The Sober Creative Podcast

with Josh Woll
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Health & Fitness
  • Updated Weekly

In this live Substack series, I explore intimate conversations with people navigating their sobriety journeys. Each episode highlights personal transformations, practical strategies, and the unexpected creative advantages of clear-minded living. These uplifting discussions reveal how sobriety enhances artistic expression, business success, and personal fulfillment. Join us to discover how these individuals are finding greater authenticity, purpose, and creative power through sobriety. newsletter.thesobercreative.com

  1. 2d ago

    Episode 074 - Leading Through Recovery: Parker Gates on Honesty, Meditation, and Borrowing From the 12 Steps

    Parker Gates was around 13 when he got properly drunk for the first time, in a field in Waco, Texas, with his two best friends. He remembers lying in bed that night with one clear thought: this is how I want to feel for the rest of my life. He was in his first rehab at 15. He stayed dry for six and a half years, bought his first legal six-pack at 21, and picked up as if he had never stopped. A seven-year run of getting darker followed. He got sober at 27, after several DUIs cost him his driver’s license and his corporate job, and he spent the first year and a half of sobriety working at Starbucks. Next week he hits 25 years. Along the way he ran a company with his business partner for a decade, coached CEOs and senior leaders, and spent about 15 years at Stanford’s d.school, where he now teaches. The kid who barely snuck out of high school teaches at Stanford. In this conversation, Parker talks about the secrets he held back the first time around and what that cost him, how the steps and traditions became his first leadership framework, why he believes personal development is professional development, and how meditation and time in the woods keep him steady. He also tells the Nick Cave story he asked Josh not to let him forget, and explains why he believes everyone is radically creative. Show Notes [02:49] - Skateboards, Punk Rock, and the First Drunk * Parker’s parents divorced when he was very young, and a couple of stepdads came through in the early years. It didn’t feel broken to him. * He fell into skateboarding around 12, and punk rock came with it. He stayed up late in Mobile, Alabama, recording college radio onto a jam box to catch bands like Agent Orange, the Dead Kennedys, and the Violent Femmes. * In that world, he says, you went one of two ways: get really good at skateboarding, or party and get into mischief. He took the second route, and it grew from breaking windows to skipping school to small-time theft. * Around 12 or 13, he became fascinated by drinking and drugs. His first real drunk came at about 13, in a field with his two best friends, and he remembers coming home and thinking he wanted to feel that way for the rest of his life. Key Insights “This is how I want to feel for the rest of my life.” - Parker Gates [06:49] - First Rehab at 15 and Six Dry Years * Parker went to his first rehab at 15, in 1989, a co-ed unit run by a hospital company. He believes his parents sent him because they had no idea what to do with him. * The unit mixed kids with eating disorders, drug addictions, and other struggles. He got through 90 days, smoked a joint the day he got out, and was scared enough by that to stay away from alcohol for the next six and a half years. * He prefers the words “abstinent” or “dry” for those years. All the old behavior was still there, and he says not drinking probably saved his life. * He moved to Colorado to become a professional rock climber, then to Nashville at 21. Key Insights “All the cruddy behavior was still there, but I just didn’t drink, which probably saved my life to be real frank.” - Parker Gates [08:48] - The Relapse and What We Hold Back * At 21 in Nashville, Parker drove up to a meeting, saw people who looked boring and square, and left. A few days later he bought his first legal six-pack. After two or three beers he felt like he was back in that field with his best friends, and a seven-year run followed that went darker than anything before it. Within two weeks he was doing blow in a bathroom with people he had never met. He says it reminds him he can’t go back out and give it a shot. * As a kid in Texas he went to meetings and picked a young, cool guy as his sponsor, but he held things back when it came time to share his inventory. He thinks that had a lot to do with his relapse, because he never learned how to get really open with another person. * After sponsoring men for about 25 years, he sees the same pattern. There is almost always one thing a person is embarrassed about and wants to hold back. For Parker, those things had nothing to do with drinking. They were about his body and whether people liked him. * He is grateful the men he sponsors trusted him enough to say hard things out loud. Josh adds that you can’t score pain, and Parker says the brain registers emotional pain much like physical pain. Key Insights “Very isolating and lonely when we keep those things to ourselves.” - Parker Gates [16:06] - Starbucks, Consulting, and Borrowing From the Steps * Parker had a corporate job right before he got sober and lost it after several DUIs cost him his driver’s license for a couple of years. He worked at Starbucks for the first year and a half of sobriety. * He has always been entrepreneurial and doesn’t love working for other people, so he started consulting early and ended up working with CEOs and leadership teams. In his early 30s he took a corporate job, joined the leadership team, and wore khakis and a button-down every day. * He was excited to be sober and to have leadership jobs, but he had no idea how to lead people. So he borrowed the only framework he had, the steps and the traditions, which he says have held 12-step programs together for almost a hundred years. * Years of sharing his own story made big, open conversations feel natural. He would ask team members what was really going on with them, even when they hesitated. Key Insights “I have no idea how to lead people.” - Parker Gates [20:24] - Personal Development Is Professional Development * Parker ran a company called Stoked with his business partner for a decade, tried some unusual experiments with their leadership teams, then moved into coaching. Today he is embedded with senior leadership teams, CEOs, and executive directors, and he calls the last 15 years one huge learning experience. * With 25 years in recovery and more than a decade of meditation retreats, he calls himself an old-timer. Those inputs shaped his book idea: personal development is professional development. * He says people get hung up on skills like reading spreadsheets and leading meetings. The leaders people love to work for are kind, compassionate, collaborative, and generous. They have strong role clarity and trust their people to do their jobs. It has little to do with executive presence. * When a recovery line like “this too shall pass” comes up in a business meeting, people’s minds are blown and ask where he heard it. Josh adds that addiction can fuel a passion for bigger things, and recovery lets you put that fire into something else. Key Insights “In a church basement when I was struggling not to drink pure grain alcohol. That’s where I heard it.” - Parker Gates [24:37] - Meditation, the 11th Step, and Getting Into the Woods * Parker came to meditation through the 11th step, a suggestion in the 12-step program. He struggled at first and pictured saffron robes, incense, and tatami mats. A meditation hall in Nashville changed that, and his Dharma teacher, Dave, is also sober with more than 20 years. * He started with an insight practice, watching his breath for a handful of years, then moved toward open awareness. The big shift was seeing that he is not his mind or his thoughts, so he could watch them without blame or shame. * He sits daily, and he says he feels better physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually when he sits regularly, goes on retreat, and gets out into the woods. At 52, he finds quiet hard to come by with screens, traffic, and leaf blowers around. * Josh says sitting feels uncomfortable when his body wants his phone. Parker says the biggest benefit of a silent retreat may be leaving the phone in the glove box of the rental car and walking into the mountains. Key Insights “I am not my mind, I am not my thoughts, and to be able to watch thoughts, to become a watcher.” - Parker Gates [31:23] - Bass Lines, Horror Movies, and the d.school * Parker started playing bass at 14 or 15. His stepdad, a phenomenal bass player, taught him a few things, and he kept recording at home and collecting records. He wouldn’t have called himself creative then. He just liked music. * He first saw himself as a creative person at an executive education program at Stanford’s d.school, where he now teaches. Looking back, he saw the drawing, the horror movies he made with friends as kids, and the bands. * About six years ago he wrote a novel. It started when his uncle gave him Joe by Larry Brown, and he thought, I want to write like that. He also names Cormac McCarthy among the writers he loves. * He recalls a study where kindergartners all raised their hands when asked who felt creative, and fewer hands went up in each later grade. He thinks adults use language that tells kids to put the glitter down and get serious. Key Insights “I think inadvertently or unconsciously, we beat creativity out of kids.” - Parker Gates [38:55] - Fear, Comedy, and the Nick Cave Story * Parker says a fear-versus-creativity match is going on in everyone at any given moment. Comics get on stage scared and do it anyway. He is comfortable speaking to large audiences, but a bit at an open mic sounds more terrifying. * Josh describes being in the zone the day before while demonstrating macro lens photography, and they agree that practice makes a flow state second nature. * Before COVID, Parker saw Nick Cave on a solo tour, with a piano and audience questions, at TPAC in Nashville. Someone 30 or 60 days sober said they were afraid they would stop making good music. * Parker recalls Cave answering that his work had never been better, and that he had become much more special since giving up alcohol. Josh adds that it keeps getting better because you are tapping into your real self. Key Insights “We’re scared what other people are going to think. We’re scared it’s not going to be as good as we wanted it to be.” - Parker Gates Key Quotes “I’m excited to be so

    Episode 074 - Leading Through Recovery: Parker Gates on Honesty, Meditation, and Borrowing From the 12 Steps

  2. Oct 15

    Episode 073 - Non-Alcoholic Money: Greg Downs on Jail, Recovery, and the 12 Steps of Financial Sobriety

    Greg Downs grew up on a dirt road in central Florida, a kid who never felt like he had a place. At the height of his career he was sitting in Palm Beach boardrooms, managing $4 billion for some of the wealthiest families in the country. From the outside, he had it figured out. On the inside, he was falling apart. On August 5, 2024, that life ended in his own driveway, where he was arrested. Six months in county jail followed. A card with a Bible verse on a cell table, a cellmate’s AA magazine, and a meeting speaker who told Greg’s own story back to him started something new. When he got out, he walked into a clubhouse less than five minutes from his house and asked for help. In the rooms, Greg heard shame, fear, guilt, denial, and avoidance described, and he recognized the same feelings in his financial clients. That idea became his book, 12 Steps to Financial Sobriety, coming in February. In this conversation, Greg talks about self-forgiveness, why shame thrives on secrecy, why you can’t go abstinent on money, and “non-alcoholic money,” the fake shopping sites that give you the buying rush with no purchase. Show Notes [02:42] - Growing Up Out of Place * Greg grew up in a small town in Florida, on a dirt road outside it. His parents kept the family busy and supported him, and he describes the childhood as fun. * He skipped a grade, so he was always younger than his classmates. He never felt funny enough for the funny crowd, athletic enough for the athletes, or smart enough for the nerds. * Heavy drinking started around 16 or 17. In college he joined a fraternity, became its president, and lived in a world where nearly every day involved alcohol. * From age 16 until a little over two years ago, alcohol was always there. Key Insights “As soon as I started getting a little bit of alcohol in me, all of a sudden I could become who I wanted to be, right?” - Greg Downs [07:31] - The Driveway, the Cell, and the Clubhouse * Greg left his career at the end of 2023 planning to take a year off. He was living alone in an apartment during a hard stretch with his wife, with no accountability and plenty of money in the bank. For the first six months of 2024, he drank every day from the time he woke up until he passed out. * He went to treatment in June 2024 and was drinking again within 24 hours of leaving. On August 5, 2024, he was arrested in front of his house. In the back of the car, he saw a successful financial advisor on his way to the county jail. * In his cell he found a card with Jeremiah 29:11 on it. Greg is not religious, but the card was deeply comforting. Later, a cellmate with 10 years of sobriety encouraged him to attend an AA meeting, where the speaker was a financial advisor whose story sounded like Greg’s own. * Jail also taught him gratitude. He had taken the cars, the travel, and the success for granted, and losing it all showed him he could still live. Key Insights “I think my sobriety journey was walking into that room and raising my hand and asking for help.” - Greg Downs [14:56] - Managing $4 Billion and Feeling Invincible * Greg went from a kid on a dirt road to meeting with executives, entrepreneurs, and billionaires. At one point he managed $4 billion, and the minimum account size was $25 million. * People asked for his advice and took it. He says his ego was through the roof, mostly on the inside. * His dad, who passed away in 2017, warned him to watch out for the booze. Alcohol was always around growing up, and their house was the one that hosted the holidays and parties. * Josh adds that awareness often arrives only when we are ready to hear it, even when people who love us are saying it out loud. Key Insights “Seven, eight years of me not watching out for it and not paying attention and not listening to what the people that loved me were telling me and sharing with me.” - Greg Downs [18:49] - How the 12 Steps Became a Book About Money * For the first six months after jail, Greg wore an ankle monitor and could only go to AA, the grocery store, and church. The day the monitor came off was also the day he picked up his one-year chip. * He had heard “the steps are designed for living” hundreds of times. One morning it clicked: shame, fear, guilt, denial, and avoidance drove his drinking, and his financial clients had the same heavy emotions around money. * Money doesn’t discriminate. Challenges show up at $60,000 a year and at $600,000. Money is math, and the hard part is the emotion behind how we spend and earn, like the late-night Amazon order we regret when the package arrives. * At its core, Greg says, his book is about self-forgiveness around money. Key Insights “You can’t just go abstinent on money.” - Greg Downs [27:06] - Building a Healthier Relationship with Money * During Sober October, Greg ran “Financially Sober October” with his email list. Once a day, open your account, look at the numbers, and close it. The goal is to see that it’s just a number, which helps people who avoid their accounts. One person who looked too often chose to look once a week. * Greg says personal finance is personal. Budget templates and apps are everywhere, and he wanted to ask a different question: is your relationship with money coming from a healthy place, and can you enjoy it? * The book walks through the same 12 steps, reworded. Readers take an inventory (what you have, what you owe, what comes in, what goes out), check their will and insurance, talk to someone, look at behaviors and outside help, make amends to others and to themselves, and align spending with their values. * Greg started the Sober Money Club, a support group, because community saved his life. He points out that over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, so we are much more alike than we think. Key Insights “Shame thrives off of secrecy.” - Greg Downs [32:11] - Your Story Is Your Superpower * Greg’s sponsor told him his story is his superpower. Greg used to hide behind it, never reaching out for help and trying to drink problems away. * Sharing has made real connection possible. The more he shares, the more other people open up to him, and that breaks down the shame barrier fast. * Greg and Josh talk about the stigma around bankruptcy. Greg says that for some people it is a really good solution, and that some laws have changed to make it easier than it used to be. * The AA clubhouse Greg attends has a plaque that says “you are not alone.” After he shared a family story at a meeting, a young woman came up to tell him she was living almost the same thing. Key Insights “Every time I share, I’ve been met with empathy more than judgment.” - Greg Downs [37:45] - Writing, Flow, and “Non-Alcoholic Money” * Writing has become Greg’s creative outlet. When he was seven, he wrote a book for his uncle with “Downs Publishing Company” on the inside. In high school he wanted to be a sports journalist, then chased the money instead. * He used to say he wasn’t creative. Writing has brought out a more creative side, and he has felt the flow state people talk about. * The New York Times calls them “dopamine sites”: fake shopping sites like fakehaul.com, where you fill a basket, hit buy, and nothing arrives. A South Korean fake food-delivery site tells you how much money you saved and how many calories you didn’t eat. * Greg jokingly calls it non-alcoholic money. These sites get hundreds of thousands of clicks a month, and he’s curious whether they will last. Key Insights “We’re reaching for that same sort of relief and the dopamine that comes from it.” - Greg Downs [42:14] - Hang On, Pain Ends * Greg says the hard moments have gotten fewer, shorter, and easier to handle than in the beginning. * He learned the acronym H-O-P-E (hang on, pain ends). He now knows the craziness in his thoughts will stop at some point, even when he can’t say when. * In the past, those moments sent him reaching for a drink for immediate relief. Now he goes for a walk, calls a friend, journals, writes, or goes to the gym. * Greg is a big advocate for meditation and went to a 10-day silent retreat earlier this year. Josh shares that he has meditated daily for over 10 years and that consistency matters more than length. Key Insights “H-O-P-E, hang on, pain ends.” - Greg Downs Key Quotes “I could very clearly see where life was going to go if I didn’t make changes.” - Greg Downs “All the material stuff was gone, but I was still there.” - Greg Downs “The 12 steps are a lot about self-forgiveness and recognizing that I’ve made mistakes, but that I’m not a mistake.” - Greg Downs “You are not your credit score. You are not your bank balance.” - Greg Downs “Your story is your superpower.” - Greg Downs, quoting his sponsor Resources Mentioned * 12 Steps to Financial Sobriety by Greg Downs: coming in February, with presale expected soon * The Sober Money Club: Greg’s weekly peer-led support group for money * Financially Sober October: the once-a-day “look at your account and close it” practice * “Dopamine sites”: fake shopping sites covered by the New York Times, including fakehaul.com and a South Korean fake food-delivery site * The 12 steps and AA, including the AA Grapevine magazine * Jeremiah 29:11: the verse on the card in Greg’s cell * H-O-P-E (hang on, pain ends): the acronym Greg uses on hard days * Meditation and silent retreats: Greg’s 10-day retreat and a daily practice Where to Find Greg * Social: Instagram and LinkedIn @gregdownscoach * Coaching: ClearPath Financial Coaching * Book: 12 Steps to Financial Sobriety, out in February. [Add presale link here when it’s live] When You’re Ready to Look at What You’re Reaching For Greg’s story keeps returning to one pattern. We reach for something to change how we feel. Greg saw it in his own drinking, and he saw it in how his clients handled money. The late-night drink and the late-night p

  3. Oct 10

    Episode 072 - The Wrong Question About Drinking With Dr. Lucy McBride

    Most of us know the moment. You’re at your annual checkup and the doctor asks how many drinks you have a week. You give a number, they type it in, and the appointment moves on. Dr. Lucy McBride has spent 25 years as a primary care physician in Washington, D.C., and she thinks that question barely scratches the surface. Alcohol has been part of her life from many angles. Her dad has been sober since he was 50. Her husband has struggled with his relationship with alcohol. Her late brother struggled with it at various times in his life. She also knows her own pull toward a drink at the end of a hard day. In this conversation, Lucy explains why normal lab work can hide a relationship with alcohol that’s causing harm. She talks about why some of her patients find out their drinking was never a willpower problem, and why she once wrote “self-compassion” on a prescription pad. She also opens up about her creative side: a lifelong journaling habit, a love of clothes she picked up from her mom, and a neighborhood consignment shop where everyone knows her name. Show Notes [0:00] A Book for People Who Don’t Know Who to Trust * Lucy’s first book, Beyond the Prescription, came out in August with Simon & Schuster and has done better than she ever expected. * She wrote it for the person who feels let down by the medical system and drawn in by the wellness industry, and who doesn’t know how to make sense of it all. * With the publicity rush winding down, she’s sleeping well, back at yoga and feeling calmer and more present. Key Insights: “It’s not a do as I say book. It’s a here’s how to think about your health book in a nuanced way.” [4:12] A Family Shaped by Alcohol * Lucy’s dad was a highly functional drinker who went to work every day but “had a real problem.” He has now been sober for more than 30 years. * She doesn’t drink much by “a doctor standard.” Even so, every time she has taken a break from alcohol, she has noticed its effects on her digestion, clear thinking and patience with people. * She doesn’t count her own lack of struggle as a moral win or a sign of better willpower. * Her patients cover the whole range, from people for whom one drink a week is one too many to social drinkers who wonder why she’s asking at all. Key Insights: “the key for anyone who’s thinking about their alcohol use, as I know everybody here on this call knows, is radical self-awareness of what it does for you and what it doesn’t for you.” [9:04] What “How Much Do You Drink?” Misses * The insurance system pays for transactions instead of conversations. Doctors get about 15 minutes per patient and, according to the data, interrupt patients within 11 seconds. * Lucy says your relationship with alcohol matters as much as the amount. If you drink five times a week to cope with uncomfortable feelings, or the drinking affects your sleep, blood pressure or relationships, that’s worth talking about. * Shame, blame and absolutism are the reasons many people don’t tell their doctors how much they drink. * Some lab markers can point to alcohol, like a high MCV (red blood cell size). But liver tests can be completely normal in a heavy drinker. * Legal and socially acceptable doesn’t mean safe. Lucy points out that alcohol carries a far greater breast cancer risk than hormone replacement therapy ever did. Key Insights: “Is it possible that the alcohol you’re consuming is contributing to your, you know, blank, blank, blank, GI distress, migraine headaches, sleeplessness?” [16:44] Addiction, Biology and GLP-1s * Lucy sees addiction as one big continuum. She separates it from dependence, which is when you need the substance to function. * She uses the biopsychosocial model: addiction can have biological, psychological and social roots, and the mix is different for each person. Knowing the roots helps you pick the right intervention. * She prescribes GLP-1 medications off-label to five or six patients to reduce alcohol cravings. They don’t work for everyone, and they aren’t FDA approved for alcohol use disorder. * For people who do respond, the medication shows them their struggle was biological. Patients using GLP-1s for food describe finally feeling like they’re not walking around “with a tiger on a leash.” Key Insights: “What it shows people is that their alcohol overuse, dependence, tolerance, addiction, before the GLP one, wasn’t a willpower problem to begin with. It was biology, right?” [24:08] Slowing Down the Reach for a Drink * Many people who drink more than they’d like haven’t looked closely at the feelings underneath, often because the alcohol gave those feelings a handy place to park. * Lucy asks patients to slow down the moment between feeling like they need a drink and grabbing it, and to notice what’s happening in their body and mind. * Some patients find the question strange. Others say they’ve never thought about it. Either way, she says, “That’s where the insight is born.” * She describes health as bringing together the conscious and unconscious mind. Doing that work is where agency comes from. Key Insights: “I mean, our thoughts and our feelings drive our behaviors. Our behaviors drive our health.” [28:44] Coping Tools That Help * Self-compassion first. Lucy told a patient who was caring for her elderly mother, drinking more and blaming herself to “give yourself a break, my friend.” * Exercise doesn’t have to be fancy. “The best exercise program for you is the one that you will actually do.” * Community matters. Lucy believes loneliness and alcohol feed each other, and she encourages even introverts to build routines around social time. * She also strongly supports therapy, AA and Al-Anon, which have helped many of her patients and members of her own family. Key Insights: “I said, what you need first and foremost is self-compassion.” [34:57] Writing, Clothes and Creativity * Lucy has kept a journal since she was a kid. Writing things down made her thoughts less overwhelming and kept them from “pinging around like a ping pong wall.” * She loves clothes as self-expression and an art form. Her mom made the family’s clothes and ran a small clothing business. * She never shops with a list: “I’m like a canvas that I’m always like painting on.” * She grew up around creative people, majored in art history, and sees art and music as ways to be in the present moment. Key Insights: “Writing is my way of taking the noise in my brain and all the subconscious noise that bubbles up and processing it and thinking it through.” [38:48] Better Questions for Yourself and Your Doctor * Lucy calls her book “a library of questions” to ask yourself and your doctor, so you get more out of a short appointment. * It helps you take stock of your own story, including the things you’re embarrassed to say out loud, and bring a more honest picture of yourself to the doctor’s office. * Her biggest hope is a healthcare system where everyone has a primary care provider “who knows their name, not just their diagnosis codes.” Key Insights: “But it starts with asking yourself the right questions and asking the right questions to the people responsible for your care.” Key Quotes “There’s no moral prize for being sober.” - Dr. Lucy McBride “But I am very aware of the gravitational pull of alcohol when you’re feeling exhausted or stressed or anxious.” - Dr. Lucy McBride “You can be completely normal in lab work and have a relationship with alcohol that is problematic, wobbly, causing harm.” - Dr. Lucy McBride “I think loneliness drives alcohol overuse. Alcohol use drives loneliness.” - Dr. Lucy McBride “So my argument really is that health isn’t about having all the answers.” - Dr. Lucy McBride Resources Mentioned * Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health by Dr. Lucy McBride * Are You Okay?, Lucy’s free weekly Substack newsletter * Beyond the Prescription podcast * The biopsychosocial model, a way of looking at the biological, psychological and social roots of a health issue * GLP-1 medications (Ozempic and Zepbound) * Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, and his work on the loneliness epidemic (also on Substack) * Self-compassion as a daily practice * Therapy, AA and Al-Anon Where to Find Dr. Lucy McBride * Book: Beyond the Prescription on Amazon or anywhere you buy books * Website: lucymcbride.com Take a Closer Look at Your Own Relationship With Alcohol When Lucy described her dad as a functional drinker, I recognized myself. During our conversation I said, “I could have eight or nine and then the next day could just crush it with work or whatever.” I also said, “I didn’t ever think I had a problem.” That’s how alcohol keeps its hold on people who are getting things done. The work still ships. The cost shows up in your sleep, your focus and your mornings, and it’s easy to blame those on being busy. Lucy’s approach is to slow down the moment you reach for a drink, ask what it’s doing for you and against you, and start with self-compassion instead of shame. That’s the work we do together in the Sober Creative Reset. The Reset is a 30-day, one-on-one alcohol-free reset. It includes: * Four 60-minute coaching sessions, one each week * Daily support and check-ins * Trigger and pattern mapping, so you can see what’s happening under the surface * Rhythm and energy tools as things settle down * Strategies for social and professional situations * A short morning email with a daily reflection prompt No labels, no moralizing. It’s $497 for the first 30 days, then month-to-month, and you can cancel anytime. If your energy, focus or mornings have felt harder than they should, it’s worth looking at what your evenings are doing to them. Start Your Reset or book a free clarity call if you’d like to talk first. Thank You A heartfelt thank yo

  4. Oct 3

    Episode 071 - Full Throttle With No Map: Steve Munro is 33 years sober, still redrawing the plan

    Steve Munro 🇨🇦 spent 25 years drinking, using, and selling drugs before he hit the bottom that finally stuck: a seizure on his apartment floor after walking through the DTs to buy a bottle of vodka. Eleven months in a residential treatment center followed. What came after that is the real story. Steve rebuilt a life across software executive roles, a motorcycle racing career, and a business he eventually had to shut down to save himself. Along the way he built something he calls the Seventy Framework, a system that started on a racetrack and ended up running his whole life. The idea at the center of it is simple: getting sober gives you a bigger life, but nobody hands you the tools to carry it. Steve calls that the Expansion Paradox, and it’s the thread running through this entire conversation. This episode moves through blackouts, a $100,000 race bike business, a boardroom sales pitch, and a concept Steve calls “map and territory” that he uses to catch himself before he drifts too far off course. If you’ve ever felt the life you built start to outpace the person you were when you built it, this one’s for you. [02:06] Beer Boy to Blackout: The 25 Years Before Sobriety * Steve started drinking and smoking hash at 14, delivering beer by bicycle in a rough Montreal neighborhood * He got into software sales in the 1970s, moved through two marriages, and kept functioning while addiction quietly took over * By the 1980s he was mixing cocaine and alcohol just to find “some level that I could function at,” and the blackouts started Key Insights: “It’s your brain’s inability to process information at the rate that it’s coming at you. It’s that simple.” - Steve Munro [08:17] The Seizure, the Welfare Apartment, and Serenity House * His wife left, he became unemployable, and he landed on welfare in the worst neighborhood in Ottawa, believing it was temporary * A seizure after a vodka-fueled walk home convinced him he was going to die * He checked into a residential treatment center and lived there for 11 months, working the steps “organically” rather than debating them Key Insights: “I was in and out of AA long enough to know what to do next, which was turn it over. I kept turning it over.” - Steve Munro [13:01] A Ducati, a Stack of Racing Books, and an Unexpected Teacher * Two years sober, Steve bought a Ducati as a celebration gift and started racing, badly and terrified * A friend pointed him to a series of books by racer Keith Code that explained why speed feels frightening: the brain can’t process information fast enough * Code’s method was about discarding every input with no value and focusing only on where you’re going next Key Insights: “If you drive at 90 miles per hour on an interstate, pretty soon 90 feels like 20. That’s what’s going on.” - Steve Munro [17:03] The Expansion Paradox: When Success Becomes Its Own Problem * Steve was thriving on paper: sober, racing, succeeding at work, but the pressure of his own expanding life was burying him * He realized people who get sober often don’t have the tools to handle the bigger life that follows * He started pulling pieces from Keith Code’s racing method, reference points, survival reactions, non-negotiable rules, and applying them off the track Key Insights: “With success comes pressure. And particularly for those of us who do crash and burn or don’t develop properly because of our drinking or drugging, when we do get sober and our lives do expand, we don’t necessarily have all the tools to cope with that.” - Steve Munro [24:42] Map and Territory: How Steve Catches Himself Drifting * The concept came from a road trip where two pages were missing from a paper travel map, leaving him lost with no way to tell where he actually was * “Map” is the life you believe you’re building. “Territory” is the reality you’re actually standing in * He’s had five periods in his life where the two drifted apart, and writing a new map is what gets him moving again Key Insights: “There’s no feeling like when your map doesn’t match the territory you’re standing in. You deny it for the longest period of time. And then finally you reject it.” - Steve Munro [39:22] Losing “Loud Guy”: Shutting Down a Business to Find Himself Again * Steve became a well-known vintage motorcycle racer and builder, running a business building $100,000 race bikes * His identity narrowed to just the bike world. He stopped riding for relaxation and started losing track of who he was outside of it * One day he recognized his map no longer matched his territory, and in two weeks he sold the businesses and shut it all down Key Insights: “It’s the difference between focus and obsession. Only you know when you step over the line.” - Steve Munro [49:17] Headroom in the Boardroom: Taking Racetrack Focus into Everyday Life * The same mental state he found on the track, what he calls headroom, carried directly into high-stakes sales meetings * Before walking into a boardroom to sell expensive software, he’d discard every unnecessary input the same way he did before a race * He closes with a reminder for anyone early in sobriety: the life you build from here can be anything you want it to be Key Insights: “I had no problem executing. I felt fantastic immediately.” - Steve Munro Key Quotes “With success comes pressure. And particularly for those of us who do crash and burn or don’t develop properly because of our drinking or drugging, when we do get sober and our lives do expand, we don’t necessarily have all the tools to cope with that.” - Steve Munro “There’s no feeling like when your map doesn’t match the territory you’re standing in. You deny it for the longest period of time. And then finally you reject it.” - Steve Munro “I don’t sweat the small stuff. I only sweat the big stuff. And I sweat it on my terms.” - Steve Munro “It’s the difference between focus and obsession. Only you know when you step over the line.” - Steve Munro “It’s already there. I just had to learn how to get at it.” - Steve Munro Resources Mentioned * Racing books by Keith Code, which taught Steve how to manage fear and attention at speed * Large language model tools (Steve mentioned using ChatGPT) to compare his “map” against his “territory” on a weekly basis * The Seventy Framework, Steve’s system for managing attention, overload, and decision-making under pressure Where to Find Steve Steve writes Seventy-Life on Substack, where he’s bringing the Seventy Framework to sober adults navigating the Expansion Paradox. He mentioned he’s about to release a demo of the framework. Find him there for updates. Want Help With What Comes After? Steve spent years building a framework from scratch because nobody handed him one. Most of us don’t get sober and immediately know how to carry the bigger life that follows. The Sober Creative Reset is 30 days of structure for exactly that stretch: figuring out what’s actually working in your life right now, what isn’t, and what to build next. Thank You Thank you to Peter | Seeded Soul Rising, KarenC-Book Collector📚⚖️🗽🗳️🧿♒️, Love conquers hate, and many others who joined us live for this conversation, and to Steve Munro 🇨🇦 for the honesty he brought to it. Your presence and engagement make these conversations possible. P.S. Missed a past episode? You can find the full newsletter archive right here on Substack. What’s Next: New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss the next conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newsletter.thesobercreative.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 25

    Episode 070 - The Whisper Needs You Awake: Lisa Marie Simmons on Performing, Writing, and Drinking Less

    Lisa Marie Simmons has been on stage since she was fifteen. She moved from Boulder to New York at nineteen to study theater and music, and she believed what a lot of young artists believe: that the tortured artist needs a drink to get up there and bare her heart. She bought all in. By her own account, she was messed up for most of the five years she spent in New York. She is sixty now, living on Lake Garda in Italy, writing and recording with her husband Marco Cremaschini. She didn’t get sober. She reined it in, mostly in her forties, and she’s careful about how she describes what changed. “I absolutely have found that reducing it has given me more energy and more clarity.” That’s the claim she’ll make. She won’t make a bigger one. What makes this conversation worth your time is how specific she gets about the cost. Not the moral cost. The working cost. Dry vocal cords that stick instead of vibrating cleanly. A thick tongue that blurs the words she works hard to enunciate. One more error to avoid on a night when there are already plenty. And underneath all of it, the thing she keeps circling back to: if the song is arriving from somewhere outside of you, you have to be awake enough to hear it. Show Notes [02:38] The Tortured Artist Myth * Lisa names the old trope directly: that artists need to drink in order to write or to perform. She says she was a victim of it early in her career. * Getting on a stage is frightening. She used alcohol as a crutch to get past the fear of standing in front of people and baring her heart. * She now sees the flow-state version of the same myth as a misconception. Alcohol is not the best way to find that state. Key Insight: “And as you mentioned, I absolutely have found that reducing it has given me more energy and more clarity.” [05:24] New York in the Nineties * She describes a tumultuous childhood: re-homed after a first adoption, adopted again, then foster homes. “I’m not an original,” she says of the pain. * She arrived in New York at nineteen and let loose. She sees it now as her way of dealing with everything that came before. * She stayed until she was twenty-four, drinking and using, in a scene where cocaine was everywhere. A job singing in the south of France was the first thing that made her start reining it in. * She didn’t really rein it in until her forties. Key Insight: “And I’d say I was messed up most of that time.” [09:10] Why the Culture Makes It So Hard * Josh and Lisa talk about music venues where everybody is drinking, and how saying no can feel like getting banished from the pack. * Lisa extends it to the ritual around the gig: a drink and a cigarette while you wait to start, a drink while you break down the stage, a drink to come down from the high. * She lives in Italy and there’s wine, which is part of why she isn’t sober. It’s just no longer a daily thing. Key Insight: “And I think that’s the thing with alcohol. There’s always a reason to imbibe if you look for one, right?” [11:05] What “Messy” Actually Means on Stage * Less precision with notes and intonation. Stumbling over words. A tongue that thickens. * She’s a professional with decades of experience, so she doesn’t think the audience sees it. She feels it, and that feeling is what can derail a performance. * Alcohol also dries out the vocal cords. She explains the mechanics: the cords vibrate against each other, then open to let air through. Dry cords stick, and control goes. Key Insight: “It’s one more error that you have to avoid that you can just easily avoid by not drinking.” [13:07] Replacing the Pre-Show Drink * Most performers have a routine before they go on, something Lisa calls talismanic. Hers used to include alcohol. * Now it’s meditation. She breathes, gets into a space, and looks for the flow state so she can be as open as possible for the audience. * The rest of the list is plain and practical: tea for her throat, good hydration, sleep the night before, a nap if sleep didn’t happen, clothing that feels good, jewelry that makes her feel protected. Key Insight: “All of these things are such a great replacement for alcohol.” [16:36] A Listener Question on Alcohol Advertising * A listener asks whether alcohol ads work against accurate medical information about alcohol’s toxicity. * Lisa’s answer is careful. She says probably, but she doesn’t know. Businesses advertise toward the positive because their bottom line depends on us consuming. * She points to cigarettes as the example: advertised as cool in the thirties and forties, smoked by every movie star, and the public was deceived for decades about the harm. * Josh brings up research on alcohol and inflammation in the brain, and how long that inflammation can last, even after just a few drinks. Key Insight: “I think there could be studies that are out there about the toxicity of alcohol, of which we’re unaware. That’s possible.” [21:14] Meditation, the Imposter, and Capturing the Ephemeral * Lisa discovered meditation at fifteen in a high school drama class, under a teacher named Rita Cotter. She had the sensation of leaving her body and looking down at the room, and a sense of peace she calls enormous. She has not stopped since. * She uses it to quiet the imposter voice, the one that says it’s arrogant to think you could be the author of something. * She talks about what she’s actually reaching for: the most honest thing, the nugget of truth, the inner landscape that nobody else can climb inside of. * Josh shares The Clear Hour, a monthly Sober Creative gathering that opens with a guided creative meditation and then lets people make something. Key Insight: “It is about capturing the ephemeral and gifting it.” [26:31] The Highway of Creativity * Before the internet, songwriters in different parts of the world would write about the same themes or land on similar melodies. Lisa takes that as evidence of something you can tap into. * The songs she loves most are the ones that feel like they didn’t come from her at all. * This is where her argument about drinking lands hardest. If the material is arriving, you need your antenna working. Key Insight: “It feels like I’m a vessel for that thing. And again, how do you hear that? How can you be receptive to that if you are drinking?” [32:22] Morning Pages and Sitting With What’s Uncomfortable * Lisa keeps shelves of notebooks full of scribblings that will never be published. Three pages in the morning, no punctuation, no editing, no deciding whose voice it’s in. * She calls it another way to get rid of the imposter without drinking to do it. Josh points out it might also help around five o’clock, when the craving tends to show up. * The conversation turns to discomfort: that we aren’t built to sit with it, and that the hard passages are where the growth happens if we let ourselves feel them. * On comparing pain, she’s direct. Everybody she knows had something happen in childhood. Key Insight: “There’s no hierarchy of pain, right?” Key Quotes “It is about capturing the ephemeral and gifting it.” — Lisa Marie Simmons “And I think that’s the thing with alcohol. There’s always a reason to imbibe if you look for one, right?” — Lisa Marie Simmons “How do you hear it? How does that truth resonate if you’ve got this thing and this fog in front of it?” — Lisa Marie Simmons “It’s one more error that you have to avoid that you can just easily avoid by not drinking.” — Lisa Marie Simmons “I’m all about storytelling. That’s how we learn empathy. That’s how we grow. Storytelling is everything.” — Lisa Marie Simmons Resources Mentioned * Morning pages — the practice of writing three unedited pages first thing in the morning * Meditation as a pre-performance ritual — breathing into a flow state before going on stage * Insight Timer — where Josh has guided meditation practices available * The Clear Hour — The Sober Creative’s free monthly session: a guided creative meditation, then time to make something. Anyone can join. * Lisa’s Substack essay on her mentor Rita Cotter — the teacher who introduced her to meditation at fifteen Where to Find Lisa Marie Simmons * Website: lisamariesimmons.com * Bandcamp: the best place to support her directly, since artists actually earn from purchases there * Streaming: her music is everywhere under her name, Lisa Marie Simmons * DAWTA The Podcast: her show with Dionne Draper on the transracial adoptee experience What’s next for Lisa: * October 1–6: in New York for a book launch supporting her friend Phoebe Boswell, and a visit to the Recording Academy, where she has an album up for members’ consideration * November 13: back at Carnegie Hall as a guest of Charu Suri. Tickets are on sale now. Thank You A heartfelt thank you to EG, mike stock, Deborah Taylor, and everyone who joined us live for this conversation, and to Lisa Marie Simmons for her generosity, her honesty, and for giving us a look inside how the work actually gets made. Your presence and engagement make these conversations possible. This was episode 70. Seventy people, seventy different paths, and every one of them has given us something worth keeping. What If the Fog Is the Only Thing Between You and the Work? Lisa was talking about the songs that carry real truth, the ones with no hiding in them, and she asked how you’re supposed to hear that truth with fog in front of it. Most of us aren’t asking whether alcohol is ruining our lives. We’re wondering if this next question is worth doing something about it. Is it costing me something in my work that I can’t quite name? More energy. More clarity. A workday that goes further. Those are the things Lisa could point to, and she’s the first to say the rest is hard to quantify. Thirty days is enough time to find out for yourself. The Sober Creative Reset is a 30-day 1:1 program bui

  6. Sep 19

    Episode 069 - One Panel At A Time

    For about twenty years, Tiffiny Yaxley was the one who made the party happen. Figure skater, geologist, entertainer, the girl who would moon a room full of people because she thought it was hilarious. She built that reputation on purpose. And somewhere along the way she stopped liking the person she had built. She'll tell you there was no rock bottom. Just a Friday at 10 in the morning at a stressful job, when she caught herself already craving the drink she wouldn't have until after work. Then an Instagram ad for a 30-day challenge, which she clicked because it made a joke about alcohol and your bowels. She signed up with a group of complete strangers who had no idea who she was. She stopped drinking in May of 2022. What came after surprised her. The clear-minded days brought back mornings, hot pink mountain peaks at sunrise, and a version of herself she actually recognized. They also brought a depression she had been calling weakness for years. So she did what she has always done. She drew it. Panel by panel, her character The Graphical Bear became the way she processed what she couldn’t say out loud, and eventually became a book she can hold in her hands. This conversation covers all of it, including the parts that are still hard. Show Notes [02:25] Small Town, Big Reputation * Tiffiny grew up in a small town in northern British Columbia. Her first drink was New Year’s 2000 for the millennium, at 16, at a party in her boyfriend’s dad’s logging truck garage. * She stayed pretty mellow through high school and first year university. Then she got into her geology major, found her group, and found the party culture that came with it. * A figure skater who loved to perform, she leaned into being the center of attention. The more she drank, the sillier the stunts got, and the reputation stuck. Key Insight: The image took two decades to build and she outgrew it long before she knew how to change it. “I spent the better part of 20 years really developing and building this kind of image that after a while I really wasn’t happy with but I didn’t know how to change it for quite some time.” [04:56] Chasing the “Unicorn Amount” * Her dad quit drinking cold turkey in his mid-30s when she was around 10 or 11. Years later, that gave her a model: if he could do it, so could she. * From about 30 to 38, she wasn’t happy with who she was when she drank, but she kept drinking enough to pretend she was. The dopamine hits from the attention were hard to let go of. * She hunted for moderation, what she calls the “unicorn amount.” Her husband was the only one who saw the aftermath, including the nights she ended up on the kitchen floor in what she describes as a puddle of sadness and shame. * Drink two or three was what she calls the TSN turning point. She rarely drank during the week and was, in her words, a classic binge drinker. Key Insight: The scariest moment wasn’t a rock bottom. It was noticing a craving in the middle of an ordinary workday. “this is a little weird that I’m having this extreme craving to just go get absolutely shmammered. And it’s 10 a.m. on a Friday because I want to escape what I’m doing right now.” [09:05] A Funny Ad and a Group of Strangers * Dry January and Sober October never stuck. She would hit three weeks, decide it was dumb, and feel disappointed in herself. * An Instagram ad for an online 30-day challenge caught her because it was funny. She signed up, and it worked partly because the group was completely separate from her real life. Nobody there knew who she was. * On a business trip to Ontario she listened to Annie Grace’s audiobook and related hard, even though she didn’t feel like someone who was falling apart. * When she told a coach she had 10 days, the reaction was immediate and enthusiastic. She realized that felt better than friends clapping when she fell off a stage. * She came home from that trip good at her job and not hungover, and the early wins started stacking. Key Insight: The community was the variable that changed the outcome. “I think I wouldn’t have been able to do it had I kept trying to do it alone.” [13:52] The First Six Months Were the Hardest * She quit in May, which meant summer patio season, birthdays, and mountain bike rides that end in a beer. The Rockies have a short summer and everyone is outside for it. * She drank non-alcoholic beer at the same speed she used to drink, nine in one Friday, mostly to have something in her hands. It showed her how fast she had been going. * She made excuses at first, telling people she was doing a 90-day challenge. Then friends started coming to her privately saying they wanted to slow down too, and asking how she did it. * The hardest part was mourning who she used to be and letting people down who wanted that person back. Key Insight: The self-consciousness was mostly hers to carry, and almost nobody else was watching. “helped me figure out that I could be there and no one actually gives a s**t if you’re drinking or not. Everyone’s in their own head so much.” [17:59] Getting the Mornings Back * Sleep improved fast. So did her ability to sit back at a party, listen, and contribute when it mattered rather than run the room. * She learned what she actually enjoys versus what she thought she enjoyed. Live music yes, dancing yes, staying out past 11:30 no. Arm wrestling, also no. * A lifelong morning person from years of 6 a.m. ice times, she had been trading sunrises for hangovers, including the walks where she puked in a snowbank and felt she had shortchanged her dog. * Now she does the “poop loop” around her circle street with the dog, even at minus 30, to catch Alpenglow turning the peaks hot pink. That walk is on the cover of her book. Key Insight: The mornings turned out to be worth more than she expected. “Mornings were something that I just value so hard and didn’t really realize how much I liked them in the quiet.” [26:02] How the Graphical Bear Became a Book * She created the character in 2014, two days after a Halloween party she spent mostly in a friend’s bathroom. The first drawing was a bear barfing. * Calvin and Hobbes was her safe space as a kid when she was scared or anxious, so comics were already where she went to feel better. * She draws by hand and scans it. She loves a Venn diagram, an XY chart, a bar chart, and uses them to show how life’s variables relate. * About a year into quitting, she brought the bear back and started pairing comics with written stories on her blog. Her coach Gary, who joined the episode live, pushed her to put them online. Her aunt, her childhood figure skating coach, was the first to tell her how much she related. * People kept saying the same thing, so she self-published. She later showed the work at the art gallery in Golden for a month and did a book reading. Key Insight: Drawing it gave her somewhere to put the feeling, and something real to hold at the end. “I wanted to have something tangible that I could hold and be like, I built that.” [34:30] The Demon, the Doctor, and Asking for Help * Four and a half years in, she still has hard days, and a lot of them come down to not feeling good enough. In the book, that voice is a character called the demon, sitting opposite the dog like the devil and the angel on her shoulder. * She went to her doctor frustrated. She meditates, does yoga, quit drinking, eats well, sees her coach weekly, and was still crashing. The doctor told her sometimes people’s brains are different and they need help. * She resisted medication at first. After a couple of bad episodes and her husband telling her he was worried, she did her research, talked to her mother who is a nurse practitioner, and accepted it. She also started seeing a therapist. * A friend in her late 60s read the blog and the comic that went with it, then asked her own doctor about antidepressants. She told Tiffiny her life has never been better. Key Insight: She reframed help the way she would treat any other injury. “I broke a bone. I would go to the hospital and have the doctor help me fix it. There’s something here that I’ve been trying to fix on my own and maybe I should actually accept some help.” [40:24] Why It’s Called a Practice * Tiffiny and Josh both landed on the same thing: you can do all the work and still need a lift some days. It ebbs, it flows, and it is never perfect. * She has charts about this. Quality of life trends upward over time, with all the ups and downs still in the picture. * Looking back through three years of comics, she can see comics she drew early that still describe how she feels today, and she can also see the baseline move. She didn’t know art therapy was a thing when she started doing it to herself. * The final comic in the book is a Venn diagram about success, with fame, money, and feats of strength on one side and a cozy place to have coffee on the other. * She has taken close to a year off from comics to paint and do watercolors, but she has a sketchbook and a phone full of ideas, and November in the Rockies is a slow season. Key Insight: Progress is real even when it doesn’t feel like it. “Because sometimes the journey is great and you’re on the top of a mountain and you’re getting powder turns. And then all of a sudden you f*****g crash into a tree well and now you’re stuck.” Key Quotes “Because you’re becoming a new person, and the new person is actually who you are, not who you think you should be.” — Tiffiny Yaxley “I drew it because I felt so ashamed of myself and so sad that I am doing this all the time that I was like, if I can make it into a joke, and people laugh at it, then it’s okay.” — Tiffiny Yaxley “Depression’s a real thing, and I just kind of thought I was weak and s****y.” — Tiffiny Yaxley “And I think partly why I want to talk about it and why I wrote the book is because if you don’t see other people doing it,

  7. Sep 11

    Episode 068 - What Alcohol Actually Does To Your Brain

    Most of what I know about alcohol, I learned by living it. I know what nine beers a day did to my sleep, my mornings, my work, and my sense of who I was. What I never had was the other half of the picture. The part happening at the level of receptors and stress hormones and inflammation, in a place I can’t see and was never taught to look. Dr. A Leslie Morrow spent 35 years in that place. She’s a John Andrews Distinguished Professor Emerita at UNC Chapel Hill, published more than 238 scientific articles, and served 25 years as associate director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies. Her work on GABA receptors and the body’s own neurosteroids led to clinical trials for alcohol use disorder and to brexanolone for depression. She could have spent this hour on technical science. Instead she chose to tell us the one thing she thinks matters most, and it reframed how I understand my own decade of drinking. Alcohol leaves inflammation behind. Not the kind you feel in a sore knee. A specific kind, in your brain and your organs, that makes anxiety louder, pain sharper, focus harder, and craving stronger. It can last long after the last drink. And there are things you can do about it. If you have ever wondered why stopping felt harder than it should have, this conversation offers an answer that has nothing to do with willpower. Show Notes [00:00] Why this conversation is different * Instead of one person’s story of what they let go, we went into the biology underneath all of our stories. * Dr. Morrow’s background: PhD in neuroscience at UC San Diego, postdoctoral training at NIH, 35 years at UNC. * I came in with a list of questions I’ve carried for years, including why cutting back fails for people who are trying as hard as they know how. Key Insight: She chose depth over jargon from the first minute. “What I would like to kind of do is rather go through a lot of technical science that may or may not be useful to people is tell you what I think has been the most important discovery.” [02:53] The dose matters, and so does what’s already in you * One or two drinks does something very different in the body than four, six, or nine. * Alcohol is a tiny molecule that acts at many sites. At low doses it acts one way. At high doses it’s a toxin. * What alcohol does to you also depends on what you already have going on. Anxiety, stress, and pain change the picture before the first sip. * Alcohol doesn’t act only on the brain. It acts on the whole body. Key Insight: “If you add a toxin to a situation that’s already working abnormally, it’s going to have different effects than if you add that toxin to a physiology that’s normal.” [04:24] The discovery she calls the most important * A lifetime of heavy drinking creates inflammation in the brain and in every organ. * That inflammation interferes with normal function, which is part of why control is so hard and craving is so strong. * It makes your original reason for drinking worse. If you drank because you were anxious, the inflammation makes you more anxious. If you drank because of pain, it makes the pain worse. * We know this from studying the brains of people who died with alcohol use disorder. Those brains show high levels of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, which Dr. Morrow calls “danger molecules.” * This is a specific kind of inflammation. It is not the same as arthritis or a common headache. Key Insight: “So basically, it’s making all the triggers stronger.” [10:26] Exercise, the tool with the strongest science * Researchers made rats dependent on alcohol at doses similar to what humans drink, and the rats developed the same inflammation in liver and brain that humans do. * Then they let the rats exercise. Before drinking, during drinking, or after stopping. Every version lowered the inflammatory molecules in the brain and the liver. * Dr. Morrow was clear that this work came from other labs, not hers, and that the science behind it is strong. * The type doesn’t matter. Walking, yoga, weights, whatever you enjoy. What matters is frequency. Key Insight: “Just make sure you do it more than four days a week, more than half of the days of the week.” [13:36] Leaky gut, the TLR4 pathway, and licorice root * High doses of alcohol cause leaky gut. Everyone has endotoxin in their gut, and it’s fine while it stays there. When it leaks into the bloodstream, it switches on a pathway called toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4). * TLR4 is what produces the inflammatory molecules. Once it’s on, it keeps turning itself back on and switches on other pathways too. * Those inflammatory molecules change how the brain works and how your normal neurotransmitters behave, which leads to extra anxiety, depression, pain, and craving. * A group at UNC found a natural blocker of this pathway in licorice root, a compound called glycyrrhiza. In animal models it reduced voluntary drinking, blocked brain inflammation, and reduced anxiety-like behavior. Human trials are about to begin. * No medication currently targets TLR4 directly. Natural compounds can’t be patented, so drug companies have little reason to fund them through trials. Key Insight: “Once you start that inflammatory process, particularly in the brain, it’s not easy to stop it.” [20:04] Pregnenolone and refilling your own supply * Your body already makes steroids that keep those inflammatory pathways in check. Pregnenolone and allopregnanolone. * Chronic stress drains them. Chronic drinking drains them. When your stress system is depleted, your natural defense against inflammation is depleted too. * Pregnenolone is the precursor to the other protective steroids, and it blocks TLR4 activation directly. It’s available over the counter. * In a Yale clinical trial with about 300 people, eight weeks at 300 mg a day normalized stress responses and reduced stress-induced craving, alcohol craving, and alcohol intake. * You don’t have to take it forever. Two months may be enough, unless a binge, a stressful stretch, or a toxin exposure brings the inflammation back. Key Insight: “We have an endogenous steroid that helps us relax. We have an endogenous steroid that helps us sleep. We have an endogenous steroid that protects our stress system.” [21:38] How a neuroscientist ended up studying alcohol * A college professor got her excited about science. That led to neuroscience, then to a graduate lab studying brain receptors. * During her postdoc at NIH she discovered that these natural steroids are powerful activators of GABA receptors. In the last eight to ten years her lab found they also block inflammatory pathways. * She turned to alcohol because alcohol activates GABA receptors too. At one or two drinks, that’s the source of the “ah” feeling, the relief people chase. * Part of the reason was practical. NIAAA funded the work. Then she started noticing how many people around her, including in her own family, had struggled with this. * She called alcohol probably the biggest public health problem in the world, and pointed out that NIAAA is the smallest institute with the smallest budget at NIH. Key Insight: “I think it has to do with the fact that for a long time, people thought of this as a moral problem, not as a real biological problem.” [29:15] What lingers after the hangover, and the short list * The hangover itself is mostly the immediate effects of alcohol. The things that stay after the hangover lifts are more likely to be inflammation. * Her list of those lingering effects: brain fog, anxiety, heightened sensitivity to pain, difficulty focusing. They can last a week or much longer. * Inflammation is hard to remove once it starts. In postmortem brains, the levels tracked with lifetime alcohol use. * If you already carry inflammation, even a few drinks a week keeps it going. If you don’t have any and you drink two or three a week, you might be fine. * Her short list for lowering it: exercise, pregnenolone, glycyrrhiza from licorice root. For supplements she stressed buying from a reputable, independently tested source. * She also mentioned that inflammation plays a big role in depression, through the same pathway. * Now retired, her focus is legacy work. Getting this research to the public, because the drug companies won’t. Key Insight: “When you feel like you’re living with those things and they just don’t ever leave you, to me that’s a sign that you have inflammation that you need to address. And then you’ll be much better able to change your behavior the way you want to.” Key Quotes “What a lifetime of excessive alcohol consumption does is causes a lot of inflammation in the brain and in all the organs, in fact.” — Dr. A. Leslie Morrow “If you started out drinking because you were anxious or stressed, well, those inflammatory changes just make you more anxious and more stressed.” — Dr. A. Leslie Morrow “It’s really hard to get rid of that inflammation. It’s really hard. Once it starts, it can stay your whole life.” — Dr. A. Leslie Morrow “Exercise actually counters the effects of inflammation. And we don’t know exactly how it does that, but we know that it does.” — Dr. A. Leslie Morrow “Maybe you have one bender and you’re beating yourself up because you did that. Well, instead of that, just increase your exercise for the next few weeks.” — Dr. A. Leslie Morrow Resources Mentioned Exercise — More than four days a week, whatever form you enjoy. The strongest evidence on the list. Pregnenolone — Over-the-counter supplement. The clinical trial dose was 300 mg a day for eight weeks, with about 100 mg a day mentioned for continued use. Buy from a reputable, independently tested source. Glycyrrhiza (licorice root) — Around 400 mg a day. Dr. Morrow noted it shouldn’t affect blood pressure in most people at that dose, but if you have high blood pressure you need to watch that closely. Human trials are about

  8. Sep 4

    Episode 067 - The Part Sobriety Didn't Touch

    Steve [Sage-Outlaw-Caregiver] on the crash that came six years after he quit, and finding out at 40 that he was creative Steve didn’t take a drink until he was 21. He calls it a reverse Benjamin Button. Most people get their worst drinking out of the way young. His started late, got heavier every year, and by the back half of his 30s it was every single day. He stopped on August 4th, 2018, after his drinking got him sent home from a post in South Africa. There was no program and no meetings. He was so depressed he couldn’t leave his room, which broke the habit before he ever decided to break it. Then nothing was fixed. Six years later, still sober, he was diagnosed with ADHD, watched two decades of near-perfect performance reviews collapse, went through termination proceedings, and checked himself into inpatient care in the Colorado mountains because he couldn’t guarantee his own safety. Almost none of what he found there had to do with alcohol. It had to do with a man who had spent his entire adult life believing he was his job. What he built on the other side of it is a dog wellness company and a world of corvid characters he draws with AI, which is not where a career foreign aid officer expects to end up. A note before you read on: Steve speaks openly about depression and two suicidal episodes. He gave his full blessing to share it. If any of this hits close to home for you, please reach out to someone you trust. Show Notes [02:36] A Late Start That Got Worse With Age * Steve went to Tulane in New Orleans, a heavy drinking town, and mostly ran with the engineering and finance crowd. He barely drank in college and never blacked out there. * After graduation he took an internship with the Department of the Army and landed in a cohort with a real drinking culture. Classes ended at three and the group went straight to margaritas. * He moved every two years, served overseas with soldiers, and drank his way into every new room. He describes himself as a chameleon during those years. * By the second half of his 30s, it was daily. Key Insights “It seemed like a shortcut. So that’s how I kind of just got sucked into it.” [11:15] When Drinking Flipped From Fun to Function * Steve rose fast, three years with the Army and then 17 at USAID. Every promotion brought a fresh wave of imposter syndrome. * He was moved from Washington, D.C. to South Africa to run a large office. He remembers blacking out one night because he had to fire somebody the next morning. * The circle kept shrinking. Five people at the bar became three, then two, then just him. * Drinking stopped being about having no responsibilities and started being about having too many. Key Insights “It becomes less of a social thing and more of a, this is just something I need to do.” [14:26] August 4th, 2018 * His drinking started affecting his work. He was sent back to the United States from South Africa. * The depression that followed was so heavy he couldn’t get out of his room, so he stopped drinking without ever making a plan to. * He had to leave his dogs behind in South Africa for two months and wasn’t allowed to visit them. * He never went to AA. He just stopped. Key Insights “August 4th is the day I returned to the United States and I thought my life was over.” [17:45] COVID, ADHD, and the Loss of Structure * Working from home stripped away the outside structure that had been holding him together. His ratings dropped from an average of 4.5 out of 5 down to threes, twos and ones. * He wanted to start drinking again. He went to therapy instead and came out with a diagnosis of ADHD and major depressive disorder. * Leadership gave him no coaching and no useful feedback, and he couldn’t work out what was happening to him. * Between 2020 and 2024 it built into a crash, and a second suicidal episode. Key Insights “What I found out is the lack of structure was killing me and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.” [21:26] Losing the Job That Was His Whole Identity * Bad reviews turned into termination proceedings. He believed it was all his fault. * He checked into inpatient care in Colorado expecting a short stay. He thought he was better, wasn’t, and stayed a second month. * In 2025, USAID was dismantled and his 17-year career ended outright. Having the job taken from him did what he couldn’t do himself. * He had stayed off social media for 20 years. Substack is where he landed after. Key Insights “I was finally able to break Steve away from Steve, the USAID worker.” [23:07] The Depression Equation * Steve built himself a simple formula for what was happening to him, and then built his day around beating it. * His answer was to get outside, so he started walking dogs. It slowly dawned on him that this could be an actual life. * Buddhist teachings on attachment had been floating around his life for years without landing. They landed now. * He got obsessed with space, and found the scale of it comforting rather than frightening. Key Insights “Depression equals being at home. Being alone and in your own head. So at home plus alone plus in your own head equals depression. It’s just an equation.” [26:02] Finding Out He Was Creative After All * Steve was a numbers guy and a spreadsheet guy who was certain he had no creativity in him at all. * Art therapy in Colorado cracked it open. He drew stick figures and it felt good anyway. * AI became the tool that closed the distance between what he could picture and what he could make. * He learned he wasn’t a burden on the people around him, a belief that had shaped how he lived for decades. Key Insights “Didn’t think I had any artistic bones in my body or any kind of creativity ever.” [33:15] Outside Feet, Artificial Idiocracy, and What Creativity Actually Is * “Outside feet” is what Steve says to his own dogs when he’s putting his shoes on. He built the company name around that instead of a pet pun. * Artificial Idiocracy started as a joke about being the average person stuck between the pro-AI and anti-AI camps. * He’s building a Renaissance-punk world of corvid characters modeled on writers he admires on Substack, studying their sites, words and mannerisms before he designs each one. * He now makes less money than he did at USAID and says he’s happier. Key Insights “It’s just being open and being honest is what I think creativity really is.” [39:07] The Dossier About forty minutes in, Steve shared his screen and showed me the character he’d made for me. I’m a rook. He picked it on purpose. Ravens are loud and shouting all the time, and as he put it, “the rooks are a little bit more introspective.” He called the character a sober artigiano, a working artisan, and drew me as a stone sculptor. His description: “creating something out of something very raw, but you’re shaping it into something beautiful.” He gave it a full dossier. Species, publication, class, a list of traits. Stone Sculptor: shapes new form by refusal. Radical Honesty: drops the alibi. Clear Hour: makes in the empty hour. Creative Reset: builds what sobriety gives back. He’d read enough of my work to pull The Alibis into a panel of its own, put the arm tattoo on the sleeve, and put me sitting in meditation at sunrise. Along the bottom it reads: Perfection isn’t the goal. Presence is. This is what he does now. He studies a creator’s work, their words and their mannerisms, and builds them a character in a Renaissance-punk world of corvids. “I studied their sights, I studied their words, I studied their mannerisms.” Then he gives it away. A man who spent 40 years certain he had no creativity in him made this. That’s the whole episode in one image. Key Quotes “For me, my entire life, my identity, my worth was tied up with my job.” — Steve “I just decided I needed to go to inpatient because I couldn’t guarantee my own safety.” — Steve “I’m not a burden to anybody. In fact, people like helping other people.” — Steve “The materialism is not the key to happiness. It is something within you and the community around you that has that happiness.” — Steve “I’m not here to promote anything. I’m just here to be myself. And that’s the greatest thing I can pick up right now.” — Steve Resources Mentioned * Art therapy — where Steve first drew anything as an adult, during his inpatient stay. * Buddhist teachings on attachment — ideas that had been around his life for years and finally took hold after he lost his job. * Corvids and the Renaissance — the two sources behind his Renaissance-punk character world. Ravens, crows, jackdaws, nutcrackers, rooks and jays. * The Clear Hour — my free monthly gathering. A short guided practice, then everyone works, then we come back and share. Where to Find Steve * Outside Feet: outside-feet.com — daily dog wellness in D.C. and Montgomery County * Artificial Idiocracy on Substack, where the corvid characters live * Mostly, he’s in the notes. In his words: “Always happy to talk with people.” What Steve’s Story Says About Structure Steve quit drinking in 2018 and stayed sober. Six years later he still crashed. What took him down was the loss of structure. No outside scaffolding, no daily contact, no one checking in on how he was actually doing. He said it plainly: the lack of structure was killing him and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. That's the piece most people skip. They stop drinking and leave everything around it exactly as it was. The Sober Creative Reset is 30 days of structure while you take alcohol out. Four weekly 60-minute sessions with me one-on-one, daily email check-ins with a reflection prompt, trigger and pattern mapping, and tools to steady your nervous system when it gets loud. When you slip, we adjust the plan instead of starting over. It’s $497 for the 30 days, about $124 a session, and you can cancel anytime. It isn’t therapy, rehab, or A

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About

In this live Substack series, I explore intimate conversations with people navigating their sobriety journeys. Each episode highlights personal transformations, practical strategies, and the unexpected creative advantages of clear-minded living. These uplifting discussions reveal how sobriety enhances artistic expression, business success, and personal fulfillment. Join us to discover how these individuals are finding greater authenticity, purpose, and creative power through sobriety. newsletter.thesobercreative.com

Information

  • Creator
    with Josh Woll
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    71
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Josh Woll
  • Show Website
    The Sober Creative Podcast

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