was unworthy of sharing because it was boring. I would come to find, though, that my story was like hundreds of others.
CLASS OF 2019
I used to be a big dickhead. I mean, I don’t think the majority of people would agree with that statement, but like so many of you, when I look back at who I was and what my values were, it’s easy for me to state plainly: I used to be a dickhead. The pertinent example that comes to mind is how I thought about my brother when he quit drinking a couple of years before I did.
CLASS OF 2022
I wasn’t a big drinker when I joined the military many years ago. I was a binge drinker. Train hard, party harder. That’s been military culture since before Roman soldiers marched on Gaul. If you couldn’t hang, were you even a man? I was young, strong, impressionable, and a bit lost. I went on to spend 30 years of my life repeating that cycle. A clean week followed by a dirty weekend. Once, I got into the wrong car and drove away. Once, I slept in a train station in Berlin because I missed the last train out. I don’t remember anyone’s names, just the faces that joined me in my self-destruction.
