Sober.Coffee Podcast

How is your recovery program like a chocolate chip cookie? Everyone has their own recipe that they think is best and it all has to do with the ingredients. Will those ingredients include AA, or will they include a different recovery program like Refuge Recovery? At a table for 3 in the coffee shop talking with Tori, a substance abuse counselor, and her own experiences with Refuge Recovery. Refuge...

At a table for three, Quint shares his experience with alcoholism from growing up with a father who drank, and his own road to recovery. Quint began drinking at 15 and gradually discovered anxieties and concerns would be magically misted away through a haze of beer and wine - and that started a pattern for the next 40 years. Eventually deciding his future was more important than alcohol, Quint sta...

From myth to truth, it’s a rapid fire espresso shots with Mike and Glenn. As they talk about things they’ve heard, questions from emails, inquiries from social media, Mike and Glenn fire true and false statements at each other with a little back and forth banter mixed in. It’s all about sobriety, recovery and addiction and the myths, misconceptions and truths that go with it. If you know someone w...

Megan is a familiar face at AA Mokena Fellowship, and with AA meetings 5 times a day, it takes a lot of volunteer hours to keep things running smoothly.  From opening the door to helping out in the community - Megan tells us that service leads to the world turning a different shade of wonderful. Service saved her life, and it started with cleaning up coffee pots, clearing tables and taking out tra...

How do you get undrunk quickly? Easy, it’s a math calculation - it takes an hour to eliminate .01 of alcohol in your system. But how long does it take to get sober? That’s a loaded question starting with what you mean by sober. In the coffee shop Mike & Glenn tell us how long it takes to get undrunk, and discuss how long it takes to get truly sober where you’re living a quality rewarding life...

Laura joins Mike & Glenn in the coffee shop to talk about SMART Recovery. Laura found SMART Recovery after she ended her chaotic relationship with drugs 40 years ago. Why after? Ten years ago she discovered her son was a heroin user. Knowing him, she knew he wouldn’t buy into the 12 step program, so she went looking for answers. While her son never attended any meetings, SMART Recovery changed...

The Webster Dictionary definition of sober - not drinking or using mind altering substances - is more of a definition of being dry. Mike and Glenn discuss how sober is more than not drinking, it’s the byproduct of working a quality recovery program.  So what does sober really mean? Sober is characterized by reason, sanity, or self-control; showing mental and emotional balance. Are you emotionally...

Getting to know Danny we find out he’s not a human lie detector and while an introvert at heart, he believes we do our best work in community. Digging in deeper with the Clinical Director at Aspen Ridge Recovery in Colorado, Mike and Glenn hit Danny with a few hard questions about addiction and recovery: How do you know if you’re a good candidate for treatment?  How important is therapy in treatme...

Glenn and Mike describe dry drunk as the grumpy guy that hasn’t had a drink but is miserable and complains about everything in their life. Why? Because stopping drinking is one thing, but then what? If you’re drinking to escape, then stop drinking without surrendering to recovery, you are still miserable but without the alcohol - and the same sh%^ behavior is still there.  Glenn and Mike elaborate...

You can learn from anyone. You can learn what to do. You can learn what not to do. If you listen to their story, listen to their life and the challenges they face, if you truly listen - their story is suggesting to you how to overcome an obstacle in your life. That’s what we hear from James C. James shares that he was given the gift of surrender on a cold January night in Michigan. It was the end...

Alcohol is a depressant, it affects your nervous system and slows down your breathing, heart rate and other important tasks your body does. Mike & Glenn share their experiences with alcohol poisoning - from friends who have been hospitalized, friends that didn’t have a chronic drinking problem and died from alcohol poisoning, and even being in the hospital for alcohol poisoning themselves. Thi...

It’s a sober new year. But what does that look like? Join Mike & Glenn in the coffee shop as they discuss what their game plan is for the new year. With a trip down memory lane and a look at the past, each discusses how sobriety has changed their new years - from removing the remorse, regret and anxiety, to looking at the past as a scorecard and making plans for the year ahead, trying to point...

Mike & Glenn sit down in the coffee shop to discuss the signs and symptoms of drug addiction. Are they experts? No. But Mike shares that drugs are part of his story of recovery. With almost everyone he knows, they know someone who has a tragic addiction to Fentanyl or Opioids.  Knowing the signs and symptoms to look for can help loved ones recognize a problem, and Sober. Coffee has collected a...

How do you get through the holidays with a focus on sobriety? The invites say go party, go drink, have spiked eggnog. Hallmark commercials and movies portray a joyous holiday season with bells ringing and happy family gatherings. But Christmas time can be a challenging time - full of stress, emotions and triggers.  Listen in as Glenn & Mike talk about sobriety and staying on the path of recove...

When discussing early signs of alcoholism, Mike and Glenn take a look backwards at themselves, their experiences, and what others saw in them as they struggled with addiction.  If you are looking at this for yourself, pay attention and ask the questions laid out in the podcast. Glenn shares that by the time he was researching alcoholism, he was already on the path to addiction.  If you are looking...

In her second year of recovery, Alexis had 4 kids. She was blessed with lots of family that really helped out, and in 2013 received a lot of holiday gifts her kids would not use. They decided to give the extra gifts to a men’s treatment center so the men could give the gifts to their kids. But five gifts didn’t go very far, and Alexis found herself reaching out to others to do more - and filled an...

At a table for 3 in the coffee shop, Megan shares her experience as a woman in recovery and her journey from first admitting she had an alcohol problem to her recovery path with counselors, women’s groups and eventually coed groups.  As a woman, AA meetings with 80% men can be intimidating. But once you sit down and listen to what men have to say, it goes out the window because we all suffer.  Lis...

California Sober is like being semi-sober. It’s trading one substance for another…for example, I’m not doing opioids anymore but I’m drinking alcohol. I’m sober, but I smoke pot. I’m sober but I take pain pills.  Join Mike and Glenn in the coffee shop as they discuss this #trending topic and why it all comes down to this: how do you define sober? If you know someone who needs to hear this episode,...

Holidays are loaded with stress, so grab a drink. No, not alcohol. Soda, coffee, tea - anything that gets your mind off what others are drinking. That’s the first tip for newly sober individuals going into family situations this Thanksgiving. Mike and Glenn share more tips and talk about their favorite holiday memories before alcoholism, their worst holiday memories, and what it looks like now in...

Mindful drinking increases awareness and avoids crashing the plane. How? By being aware of why and how much you drink. It’s like keeping score. Mike tells us his score is something like “Drinks: 7353 vs Mike: 0” But admittedly you don’t have to get to the point where you lose everything or hit rock bottom and pay the ultimate consequences to pay attention to drinking. In this episode you’ll learn...

Through his own path to recovery, Stevie G stayed at a halfway house. While there, he found connections and moved forward in his own recovery, but he saw some things that were disturbing, as if the halfway house had lost the focus on helping recovering alcoholics. After leaving, Stevie was presented with the opportunity - a friend owned some 3 flats - and Stevie said “I think we can do better for...

Dr. John shares three ways to go: Drunk, Dry, or Sober. While dry is miserable, restless, irritable, and filled with discontent, and obsessive worry - sober should be the opposite, right? Wrong. Join Mike & Glenn and special guest Dr. John to discuss what it means to be sober. If you know someone who needs to hear this episode, share it with them! Mentioned in this episode: The Wounded Healer:...

On their own path to recovery, Mike and Glenn will be the first to tell you when it comes to cravings vs addictions, both words are subjective. Discussing it at the coffee shop, they both agree - cravings are one sign of addition and fertile soil where addiction can really grip in and grow. When you’ve lost control of a craving and you just keep doing it, that’s an addiction. Sober curious and won...

Dr. John relates the "ISM" of alcoholism to the human condition, a yearning to fill the void, a yearning for wholeness and connectedness. With Mike & Glenn, he discusses the viewpoint that we don’t need AA to tell us that drinking makes life s*&% or that if you don’t drink your life will be better. What we need AA for is that even when we don’t drink and things get better, even when we cle...

Steve G joins Sober. Coffee at a table for three and gives us a glimpse into his life and how he found sobriety. A sneak peek - it took losing everything over a 20 month period, being homeless and living in the back of a Jeep Renegade, then finding himself in a surprise intervention to get Steve on the path to recovery.  Now, 30 years sober, Steve still goes to a lot of meetings. Why? Because noth...