100+ of recommendations, resources, ideas, tips, and more for where to start and how to keep going. For 🍷, but also 📱🚬🧑🏻💻👩❤️💋👨💊💉🌲🛍️🤑. By Holly Whitaker, author of Quit Like a Woman.
Holly this is INCREDIBLE! Thank you! An amazing list of ideas and resources for anyone quitting drinking, or anything, as you say. I really appreciate you sharing a variety of support groups, including paid ones, and mentioning sober coaches. I saw a post recently by a sober influencer who said that sobriety support should never be paid for, and there were tons of people agreeing in the comments. So it's great to see someone like you sharing the many varied ways people can gain support and to recognise that paid support, especially for 1:1, can be incredibly important for some people.
The idea that sobriety/recovery/addiction support should be free--and that people should not make money providing care work to this population--has been a thing for a long time as a way to promote and uphold a single dominant narrative, reduce our options, make sure healers aren't able to meet their basic needs and de-incentivize anyone who cares enough to do this work from making it their work, undervalue care work in general, keep us chained to patriarchal institutions and institutions in general, and so on. It also completely undermines the reason there's a fucking cottage industry built around recovery in the first place--because there aren't enough resources, and there isn't enough help.
We live in capitalism. Mutual aid is free, support groups can be free but some are not. But no, no. It's not reality to say this. It's puritanical.
Thank you Holly! Yes! Why is it specifically sobriety support that people come for, I wonder? Why should this specifically be done for free? Surely then all service jobs should be done for free - why is it OK for an accountant, hairdresser, therapist or personal trainer to charge for services but not a sober coach, writer, or a sober support group? The logic doesn't follow but I think because there are organisations like AA, people think that you can't justify charging for the support. Because there is free support (and it's brilliant that there is) then ALL support should be free... Thanks for your response, it's helped give me more confidence!
Thanks so much for this beautiful guide and the mention, Holly. Your work will always be dear to my heart - turning 6 years sober this February, and I got started with you... after Googling around for people writing about sobriety one lonely night ❤️
Thank you, Holly! Btw, your email course feels like a true exhale and gift in my inbox right now. I’m remembering how your daily emails were such a guide and anchor for me during sobriety school.
Thanks, Holly for your generosity in sharing this info. I am 18 months sober, in TLC ( my whole being does not react well to AA, fortunately or unfortunately). I have a lot of admiration for you and Laura. For me, quitting alcohol was an essential step in healing a painful break up of a long time best friend. Peeled back to the core of some old family trauma by this, alcohol seemed essential for numbing the pain. Except, it was keeping me stuck in it. I am forever grateful for your book and your fiercely honest presence. Thank you thank you thank you
Thank you for this. Today is, hopefully, my last Day One. I needed this today ❤️
❤️🫂
Holly this is INCREDIBLE! Thank you! An amazing list of ideas and resources for anyone quitting drinking, or anything, as you say. I really appreciate you sharing a variety of support groups, including paid ones, and mentioning sober coaches. I saw a post recently by a sober influencer who said that sobriety support should never be paid for, and there were tons of people agreeing in the comments. So it's great to see someone like you sharing the many varied ways people can gain support and to recognise that paid support, especially for 1:1, can be incredibly important for some people.
The idea that sobriety/recovery/addiction support should be free--and that people should not make money providing care work to this population--has been a thing for a long time as a way to promote and uphold a single dominant narrative, reduce our options, make sure healers aren't able to meet their basic needs and de-incentivize anyone who cares enough to do this work from making it their work, undervalue care work in general, keep us chained to patriarchal institutions and institutions in general, and so on. It also completely undermines the reason there's a fucking cottage industry built around recovery in the first place--because there aren't enough resources, and there isn't enough help.
We live in capitalism. Mutual aid is free, support groups can be free but some are not. But no, no. It's not reality to say this. It's puritanical.
Thank you Holly! Yes! Why is it specifically sobriety support that people come for, I wonder? Why should this specifically be done for free? Surely then all service jobs should be done for free - why is it OK for an accountant, hairdresser, therapist or personal trainer to charge for services but not a sober coach, writer, or a sober support group? The logic doesn't follow but I think because there are organisations like AA, people think that you can't justify charging for the support. Because there is free support (and it's brilliant that there is) then ALL support should be free... Thanks for your response, it's helped give me more confidence!
Thanks so much for this beautiful guide and the mention, Holly. Your work will always be dear to my heart - turning 6 years sober this February, and I got started with you... after Googling around for people writing about sobriety one lonely night ❤️
Just a note that the links to Perfect Hunger and my directory seem to be broken; folks can find the directory here: https://danaleighlyons.substack.com/p/sober-substack-addiction-recovery-sobriety xo
<3 Thanks Dana! Fixing...
Thank you, Holly! Btw, your email course feels like a true exhale and gift in my inbox right now. I’m remembering how your daily emails were such a guide and anchor for me during sobriety school.
Thanks, Holly for your generosity in sharing this info. I am 18 months sober, in TLC ( my whole being does not react well to AA, fortunately or unfortunately). I have a lot of admiration for you and Laura. For me, quitting alcohol was an essential step in healing a painful break up of a long time best friend. Peeled back to the core of some old family trauma by this, alcohol seemed essential for numbing the pain. Except, it was keeping me stuck in it. I am forever grateful for your book and your fiercely honest presence. Thank you thank you thank you
Cindy <3
I appreciate the mention, thanks so much, Holly!❤️
Of course!!! An honor to share your work Jolene.
Upgraded but no emailed course link? 🙏
hi! It's in the welcome to paid email! I'll email it to you also right now.
Thanks, Holly! X
🙏💕
<3
thank you as always
<3
Thank you for this 💚
🫀