Journey to the Sunnyside | Mindful Drinking & Alcohol Health

In this episode, I sit down with Billy Grady, co-founder and CEO of Kava Haven, one of the fastest-growing alcohol alternatives in the country. We break down what kava actually is, how it’s been used for thousands of years, and why more people are turning to it as a way to relax, socialize, and mark the end of the day without alcohol. Billy shares how a personal health experiment turned into a brand now carried in over 1,000 retailers and bars nationwide, clears up common misconceptions around liver health and addiction, and explains what kava really feels like compared to alcohol or cannabis. If you’re curious about drinking less but still want something that helps you unwind, this conversation gives you a clear, grounded look at whether kava might fit into your life.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who cut back on drinking, hit their goals, and still feel like something’s off. In this episode, I share why moderation can start to feel like something you manage instead of a real shift in how you live. I walk through what alcohol is often doing beneath the surface, why removing it isn’t always enough on its own, and how building what’s missing can make drinking naturally feel less necessary.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Many people feel exhausted but unable to truly rest. Sleep feels shallow, stress lingers, and the body stays on edge even when life looks “fine” on the outside. In this episode, functional wellness practitioner Zoa Conner, PhD brings a systems-based lens to what’s happening underneath that wired-but-tired state. Drawing on her background in physics, she explains how depletion, nervous system dysregulation, and environmental stress quietly shape how we feel long before we try to change our behavior.

We talk about how mineral balance and liver support affect energy and resilience, why cravings can be signals rather than failures, and how changes in environment or travel can either restore regulation or amplify stress. This conversation isn’t about fixing yourself or following a rigid protocol. It’s about understanding what the body is asking for and learning how support, not force, often creates the relief people are looking for.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

We’re a few weeks into January — past the excitement of starting, but still early enough to choose again. In this episode, I share how I’m structuring a personal experiment this year, not as a rule or resolution, but as a way to support what I want more of: energy, clarity, consistency, and presence. Using examples straight from my journal, I walk through a simple framework you can use at any point in the year:

• Clarifying your “why” by category
• Turning it into purpose statements
• Choosing a meaningful container without forever language

Whether you’re right on track or already feeling off course, this episode isn’t about restriction or perfection. It’s about paying attention to what supports you, and what quietly takes from you, and choosing from there.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Marci Hopkins, host of Wake Up with Marci and author of the upcoming book Wake Up, You’re Not Broken, joins me again to talk about what actually happens after you make a big change. We unpack the first 30 days — including that first-month “I feel amazing” phase — and why things can feel harder once it fades. We talk about identity, spirituality, community, and how to move forward without shame when progress isn’t linear. This episode is about rediscovering yourself, not fixing something that was broken.
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RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Marci Hopkins is the host of Wake Up with Marci, a speaker, and the author of Chaos to Clarity. But her work didn’t come from theory — it came from living through years of trauma, chaos, and using alcohol to cope. In part one, Marci shares what chaos actually looked like growing up, how drinking slowly became normalized, and the moment she realized that trying to “manage” alcohol wasn’t going to work for her. We talk about self-awareness, nervous system survival, and why real change starts when you stop pretending something is working when it isn’t.
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RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

You’d think a hangover would be enough to stop drinking. For most people, it’s not. In this episode, we look at why delayed consequences don’t change behavior, how the brain prioritizes immediate relief, and what cravings are really responding to. Once you understand the timing problem at the center of drinking habits, a lot of things start to make sense.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Claudia Christian is an actress, author, and leading advocate for evidence-based approaches to alcohol use disorder. She’s best known for her roles on Babylon 5, NYPD Blue, and 24, as well as for her widely viewed TEDx talk on alcohol recovery, which has been watched by millions of people worldwide.

In this conversation, Claudia shares why being told to “just quit drinking” never worked for her, despite years of trying. We talk about cravings, relapse cycles, and why willpower alone often isn’t enough to change drinking habits. Claudia explains how naltrexone helped quiet the mental and physical noise around alcohol, and what most people misunderstand about medication, side effects, and consistency.We also go beyond the biology.

Claudia reflects on trauma, learned coping patterns, and why the deeper work matters once cravings begin to fade. This episode is about expanding options, reducing harm, and offering a more realistic and compassionate way to change your relationship with alcohol.

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

• Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
• Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joinsunnyside/
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/joinsunnyside/
• Twitter:  https://x.com/joinsunnyside
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joinsunnyside

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE:
 
Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol health app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

We now offer Sunnyside Med, a new program that provides access to compounded naltrexone, a medication that can reduce alcohol cravings at the brain level, offering a more clinical pathway for people who need it. Sunnyside Med is a complete, holistic approach to help you drink less or quit, including coaching, community, habit change, education, and more to help you create longterm change while the medication does its work.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

We’re surrounded by advice on how to do better, be better, and optimize every part of life. But what if the constant effort to improve is part of what keeps us feeling tense? In this episode, I talk about my own habit of always learning, always doing, and what happened when I finally made space to stop fixing myself. We explore why easing pressure can lead to calmer choices, clearer thinking, and more sustainable change.

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Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE: Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol moderation app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

If you’re starting Dry January or Dry(ish) January today, this episode is about support, not pressure. We talk about how to approach the month with kindness instead of correction, what to expect in those first couple of weeks, why an off night doesn’t undo progress, and how to set yourself up with tools that actually help once January is underway. We walk through practical support like the Dry(ish) January Challenge with Sunnyside, medical and physical support options, urge surfing, and motivating resources that make this feel doable in real life. This episode builds on Monday’s conversation about planning ahead, but it stands on its own as a grounded way to start the year feeling clear, steady, and supported.

My Top 5 Resources for Dry (or Dryish) January

1. Dry(ish) January Challenge with Sunnyside
Join the free challenge, choose your goal, track your drinks, and earn rewards.
https://get.sunnyside.co/january

2. Sunnyside Med
Medical support designed to help when cravings feel bigger than intentions.
https://www.joinsunnysidemed.com/

3. Cloud9 – Daily Restore (Sunnyside Edition)
Physical support for sleep, nervous system recovery, and liver health during alcohol reduction.
https://trycloud9.com/products/daily-restore-sunnyside

4. Urge Surfing (Behavioral Psychology Tool)
Clinical overview:
👉 https://ssihi.uci.edu/news-and-media/blog/urge-surfing-in-the-new-year-resolving-to-ride-the-waves-of-change/

5. SoberishMom on Instagram
Motivating, real-life support that makes Dry(ish) Jan
👉 https://www.instagram.com/soberishmom/

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Listen to Journey to the Sunnyside Podcast: https://bit.ly/4bxCqT3
Subscribe to Sunnyside’s YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3zuoID4

RELATED ARTICLES FROM THE SUNNYSIDE BLOG:

ABOUT SUNNYSIDE: Sunnyside is the #1 alcohol moderation app that helps you drink less without any shame, guilt, or pressure to quit. Optimize your alcohol habits to achieve benefits like sleeping better, losing weight, feeling more energy, and saving money. We know that an all-or-nothing approach doesn’t work for everyone, so we focus on helping you set your own goals, celebrate small wins, and build a lasting system of accountability. As a result, 96.7% of our members see a big drop in their drinking after 90 days.

Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.