Sober Friends

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes the resentment starts with something real. You feel dismissed, unappreciated, overlooked, or like you’re carrying more than your share. But then the story starts growing. You keep score. You build a case. You start deciding who’s right, who’s wrong, and who should have done more. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about how quickly hurt can turn into resentment, and wh...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever cared about something so much that you started to resent it? You keep showing up, taking responsibility, and doing what needs to be done. But when it feels like nobody else is putting in the same effort, something that once mattered to you can start to feel like a burden. This week on Sober Friends, Matt and Steve talk about a struggling Monday night AA meeting and t...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever been enjoying something good, only to find yourself already worrying about when it's going to end? Maybe it's time with someone you love, a relationship that's going well, or a period in your life when things finally seem to be falling into place. Instead of enjoying what's happening, you're already preparing yourself for what you might lose....

Send us Fan Mail You had a plan for the day. Now someone needs you to drop everything, another arrangement falls through, and you’re scrambling again. At some point, one more change feels like more than you can handle. Matt shares a weekend that pushed him past his limit and how ADHD and autism affect his response to disrupted routines. Steve recognizes his own version: offering to help, then gett...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you’ve stopped drinking, but your brain still wants guarantees? Matt and Steve talk about the need to research, plan, anticipate, and control what happens next — from work and money to cooking dinner and doing projects around the house. Underneath it is a harder problem: uncertainty. If you can figure everything out ahead of time, maybe you can avoid getting it w...

Send us Fan Mail What if the problem isn’t that you haven’t figured out how to drink the right way? Suzanne Warye, host of The Sober Mom Life and author of The Sober Shift , joins Matt to talk about the exhausting work of trying to control alcohol, wondering whether you’re “bad enough” to quit, and realizing that you don’t need to hit someone else’s rock bottom before deciding drinking isn’t worki...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when something that helped save your life starts to raise questions? For many people in recovery, there can be an uncomfortable tension between gratitude and honesty. You can believe that AA, meetings, and the recovery process have given you something valuable while still having questions about parts of the program, the language, or the way recovery is sometimes prese...

Send us Fan Mail I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. I’m showing up. I’m putting in the work. So why does it still feel like I’m falling short? Matt and Steve talk about the nagging belief that you should always be doing more—at work, in recovery, and in life. That leads them into a bigger question: are you doing things because they actually help, or because you’re trying to prove you’re doing reco...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes something can hurt deeply even when nothing is wrong. After dropping his son Owen off at college, Matt expected the hard part to be worrying about whether he would be okay. Instead, the emotion hit when he realized the opposite: Owen was ready. He had found his people. He was going to be fine. And a chapter of Matt’s life as a parent had changed anyway. Matt and Steve ta...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes you solve the thing you were worried about and feel relieved for about five minutes. Then your brain finds something else that could go wrong. Matt and Steve talk about what uncertainty does to them, from travel and job changes to money, family responsibilities, and situations where you've prepared as well as you can but still can't control the outcome. They al...

Send us Fan Mail Why is it so hard to ask for help without immediately feeling like you need to apologize for it? Matt and Steve talk about the shame that can come with needing support, the belief that we should be able to handle everything ourselves, and the fear that struggling will make other people think less of us. They also get into pride, people pleasing, emotional overwhelm, and the differ...

Send us Fan Mail You can spend a lot of time trying to fix the thing that seems to be causing your anxiety and still miss what’s actually underneath it. For Matt, the panic looked like money, college costs, and the fear of letting his son down. But when the emotion finally came out, it opened into something bigger: grief, change, getting older, losing control, and realizing that some parts of life...

Send us Fan Mail Being able to gut through pain can look like strength—until it becomes the reason you stay in a bad situation longer than you should. Matt talks about hitting a wall during a difficult medication taper, changing the plan, and still feeling like a failure for not pushing through. Matt and Steve look at how that same stubbornness shows up in health, work, and addiction. They talk ab...

Send us Fan Mail After travel, disrupted sleep, and a difficult medication taper, Matt feels depleted—and immediately starts questioning everything. Does his work matter? Is the podcast helping anyone? Is something genuinely wrong, or is exhaustion turning a temporary emotional state into a verdict on his entire life? Matt and Steve talk about the dangerous stories that can surface when they feel...

Send us Fan Mail As long as Matt wasn’t drinking like his father—and Steve wasn’t as bad as the people he grew up around—they could tell themselves they weren’t really alcoholics. There was always someone who had lost more, drank more, or looked more like the stereotype. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about how comparing your drinking to someone else’s worst consequences can keep you stuck....

Send us Fan Mail Success can make a drinking problem harder to see. When you are still working, earning, providing, and checking the outward boxes, it is easy to use those accomplishments as proof that nothing is seriously wrong. In this conversation, Matt talks with sobriety coach and podcast host Mike Curry about succeeding professionally while struggling privately. They discuss the limits of th...

Send us Fan Mail Sobriety can take away the drinking, but it does not automatically fix the part of us that avoids uncomfortable things. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the everyday tasks that can become weirdly heavy in recovery: making the phone call, going back to the dentist, dealing with money, choosing a contractor, or finally handling the thing we’ve been putting off. This conver...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a way many of us postpone our lives without even realizing it. We tell ourselves we’ll slow down later, appreciate it later, and be happy when things settle down. Then one day we look around and realize the years didn’t slow down while we were waiting. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about Father’s Day, graduation season, and the surprising realization that the moment...

Send us Fan Mail Brooke Taylor looked successful from the outside. But behind the polished image was alcohol, pressure, and the exhausting feeling that nothing ever felt like enough. In this conversation, she shares what it was like to get sober before she felt ready — and why early sobriety felt more like punishment than freedom. They also talk about the exhausting work of keeping up appearances,...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us spend a lot of time worrying about things that haven't happened yet. We replay conversations, predict outcomes, and try to solve problems that may never arrive. In recovery, that kind of future-tripping can feel overwhelming because alcohol is no longer there to quiet the noise. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the connection between anxiety and control....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the disease model of alcoholism—not as an excuse, but as a way to understand why alcohol affected them differently than it does other people. The conversation starts with the idea of “getting better and leaving,” and turns into a deeper look at why staying connected still matters, even after years of sobriety. They discuss personal respon...

Send us Fan Mail Getting sober does not automatically make the voice in your head disappear. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about the part of the mind that used to minimize drinking — you’re not that bad, other people drink more, you’re overreacting — and how that same voice can show up later in sobriety as doubt, fear, or the feeling that you don’t deserve what you have. Matt shares how anx...

Send us Fan Mail There’s a weird part of sobriety where nothing is technically wrong, but you still feel uncomfortable in your own skin. In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about what happens when alcohol is gone, but the restlessness, anxiety, expectations, and urge to escape are still there. They get into why discomfort does not always mean something is wrong, how ordinary life can still feel h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Matt and Steve talk about acceptance in sobriety — not as approval, not as giving up, and not as pretending everything is fine. It is about getting honest with reality instead of wasting energy trying to control people, outcomes, feelings, or the past. They dig into why acceptance can feel so uncomfortable for newcomers, especially when it sounds passive or weak....

Send us Fan Mail Matt and Steve talk about what happens when old alcoholic thinking shows up without the alcohol. Matt shares what it has been like tapering off medication, including the dark, isolating feeling that reaching out would not help — even when he knows connection usually does. They also get into emotional overreactions, escape fantasies, family stress, broken phones, sponsor avoidance,...