Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast

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 fo...

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 d...

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 da...

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...

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 b...

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 yo...

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, ca...

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 ho...

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....

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...

This week, I’m talking with my friend Cindy — no last name, because we are classy and mysterious like that. Cindy takes us from growing up in Mississippi, to 1980s New York, to getting sober young, to the complicated, sneaky way pain pills pulled her back into addiction after years in recovery. We talk about shame, secrecy, chronic pain, AA, bad boy choices, schoolteacher glamour, and the miracle...

This week I’m talking with Kira Reed, and wow, we get into it. We talk about the kind of childhood stuff that follows you around, getting launched into adulthood way too early, and the many extremely bad ideas that can grow out of trying to outrun grief. Kira talks about her path from wild 80s partying into heroin addiction, getting sober, relapsing years later through prescribed muscle relaxers,...

Stefanie decided to take a week off from guest stories to argue about AA with her friend Tamara Mello, who is sober but also takes the occasional gummy, which according to some corners of Sober Facebook means she is not sober, which means she should probably turn in her badge. Wait, nobody gave her a badge. That's the whole problem. They talk about the imaginary sober rule book nobody can find, th...

Stefanie sits down with her neighbor Josh Sautter, who broke his ankle and his leg riding a drunk electric scooter on New Year’s Eve and then called his mom from the hospital at 7am on January 1st. Classic. Josh got sober that week. From there things could only go up. We hear about meeting his wife because the world was ending (Covid, specifically), and somehow going from hosting a neighborhood pi...

I talk to Laura Van Antwerp, who once sat on her couch reading a book by the Buddha, candles lit, vibes immaculate -- while doing shots of Sauza Blue tequila with a pineapple back. Her ex-boyfriend walked in and said, "What happened to you?" and she thought he was asking about her day. He was asking about her drinking. Laura tried everything to quit drinking: the wine-only rule, the expensive-wine...

I talk to Rich Shydner, a standup comic who once performed on acid, had a roast beef sandwich thrown at him on stage by his tripping girlfriend, and thought “I am one with the bugs” while sitting in a stream covered in mosquitoes. So yeah, he’s done some things. He’s also been sober since 1985, which is longer than some of you have been alive, and he's doing great! Rich was part of the original so...

In part two with Kristi Tanner, we get into what happened after everything fell apart: the second DUI, rehab, divorce, single motherhood, and the very weird miracle of building a life you actually want to be awake for. Kristi talks about getting sober with four little kids, learning how to be alone without losing her mind, and why her children now think rehab was basically the White House.  Please...

This week I’m talking to Kristi Tanner, and wow, did we have one of those conversations where you start nodding so hard you practically sprain your neck. Kristi walks me through the long, messy road from party girl to mommy-wine survival mode to full-blown chaos, complete with blackouts, denial, rehab, hiding bottles, and trying to convince herself she just needed better “rules.” We talk about how...

This week I'm talking to Celeste Yvonne, author of It's Not About the Wine: The Loaded Truth Behind Mommy Wine Culture, and I have to tell you — I kept saying "same" out loud while reading her Scary Mommy interview. Celeste grew up watching her dad's Nicolas Cage-level alcoholism and figured as long as she wasn't that, she was fine. Meanwhile, she's hiding bottles and white-knuckling through bedti...

This week on Drunk-ish, my friend Kim Evey comes back for a do-over—because last time she was on in 2025, she wasn’t fully telling the story. We talk about what relapse can look like when you’re  still  saying the right things, still showing up… and quietly sliding into secrecy anyway. Kim gets brutally honest about perfectionism, shame, “sneaky” addiction brain, and how the smallest little off-ra...

I’m joined this week by Sara Kaufman Bradstreet, creator of No More Wasted Days, and honestly we could’ve titled this episode: The Nobel Prize in Making Rules You’ll Break By Tuesday. Sara and I talk binge drinking, brownouts, the fantasy of “I’ll only drink wine and beer,” and the oddly romantic chaos of being drinking partners—until one of you ruins the party by quitting. We also get into her Be...

Catherine Gray, best selling author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, is here to talk about her new book Little Addictions, and let me tell you, this one hit close to home. We're talking about all the stuff we do too much of—phones, sugar, procrastination, people-pleasing—basically everything except drinking, which we've already quit. Catherine explains why her journalism friends literally coi...

This week I'm talking with my friend Vicki Moser about anxiety, complicated childhoods, and how sobriety helped her rewrite the story she'd been telling herself for decades. Vicki shares what it was like growing up painfully shy, caring for her sick mom while still a teenager, and eventually finding herself drinking to cope with all of it. We get into the messy middle of recovery, the freedom that...

This week I’m talking with Colleen Saldana, a therapist at a recovery center who somehow manages to be both deeply wise and extremely relatable. Colleen got sober at  21 , relapsed at  38 , and tells the whole “I’ll just have  one  margarita” story in a way that will make you laugh… and also clutch your water bottle tighter. We get into growing up around alcohol, anxiety, an eating disorder, the w...

I love this episode because Danielle Mercier is basically a walking cautionary tale  and a motivational poster at the same time. We get into her early “party girl” years, her brief era of thinking Las Vegas was a wholesome alternative to LA (amazing logic), and the moment her drinking finally caught up with her in the most dramatic way possible. From there, Danielle talks about getting sober, find...