Recovery Rocks

Lisa chatted with Gemma Hartley, a freelance journalist, writing coach, speaker and author of No One Loves an Angry Woman. Her previous book, Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women and the Way Forward, sparked national conversations about the hidden, underappreciated and exhausting mental work that so many women experience. We talk about the lasting impact of the purity culture and patriarchy from her childhood. Drinking was socialized and it helped her to shut down feelings of overwhelm and anger, until it didn’t. Gemma learned to embrace her rage and see it not as a moral failing, but as a rational response to injustice—and a potential catalyst for change.

Actor, recovery coach and School of Rock Bottom podcast host Oliver Mason has been through it. He’s survived blackouts, seizures, terrifying withdrawals, an addiction to prescription medication and a hospital stay where he nearly walked out with a box of approximately 500 Librium tablets he'd found beside his bed.

Despite having a rock bottom story that could pretty much qualify as a horror movie, Mason doesn't believe people need a spectacular collapse to deserve recovery. He spent roughly a decade drinking primarily on weekends, looking reasonably functional from the outside while living with what he calls "hang terror," and he knows that the private misery can be every bit as devastating as the public consequences.

We get into his relapse after a year of sobriety, the woman whose story helped convince him that getting sober again was possible and why he waited nine years before publicly sharing his own recovery story. Lisa also remembers discovering that her hospital records described her as refusing to participate in bingo during detox (some things never change; you’ll have to listen to find out more about that).

We also talk about the shame that can make one drink feel like a life sentence, the irrational fears we lived with while drinking (say, an eviction notice, despite paying my rent) and why Mason believes there's no single right way to recover.

In this episode:

·       How Mason went from weekend drinking to severe withdrawal, hospitalizations and eating shaving foam in search of alcohol

·       Why alcohol initially seemed to solve his anxiety and self-esteem problems

·       The relapse that followed a full year of sobriety—and the unexpected story that changed his mind about trying again

·       Why rock bottom doesn't have to involve losing your job, your home or everything else

·       How shame and fear kept all three of us trapped in our addictions

·       Why Mason waited nine years to share his story publicly and how School of Rock Bottom grew from there

There are people who have dramatic stories of recovery and then there’s Sabyn Mayfield. Do you know anyone else who showed up at a rehab and, a few years later, ended up as that rehab’s CEO? Well, now you do because Mayfield is the CEO of The Bridge to Recovery—a rehab where he was a client in 2022.

A Nashville native, filmmaker, musician and nephew of Dolly Parton, Mayfield spent years in the entertainment business while struggling with addiction, low self-esteem and the belief that becoming rich and famous would finally make him feel like somebody. What he eventually realized was that he didn't particularly want fame or fortune as much as he wanted to feel seen, safe and worthy (we couldn’t have said it better ourselves).

We talk about the strange transition from freelance artist to businessperson, why Mayfield prefers the word "woundedness" to "trauma" and how drinking and using can become a survival strategy when being sober feels unbearable. We also get into the voice in our heads that can make us feel worthless even after decades of sobriety, the freedom of creating art without depending on it to pay the bills and how a three-day silent retreat at a monastery inspired his song "Worthy," featuring Callie Twisselman.

Along the way, Mayfield offers one of the better descriptions we've heard of addiction: most people who burn their hand on a stove run it under cold water, while someone struggling with addiction may put their hand right back on the stove in an attempt to relieve the pain.

In this episode:

·       How Mayfield went from receiving treatment at The Bridge to Recovery to running the place

·       Why his dreams of becoming rich and famous were rooted in wanting to feel safe and worthy

·       The surprising similarities between struggling artists, entrepreneurs and people in recovery

·       Why getting sober doesn't automatically silence the vicious voice in your head

·       What three days of silence with a group of monks taught him about spirituality, creativity and not overthinking everything

·       Why Mayfield believes the deeper work of recovery involves much more than putting down the drink or drug

Open Instagram, Ruin Your Night?We love to hate social media. But it’s also a singular tool for staying in touch, getting the word out on things we care about, and even learning a thing or two. We talk about our early days on the socials and how we use it now. Sober tools can help – just like with a drink, before opening that app, maybe ask yourself why you want to log on and play the tape through on where it might lead. Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna.

Some people love sober anniversaries, some people dread them, and some people don’t keep up with them at all. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. We talk about what counting days and keeping time looks like for us. Anna never misses an opportunity to celebrate herself, from her first soberversary (a karaoke party in West LA!) to her upcoming 25th (a full on 90s party with food trucks and costumes). For Lisa, it’s changed multiple times over 21 years. Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Our friend Stefanie Wilder Taylor, author of SIPPY CUPS ARE NOT FOR CHARDONNAY and DRUNKISH, and host of the Drunkish podcast,  joins us to talk about being publicly outed as a sober person and what the backlash was like. Stefanie was barely sober when she was thrust into the spotlight as a sobriety expert. We talk about owning our own stories and what anonymity is and isn’t.Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

It’s bound to happen. At some point in our early or not-so-early sobriety, something is likely to trigger that overwhelming feeling of anxiety or even panic. Maybe it’s in a situation we’d drink our through or maybe it’s out of nowhere. For Lisa, it was the latter. For Anna, smoking cigarettes eased her newcomer sobriety—until she realized it was only exacerbating the issue. Check out all things Lisa and all things Anna. 

Plenty of people struggle with the Higher Power part of AA. Natasha Ruby had a particularly good reason: she’d already dismantled the entire religious framework she was raised in and wasn’t especially eager to replace it with another male authority figure.

So she chose a mini-dachshund.

Before that came Mormonism, an eating disorder, alcoholism and a terrifying psychotic break that left Natasha unable to understand a New York subway map she’d used for years. She believed every conversation was prophecy, gave her phone to a stranger and told the hospital staff she was essentially Bradley Cooper in Limitless. The aftermath was darker: she returned to Utah, covered her windows with a felt blanket and drank in a locked closet because she believed her life was over.

It wasn’t.

Nearly 10 years into sobriety, Natasha has turned 15 years of journals and voice recordings into the brilliantly titled memoir Latter Day Psychosis. She also found something she once believed she could only access while drinking: creativity. Now she makes art sober, which may be less cinematic than Bradley Cooper becoming superhuman but has worked out considerably better.

In this episode:

·      Why leaving Mormonism made alcohol feel like freedom—very briefly

·      What Natasha remembers about losing touch with reality in New York City

·      Why AA offended her until the moment it saved her

·      How a mini-dachshund became a perfectly legitimate Higher Power

·      What she discovered inside 15 years of journals and recordings

·      Why publishing her memoir feels like a 12th step

Natasha celebrates 10 years sober on September 28. Latter Day Psychosis will be released November 17.

Find her at natasharubyart.com and on Instagram at @natasharubyart.

If a quarter of the people at your conference don’t drink, greeting everyone with champagne is less “festive” than it is “we have made absolutely no effort to know our audience.”

Laura Nelson discovered this when she asked a room of 125 professional women how many were sober or sober-curious. About a quarter raised their hands—hesitantly, while looking around to see who might be watching. Laura, who had kept her own sobriety separate from her professional life, realized this was ridiculous. So she did what every reasonable person does after identifying a problem: started a company, wrote a book and put on a conference.

Lisa spoke at the first Amplify conference, where a sober crowd took over a hotel bar, had an apparently suspicious amount of fun and woke up feeling fine. Now Laura is bringing Amplify back for two days—and trying to convince event planners that one syrupy mocktail served in a child’s glass does not count as inclusivity.

In this episode:

·      How Laura reacted when she was recognized from her sober TikTok 

·      What happened when 25% of a room admitted they didn’t want the champagne being handed to them

·      Why your mocktail may actually be more insulting than having no mocktail

·      How Sober Life Rocks built the largest sobriety community on LinkedIn

·      Why Laura swore she’d never put on another conference—and is now planning one twice as long

Laura is the co-founder of Sober Life Rocks and the author of The Inclusive Event Planner: A Quick Start Guide to Sober-Friendly Conferences That Boost Attendance. 

Find Laura on IG @sober_life_rocks.

Have you ever been ayahuasca-curious? Dr. Jeff McNairy, Chief Medical Officer at Rythmia, the world’s first medically licensed ayahuasca retreat, joins us for a candid conversation about what plant-based medicine can and can’t do. We get into the science, what actually happens at the retreat, who may benefit and what happens when an experience doesn’t go the way someone hoped.