An All Night Place - Secular AA

From Dead Tour to Day One: Angelique's Story Angelique spent years following the Grateful Dead across America, chasing music, freedom, and a life that felt limitless. But behind the adventure was an addiction that quietly evolved from party culture into isolation, grief, and survival. In this episode, she shares a life shaped by childhood trauma, caring for two terminally ill parents, losing h...

What happens when your primary addiction isn't just alcohol, but escape itself? In this deeply honest, hilarious, and profoundly moving share, Tristen Michael ("TJ Starter the Third") explores growing up with impossible standards, learning to perform a version of yourself that everyone else could accept, and discovering that recovery isn't about becoming a better person, it's...

What if sobriety wasn't something you achieved once, but something you tended every day? In this deeply personal share, Raven takes us from a childhood marked by abandonment, through addiction, grief, abusive relationships, loss, chronic pain and repeated attempts to rebuild a life worth living. Along the way she discovers that recovery isn't about finding the perfect spell, but about tending a da...

When He Withdrew, He Drew | Malcolm's Story Long before he understood why, Malcolm learned to retreat into art. As he puts it, when he withdrew, he drew. What began as a childhood refuge would become one of the threads running through a life marked by trauma, addiction, resilience and recovery. In this episode, Malcolm traces the path from an abusive home and undiagnosed ADHD to the club scene...

From unimaginable trauma to the promise of recovery, Skye's story is one of survival, resilience, and hope. In this profoundly moving episode of the An All Night Place Podcast, Skye shares her journey through childhood abuse, addiction, loss, violence, homelessness, mental health struggles, motherhood, relapse, and recovery. Through experiences that would have overwhelmed many, she discovered...

Tony celebrates 365 days sober by telling the story that got him there. Born into a chaotic and unconventional family, Tony grew up surrounded by addiction, poverty, violence, and contradictions. Determined not to become what he saw around him, he instead found himself following a path that led through cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, Burning Man, heartbreak, toxic relationships, grief, caregiving, and...

Luke thought he was different. Smarter. Tougher. The guy who could drink all day, surf all weekend, and somehow keep life together. Until alcohol stopped being part of the adventure and became the entire story. In this candid and often funny share, Luke reflects on the years he spent chasing freedom through alcohol, only to discover that his world had become smaller, lonelier, and completely contr...

Three years ago, Bunnie woke up on the floor of a padded jail cell convinced that her life had finally hit bottom. Her car was disappearing. Her home was disappearing. Her career was slipping through her fingers. Yet somehow, when the fog lifted, she felt something she hadn't felt in a very long time: hope. In this raw and deeply honest conversation, Bunnie reflects on 1,127 days of sobriety,...

Sarcasm and Vodka. Josh shares a brutally honest, darkly funny, and deeply human story of alcoholism, relapse, trauma, identity, recovery, and rebuilding a life from the ashes of self-destruction. From growing up in a small conservative town in Indiana, to years spent surviving on “sarcasm and vodka,” Josh reflects on chronic relapse, toxic relationships, therapy, AA, LGBTQ+ identity, shame, survi...

What happens when someone who openly admits he’s “full of shit” decides to build a life around honesty, recovery, and gratitude? In this deeply personal and unexpectedly funny share, corded during a "Grati-Thursday Meeting, Dave unpacks the word GRATITUDE by turning it into a backronym:Growing Recovery Around Trust, Integrity, Tolerance, Understanding, and Daily Effort. From growing up in Sou...

Almost four decades sober, one sponsor-turned-wife, a secular approach to recovery, and a lifetime of lessons earned the hard way. Ernie shares his journey from a seven-day-a-week drunk and bar fighter to a man living a calm, grounded life in long-term recovery. With humour, grit, vulnerability, and zero sugar-coating, he speaks about atheism in AA, PTSD, Vietnam, relationships, emotional honesty,...

Bruce got sober on October 3rd, 1977. Since then, he’s lived through war, loss, grief, divorce, mental illness, the murder of his daughter, and the collapse of a faith that once shaped his entire life. He did not drink. Now approaching 49 years sober, Bruce shares a story that stretches across generations, from learning to drink on cough syrup in the 1950s to finding a home in secular AA after dec...

Some stories don’t begin gently, and they don’t follow a straight line. Ambra shares an honest account of growing up in chaos, experiencing trauma at a young age, and finding herself caught in cycles of addiction, unstable relationships, and survival. From early exposure to alcohol to years shaped by substance use, loss, and searching for belonging, her story reflects the reality of how addiction...

Rock bottom doesn’t always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like carrying on, quietly breaking underneath it. Sophie’s story begins in foster care and moves through years shaped by trauma, early exposure to alcohol, and a growing dependence that blurred survival with escape. What follows is not a straight line, but a series of hard turns through addiction, mental health struggles, and abusiv...

A life once driven by obsession, control, and the next drink unfolds into something far steadier, built one decision at a time. Luke reflects on drinking that started as excitement and identity, then spiralled into isolation, physical decline, and a loss of control he couldn’t outthink or outmanoeuvre. From blackouts, arrests and broken trust to a moment of willingness, he traces the shift from re...

From teenage experimentation to full-blown addiction, broken marriages, and sleeping in a truck during one of the coldest winters he can remember, Phil’s story is not a gentle arc, it’s a collision of choices, consequences, and hard-earned clarity. In this deeply personal share, Phil walks us through what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. Early exposure to alcohol and drugs set t...

Sonja: Finding a Way to Stay From a childhood shaped by emotional absence to a life that slowly unravelled under the weight of mental health struggles, physical trauma, and alcohol, Sonia’s journey is anything but linear. In this deeply honest share, Sonja speaks about: growing up feeling like she never quite fit in long periods of not drinking… and then crossing an invisible line cancer, chronic...

In this deeply honest and courageous share, Abby takes us through a journey that begins long before her first conscious drink — into a childhood shaped by trauma, secrecy, and the quiet beginnings of addiction. From early compulsive behaviours and a life built around discipline and control, to the introduction of what she called her “special drink,” Abby unpacks how alcohol became both a coping me...

(Our first daytime speaker share.) What happens when you don’t fit the mould — not in life, not in addiction, and not even in recovery? In this deeply honest and thought-provoking episode, Kate shares her journey of always feeling like an outsider — from a difficult childhood marked by difference and exclusion, to navigating substance use as a way to connect, cope, and belong. But this isn’t a typ...

PLEASE NOTE: This episode is part of our "One Year On" series, two ESH shares recorded approx. 1 year apart. Alex's first share can be heard here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/32m2rqcRNARIBsM5WW8tAl?si=ezW7CNoNRaGyN3sM-PA_5g Alex didn’t arrive thinking she had a problem. She arrived because everyone else thought she did. From a first drink at 12 to blackouts, psychosis, jail, and two DUIs, her...

Michael arrived in the rooms of recovery in 2003 after years of IV drug use, chaotic relationships, and a life shaped by trauma, fear, and the lasting effects of fetal alcohol syndrome. What began as simply finding people to hang out with in a crowded Dallas meeting eventually became a decades-long struggle to understand why sobriety wouldn’t stick. Twenty years of trying to get sober exposed some...

Larry C shares the story of how decades of alcohol and drug addiction shaped his life and how he eventually found his way into long-term recovery. Growing up in a home affected by alcoholism and violence, Larry was introduced to drinking and drugs at a young age. What began as teenage partying gradually evolved into years of substance abuse, unhealthy relationships, and repeated attempts to escape...

Some people are born reaching for intensity long before they ever touch a substance. In this episode, Katie traces a life shaped by obsession, stubbornness, survival, and the relentless search for relief. From a childhood crowded with chaos, to the early discovery that certain feelings could be chased and repeated, to a progression that moved from alcohol to anything that could make the pain quiet...

In this powerful episode, Alexis shares her story of addiction, recovery, and rebuilding a life she no longer wants to escape from. Raised in chaos and introduced early to loss, substance use became familiar long before it became destructive. From years of drug addiction to a progressive and devastating struggle with alcohol, Alexis traces the repeating patterns that shaped her life, relationships...

In this deeply personal episode, Monica joins us from Chicago to share her lived experience of long-term sobriety through secular recovery. Speaking candidly as a dual-diagnosed atheist, Monica reflects on more than a decade of struggle with alcoholism, drug-resistant bipolar depression, anxiety, repeated relapses, homelessness, and a near-fatal crisis that became a turning point in her life. She...