This is Sober

In today's episode, we're joined by the remarkable Vera, whose journey into sobriety is as compelling as it is inspiring. Growing up in a high-pressure Chinese household, Vera turned to drugs and alcohol as a means to socialize and escape the immense expectation to excel. Her quest for belonging led her to a pivotal moment with her first line of cocaine, chasing a surge of dopamine that felt like a newfound freedom. Yet, it was in the quietude of her room, amidst books and study, that her true path to liberation began to unfold.

Enter the transformative power of Yoga—a practice that not only opened Vera to sobriety but also guided her to discover the art of self-nurturance. Throughout our conversation, Vera shares the essence of replacing the temporary highs of drugs or alcohol with something profoundly "delicious"—a journey of nurturing oneself that's essential for anyone walking the path of recovery.

Vera's down-to-earth nature and her deeply moving story shine a light on the importance of finding joy in healthy alternatives. She has since created a unique coaching program, weaving together meditation and yoga for an all-encompassing experience that leaves her clients exclaiming, "wow, I needed that!"

Join us as we delve into Vera's transformative journey, exploring the crucial steps toward self-care and sobriety, and uncover how she's helping others to find their own path to healing and happiness.

ABOUT VERA: Vera is a Certified Holistic Life Coach and RYT500 Yoga Instructor and Meditation Teacher. Through overcoming her own struggles with addiction, Vera believes in the potential of every person to build an authentic life filled with meaning, joy, and healthy relationships. Her mission is to support people who feel disconnected from others and themselves to rediscover that connection through yoga, mindfulness and coaching. She advocates for those who want to make a change and creates a safe environment that encourages exploration and discovery.

In this episode, we sit down with Stacy, the founder of Real Everything, a blog that began as a platform for sharing paleo recipes and tips for families but evolved into a passionate advocacy for non-toxic healthy living. Stacy's journey took an unexpected turn when she decided to confront her relationship with alcohol. Guided by her focus on holistic health, she made the courageous decision to quit drinking and embrace a (w)holistically healthy lifestyle.

As the host of The Whole View podcast, Stacy shares her experiences and insights to help listeners become the best versions of themselves. Through our conversation, Stacy opens up about her decision to quit alcohol, recognizing that it didn't align with her values and the vibrant, toxin-free life she was cultivating.

We delve into the transformation she experienced after letting go of alcohol and how it positively impacted her physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Stacy shares the benefits of living a non-toxic lifestyle inside and out, fostering a deep sense of authenticity and connection with herself and her loved ones.

Join us as we explore Stacy's journey, gaining inspiration and practical wisdom for embracing a (w)holistically healthy lifestyle, and discover the power of aligning our choices with our true values for lasting well-being.

Follow Stacy:

Codependency can be described as someone who enables behaviors, such as rescuing, fixing, or taking responsibility for others' problems and consequences. Codependents may feel compelled to constantly help and control others, even at the expense of their own well-being. In this episode I share how I have noticed some of my past behaviors as codependent. When I learned someone very close to me was struggling with alcohol, I began rescuing, fixing, and taking responsibility for their problem. As I became self-aware of this, I have been able to step back and understand this as a pattern.

Self-awareness can be such a powerful tool in sobriety. It helps us recognize old behaviors that no longer serve us and allows us to develop healthier behaviors.

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Molly Desch is a women's sober coach, advocate for sober-awareness, podcast host, and single mother of 2.

As the Founder of As You Are, a Sober Women's Coaching company, she has worked with women from all walks of life to free themselves from alcohol with renewed energy, confidence, and pride using her Sustainable Path to Sobriety program. She has been featured in publications such as CBS, NBC, Authority Magazine, WomELLE, and Real Simple. 

In this episode, I speak to Will House, the founder and creator of Oberit, an app that has been helping thousands transform their habits into sustainable recovery. From a young age, he was exposed to a party culture where drinking was prevalent, influenced by his environment. In college, the drinking culture intensified, and upon entering the corporate world in London, he embraced a work hard, play hard mentality, leading to excessive alcohol consumption due to the demands of the job and corporate entertainment. Reflecting on this lifestyle, Will recognizes that his beliefs, habits, and behaviors were shaped by years of living in this environment.

Oberit is a rewards-based recovery app that incentivizes long-term mental wellness by helping users build consistent healthy habits, eliminate destructive behaviors, earn digital rewards and unlock exclusive subscriber discounts from brand partners in the in-app marketplace, which supports a healthy, fulfilling lifestyle. Will House is the founder of the Oberit app. Will has years of experience in recovery and founded Oberit to make recovery easier and more rewarding. Before founding Oberit, Will had more than a decade of experience in the tech field.

In this episode I get to talk to to one of the most spirited and passionate women I've met. For way too long, she was enduring some health challenges that kept her up at night, held her in perpetual pain and discomfort, and overall led her to try anything to ease her burden. She saught medical help and for years felt frustrated at her inability to cure what most women can easily do with over the counter medication. It wasn't until a good friend of hers joked about how alcohol is an enemy of health issues like hers and it dawned on her she was going to give it a shot. She quit drinking in order to alleviate her health problems and slowly noticed her ailments improving. What started as a hypothesis to curb her pain became a lifelong commitment to sobriety.

Mabel is a career and mindfulness coach who has been sober for over almost 4 and a half years. Mabel started her sober journey for health reasons at the beginning of 2019, but even as her symptoms improved, the clarity and joy from no longer drinking was something she didn't want to up. Originally from the UK, Mabel now lives in Lancaster Pennsylvania where she continues to live a sober life. 

Follow Mabel on Instagram @mabelbachini

I haven't had many healthcare professionals respond to my request to be interviewed on This is Sober, so I jumped at the chance when this nurse emailed me asking to share her story. I am grateful for her work in the field and her multi-passionate attitude towards helping others overcome their alcohol struggles.

In this episode Christy Sloan shares her story of her struggles with alcohol, how she white knuckled through her first year of sobriety, and how not confronting the underlying issues caused her to return to drinking. After watching her dad pass away from alcohol and smoking-related esophogeal cancer, she knew she needed a change both for herself and her new baby.

Christy Sloan is a BSN, RN, Certified Wellness Coach, Yoga teacher, and currently working towards Board Certification as a Nurse Coach and Holistic Nurse with the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy. As a professional woman in recovery from alcohol abuse, she passionately promotes health and healing with integrative and holistic approaches. She advocates for people to stop asking whether or not they're an alcoholic and instead ask, "Is alcohol serving my life?"

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Molly Desch is a certified women's sober coach, advocate for sober-awareness, podcast host, and single mother of 2.

As the Founder of As You Are, a Sober Women's Coaching company, she has worked with women from all walks of life to free themselves from alcohol with renewed energy, confidence, and pride using her Sustainable Path to Sobriety program. She has been featured in publications such as CBS, NBC, Authority Magazine, WomELLE, and Real Simple. 

She also hosts "This is Sober", the podcast that focuses on exploring what life in sobriety is really like. Each week she dives into topics that impact those who are struggling with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol providing useful tips and strategies to string more days together and eventually overcome the drinking hamster wheel.

This episode is all about travelling sober. If taking a sober vacation scares the heebeegeebies out of you, this episode is for you!

Amy Hill, founder of Then She Went, is on a mission to change sober travel forever. Her very unique and incredibly amazing passion is taking women who are sober or sober curious to places like Guatemala, Columbia, and Mexico and opening their eyes to vacation sans alcohol. In this episode Amy talks about her previous relationship to alcohol, how that has changed in the past couple of years, how she is now living her best life, and helping other women overcome their fears of sober travel.

Amy has been living alcohol free since 2021 since she realized the profound effect alcohol was having in fueling her everyday anxiety. Over the course of the last two years she has completely re-imagined her life and it has learned to live aligned with her values. She is a Certified Naked Mind Coach and is passionate about educating others on how they can change their lives by changing their relationships with alcohol. As a lifelong explorer, she brings her work to the world through coaching and global sober curious events.

Follow her on Instagram: @thenshewent

TikTok: @then.she.went

In this episode, Angelica Alen from Brisbane Australia shares her story how being diagnosed with stage 3 cancer not only led her to sobriety, but it completely altered her life for the better. We talk about her diagnosis and how it led her to begin a healing journey both physically and emotionally. With over 5 years sober AND now cancer free, she is determined to share her story and bring awareness to the dangers of alcohol.

About Angelica: Stage 3 Bowel Cancer Survivor & Thriver, Angelica Alen is a Health & Life Coach who focused on helping people to change their habits - physical, mental and emotional so they can create their dream life. Angelica has helped people from all over the world with issues like anxiety, diabetes, cancer recovery, mental health disorders, cholesterol, auto immune diseases, sleep issues, fatty liver disease and more. Angelica is passionate about helping people to free themselves from living in the prison of their bodies and minds so they can create life on their terms.

In this episode I get to interview Julie Ann Meyer. She calls herself a late bloomer when it comes to drinking. She started in her early 20s and quickly spiraled into a full blown addiction. Like many of us, when life threw us curveballs, our drinking got worse. Julie not only shares what drinking was like for her, but her sobriety is so inspiring. What she is doing with herself these days, helping others achieve true wellness. As she says, wellness isn't just broccoli and burpees! We talk about what wellness means and how anyone in the sobriety journey, or in life in general can work towards total wellness of the mind, body, and spirit.

Julie Ann Meyer is the Visionary and TV Network President behind Achieve TV, a Tell-A-Vision Network for entrepreneurs.  She’s also the Creator-Producer-Host of the successful TV show Own Your Wellness. As an industry leader in health & wellness for over a decade she supports people with life transformations, mindset shifts, nutrition changes, exercise, and stress reduction.  She is also a contributing author of the book Achieve Wellness, featured on the TV show World's Greatest Motivators, and recently selected to be featured contributor in the Female Thought Leaders Special Edition of the LA Tribune.  Put simply, Julie Ann is dedicated to helping people seize their greatness.  Whatever that means to them!

In this episode I talk to professional Astrologer Caitlin McPhail. She's been a long-time student of astrology and is the founder of ValYou Wellbeing, providing astrology readings to clients for over 5 years.

In my personal sobriety journey, I have turned to astrology time and time again to help me overcome the uncertainty in my life. I have used the planetary alignments, the moon, my natal chart, and transit readings to guide me and help me make important decisions. Caitlin dives into all the things astrology and provides super helpful tips for those in sobriety:

• How to you use your natal chart to find your purpose
• How your natal chart influences addiction
• Transit readings are helpful when mapping out the future and planning
• How you can get natal readings for your children to assist you in their upbringing
• How astrology has helped me with emotional turbulence caused by planetary alignments

and so much more!

If you are skeptical about astrology, this episode is for you.

If you love astrology and are sober curious, this episode is for you.

Hell, this episode is helpful for anyone that is looking to find their purpose in life and live a more heart-centered and life with their eyes open.

In this episode, I chat with founder of GrayTonic, Kari Schwear. This episode is packed with goodies! You'll learn all about how to discover the true you, what exactly is gray area drinking, how to work through that internal dialogue of 'do I have a drinking problem', how to use her D.E.C.I.D.E. methodology to create the change agent necessary to break free from alcohol, and so much more!

As a former gray area drinker, Kari Schwear founded GrayTonic & Question the Drink in 2018 after her own experience of “living in the gray” led her to the service of others. Her zone of genius is in habit creation, communication, leadership development and intentional living. She is an Executive Lifestyle Coach, author of two anthologies, a speaker and corporate trainer.

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In this episode, I dive deep into the topics of shame and compassion in sobriety. I share some of my personal experiences with shame and how it impacted my addiction and journey to sobriety. We explore the ways in which self-compassion can be a powerful tool for overcoming shame and maintaining sobriety, as well as practical strategies for cultivating self-compassion in everyday life. Join us for this inspiring conversation about the role of shame and compassion in the recovery process.

In this episode, Molly talks about her experiences with relapse, what those experiences ultimately taught her, and how anyone working through sobriety can utilize relapse incidents as an opportunity to reframe their sobriety.

- Her first relapse happened after over 365 days of consecutive sobriety; she fell victim to the false pretense that after a long enough duration of sobriety she could handle drinking; she learned that owning her story and understanding her 'why' was vital to continuing to not drink

- After seeing her partner of over a year drinking while on a business trip she was overcome with loneliness, lack of trust, and the fear of being on her sober journey all alone; she was able to reframe her sobriety and embrace her story and be firm in knowing yes, this is all about her, and that's ok

- When friends of her threw her a happy hour going away party, Molly was underprepared and allowed fate to run its course, resulting in drinking too much, embarassing herself, and of course the worst hangover she had experienced in a very long time; she learned that social settings require a bit of forethought and planning and that it is ok to say 'no'

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Molly Desch is a certified women's sober coach, advocate for sober-awareness, podcast host, and single mother of 2.

As the Founder of As You Are, a Sober Women's Coaching company, she has worked with women from all walks of life to free themselves from alcohol with renewed energy, confidence, and pride using her Sustainable Path to Sobriety program. She has been featured in publications such as CBS, NBC, Authority Magazine, WomELLE, and Real Simple.

When Al reached out to me, I wanted to learn more about him before our interview. I scoured his podcast, other podcasts he had been on and came up very short. I realized Al hasn't publicly spoke much about his addiction and I was determined to change that. Ironically enough, Al had that exact thought when he came on my show. And for one of the first times, he shares his story. 

Al Richards is a true inspiration to those who have faced addiction and are seeking a way to overcome it. After battling a weekend alcohol and cocaine addiction for eight years, Al lost his job of 24 years as a result. But instead of giving up, he turned his life around and spent the next 14 years working tirelessly on himself and helping others understand addiction. In March of 2021, he started The Other Side of Addiction Podcast, which has quickly become a space for open and honest dialogue about addiction and recovery. And just this past February, Al started the ARC/Addiction Resource Collective Networking group, in an effort to connect people with the resources and support they need to overcome addiction. Al believes that it's time to lift each other up, and he is leading the way with his powerful message of hope and healing.

Learn more about Al and his work at

In this episode, I talk about my story. What got me started drinking, why I kept drinking, and what prompted me to give it all up.