If you've ever moved to a new city thinking a fresh start would fix the drinking -- and then found yourself alone on the couch at 2 PM on a Tuesday with a bottle you swore you weren't opening?  Alysse Bryson gets it. This week I'm talking to the founder of The Sober Curator, who has 20 years sober. We get into the geographic cure, project-managing your own rock bottom, emergency heart surgery at 40, and I also say somethings about tiramisu that I probably should have kept to myself.

Find Alysse at The Sober Curator

Her IG is @AlysseIntheCity

My IG is @SWilderTaylor

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In this episode I talk to comedian Zach Noe Towers, who spent the first five years of his stand-up career doing a shot before his set and a beer during it, convinced it made him calm and in tune with the room. He walks me through his whole magic-medicine-misery arc: the scared gay kid in St. Louis who found that alcohol helped, the 30th birthday where he woke up in a stranger's bed already late for a job he hated, and how he got sober despite worrying he wouldn't like other people in recovery.

Watch Zach's comedy special Twink Death on YouTube.

Follow Zach on IG @ZachNoeTowers

There’s a specific kind of person who hears “just have dessert sometimes” and counters with a
38-day countdown to her dad’s birthday cake. Misti Milner is that person, and it turns out so am
I. We talk about the offhand comment from a popular kid that lodged in her brain for decades,
the era when every mom in the neighborhood was doing Jane Fonda in the basement or driving
to Jazzercise, and the deeply unfun truth that anorexia does not just go away on its own no matter how hard you try. 

You can find Misti on the substack That's What She Said 

Please subscribe to Misti's substack and also watch this episode on YouTube!

If you've ever sat in a therapist's office for months working on everything except the thing you do every single night — same. My friend Rebecca Nelson Lubin has almost 14 years sober, and she told me about going to therapy for the panic attacks she got driving over the bridge, and somehow the drinking just never came up. We get into the weekends that started Thursday and ended Tuesday, and the day at ten years sober when she hit an emotional rock bottom and picked up the phone instead of a drink. 

@RebeccaNelsonLubin

Watch this pod at YouTube

If you’ve ever woken up with an injury you couldn’t explain and just… made up a story about it, Elli gets it. She had her first drink at 13, her first blackout at 14, and then blacked out almost every time she drank for ten years, the whole time deciding she was just a bad person instead of a kid who couldn’t stop. We get into the fake Twitter account a group of girls built to bully her at 16, her mom showing up to graduation in an ankle bracelet, and the genuinely unhinged thing that finally made her quit.

You can find Elli Rose Cikovic's book The Diary of a Twenty Five Year-old Alcoholic on Amazon for right now. Follow Elli on IG @ellirosecikovic

If you've ever assumed sobriety would turn you into a calm, well-adjusted person who makes good decisions and drinks green juice while journaling at sunrise, Sara Christine Berelsman would like a word. We talk about drinking, bipolar disorder, shame, marriage, motherhood, writing your way through the hard stuff, getting judged by small-town boss babes, and why telling the truth can be terrifying but also deeply useful which is pretty much our brand around here. 

Sara is the author of My Last Rock Bottom and can be found on her Facebook page Sara Christine Berelsman.

Please check out this episode and more on our YouTube page at Drunk-ish

Tanya J is back for Part Two, and I would strongly suggest listening to Part One first unless you enjoy walking into the emotional equivalent of a movie halfway through and asking, “Wait, why is everyone crying?” Tanya’s story goes from sober parties and family Thanksgiving to grief, trauma, motherhood, court, recovery, and the very rude discovery that life does not stop being life just because you quit drinking. We talk about staying sober when “all bets are off,” and why playing through the drink is not just a slogan — it’s survival.

This week on Drunk-ish, I’m talking with my friend Tanya J, whose sobriety story does not begin with teenage keg stands or dramatic college beer pong. Her drinking took off later, wrapped up in marriage, wine with dinner, perfectionism, parenting, adoption stress, family chaos, and the deeply annoying belief that if you’re the “responsible one,” you must be fine. Tanya shares how fear, control, caretaking, and white wine all tangled together — and how rehab, recovery, sponsorship, and a very inconvenient amount of crying helped her start rebuilding her life. This is Part One, so yes, we are making you come back.

This week on Drunk-ish, I’m trying something a little different: a topic episode instead of one guest story. I’m joined by Casey McGuire Davidson and Sara Kaufman-Bradstreet to talk about getting sober after having kids, what our children remember — or thankfully don’t — and how we talk to teenagers about drinking, weed, driving, consent, and all the fun topics that make parenting feel like a hostage negotiation with snacks. We also get into mom wine culture, shame, sober sex, and why quitting drinking didn’t make us less fun — just less likely to fall asleep mid-sentence. Or mid-other things.

You can find sober mentor and podcaster Sara Kaufman Bradstreet at @No_more_wasted_days

and host of the Hello Someday podcast, Casey McGuire Davidson at HelloSomedayCoaching.com

You can subscribe and follow us on YouTube 

This week I’m talking with my Rob Hill, who has 45 years sober and somehow manages to make attempted childhood sibling murder, lesbian bar fights, therapy, motorcycles, and spiritual awakening feel like one very eventful coffee date. Rob takes us from feeling different as a kid, to drinking early, to getting sober, relapsing once, crawling back, and building a life she still loves showing up for. It’s funny, wild, moving, and also a pretty great reminder that recovery doesn’t have to look perfect to be real.

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This week I’m talking with Josh Welch, a criminal defense lawyer, husband, dad, and person in recovery who has been through it — rehabs, relapses, shame spirals, rebuilding, and the occasional very bad idea involving a tallboy immediately after treatment. You may also recognize him as a frequent guest on his wife's podcast, I've Had It. Josh talks about getting sober after years of addiction, how becoming a father changed what he was willing to fight for, why perfection in recovery can be a trap, and how shame can keep people sick and the radical concept of not beating yourself to death for being human.