PODCAST · health
The Sober Creative Podcast
by with Josh Woll
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
Episodes
-
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…
more -
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...
-
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…
more -
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...
-
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...
-
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…
more -
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...
-
Episode 066 - Walking Away From Normal
Erin Gregory Creative did not hit rock bottom. That’s part of why her story is worth sitting with. She grew up Irish Catholic, in a family where a drink was how you celebrated and how you grieved. She was a scholarship swimmer in college, where work hard, play hard was simply the culture. She...
-
Episode 065 - What Recovery Gives You Back: A Conversation with Hunter Biden
In this episode, Josh sits down with Hunter Biden, a painter and writer based in Los Angeles who built a first career in law and business long before most people knew his name for anything else. Then one October, a laptop turned his private life into public property overnight. Every family photo,...
-
Episode 064 - The Second Time It Stuck: Dana Kay on Becoming a New Person, Not Just Stopping a Behavior
Dana Kay’s first memory of alcohol is from a dinner party when she was five or six years old. She spent the night sneaking sips while the adults were turned away in conversation, and by the end of the night she’d passed out on a beanbag in the middle of the room. Nobody worried. Everybody…
more -
Episode 063 - Jomo the Meditating Monkey: Stillness, Sobriety, and the Busy Mind
Most guests on this show are people who found their way to sobriety and creativity through hard-won trial and error. This week’s guest is a small golden monkey in a patchwork waistcoat who has never had a drink in his life. His name is Jomo, and he teaches meditation to millions of people on…
more -
Episode 062 - Music Is The Centerpiece Of My Life, Alcohol Is Not
Jeff “H” Harrington has been playing bass and writing songs for close to 40 years. He grew up in Milwaukee, a city he describes as one of the heaviest drinking cultures in the country, and spent his 20s and 30s using alcohol to manage a shyness he calls “criminally vulgar.” Nine years ago he left…
more -
Episode 061 - It’s Getting in My Way Now: Gary Allen on Slow Change and Building a Second Act After 45
Gary Allen had his first drink at 19, a pint of Harp he didn’t even like. He kept drinking it anyway, because for the first time, he felt like everybody else. Gary grew up in rural Ireland, the oldest of three, and has used a wheelchair full-time since he was 13. Alcohol became the thing that...
-
Episode 060 - Chasing Curiosity Instead of Chasing Quiet: Bob Mathers Found There Was No Ceiling Once He Stopped Drinking
Bob Mathers spent 35 years being “Bobby Good Times.” He was the guy other people kept on speed dial for a good night out, the one always up for an extra day of drinking when everyone else had called it quits. He built a career as a speaker and coach. He raised two sons. From the outside, it…
more -
Episode 059 - From the Fog to the Fast Lane: Ian Fee’s Wild Ride to Sobriety
IAN FEE took his first drink at age one, handed a sip of beer by his own dad while sitting in a highchair. He grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when parents dipped a baby’s binky in wine and nobody thought twice about it. By the time he hit his twenties, drinking wasn’t just a habit. It was the whole...
-
Episode 058 - Two Promises I'm Keeping
Jen Benford grew up carrying more than most people ever have to carry. Adopted at age two or three, moved through four homes before then, her aunt and uncle raised her in those first few formative years. Not finding out until she was 19 that she had six or seven half-siblings out in the world...
-
Episode 057 - Sobriety at 15,000 Feet: My Trek to Machu Picchu
I almost got off the bus. Sitting there before we took off, bags being loaded, heart racing, I seriously considered stepping out and calling the whole thing off. Five and a half years sober, and fear still shows up in the body the same way it always did. What changed is what I do with it. I kept...
-
Episode 056 - The Electricity Nobody Named: ADHD, Addiction, and the Power of Willingness
Jill DePhillip, CRNP-PMH has spent years sitting with people at the hardest parts of themselves. As a certified registered nurse practitioner in psychiatric mental health, specializing in ADHD and addiction recovery, she brings something most credentials don’t come with: she’s been there. Six…
more -
Episode 055 - Staying Alive Is Enough to Build Something Real
Marya Hornbacher came out of rehab in her mid-20s not knowing how to make dinner. She could earn a graduate degree, but she couldn’t change a tire or make a doctor’s appointment. She’d been drinking and using since her early teens, and by the time sobriety arrived, basic life skills were largely...
-
Episode 054 - The Intelligence You Already Have: Jenn Ocken on Navigating Uncertainty Without Abandoning Yourself
Jenn Ocken is a photographer, brand builder, and the person who gave language to something she calls creative adaptive intelligence — the human capacity to navigate uncertainty without abandoning yourself. She didn’t arrive at this framework through a research institution or a credential program....
-
Episode 053 - The Reputation You Earn: James Martin on Sobriety, Creativity, and Building Something That Lasts
James Martin | Made By James has spent 20 years building brands for some of the world’s most recognized companies. But the most important brand he’s ever built is his own — and he’ll tell you sobriety had everything to do with it. In this conversation, James opened up about getting kicked out of...
-
Episode 052 - When Your Work Ethic Outlasts Everything Else: A Conversation with Jessica Drapluk
Jess, The Creator is the kind of person who does not slow down. A family nurse practitioner, former pediatric oncology nurse, competitive hockey player, stock market analyst, and full-time Substack writer — she has built a life that runs on discipline, curiosity, and a refusal to stay average.…
more -
Episode 051 - From Rock Bottom to Open Sea: How Cory Gerlach Used 18 Years of Sobriety as a Launchpad for Radical Change
Cory Gerlach did not follow the script. Teenage punk. Community college. Harvard PhD. Senior federal scientist. Congressional advisor on COVID-19. And then—in 2024—he and his husband rebuilt a dilapidated sailboat by hand, quit their jobs, and sailed away from the lives they had built. He has…
more -
Episode 050 - When Sensitivity Meets Sobriety: Jonathan Hoban on Managing the Nervous System Behind Addiction
Jonathan Hoban has spent years trying to understand why he kept sabotaging himself when things were going well. The answer wasn’t where he expected to find it. It was hiding in plain sight — in the word most people dismiss as weakness: sensitivity. As a psychotherapist, author, and founder of...
-
Episode 049 - From the Garage to the Page: How Shelly Built a Clear, Creative Life on Her Own Terms
There’s a version of Shelly’s story that looks like a series of detours. Mechanic to content creator. Dealership to Substack. Substances to sobriety. But spend twenty minutes with her, and you realize those weren’t detours. They were the path. Shelly is the writer behind Cozy Clarity, a Substack...
-
Episode 048 - Your Body Is Talking. Are You Listening? A Conversation with Carolina Wilke
Carolina Wilke has spent decades studying what most of us ignore. The signals our bodies send. The tension we carry without naming it. The emotions we skip past because sitting with them feels like too much. As co-founder of Sacred Business Flow and a master bioenergetics practitioner, Carolina...
-
Episode 047 - From a 12-Hour Gaming Addiction to Six-Figure SaaS: A Conversation with Orel Zilberman
Orel Zilberman spent years inside the kind of addiction most people don’t take seriously. No substances. No rehab. Just a screen, a game, and a mind that had completely given itself over to the loop. At the peak, he was logging 12 to 16 hours a day on League of Legends and Overwatch — counting…
more -
Episode 046 - Being The Project Manager of Your Own Life: Kerry Hoffman on Proactive Sobriety and A Creative Life
Kerry Hoffman is a project manager. She builds systems. She connects dots. She is, by her own admission, very type A. So when she found herself going out and planning on two drinks, knowing she’d have three, and ending up with four or five — she noticed the problem. The drinking wasn’t following...
-
Episode 045 - When the Addiction Doesn't Go Away — It Just Gets a Job: A Conversation with Doan Winkel
Some guests come to these conversations with a tidy arc — the fall, the turning point, the recovery. Doan Winkel doesn’t have that story. He has something interesting and one we explored: the willingness to still be in it. At 25, after three stints in rehab, a suicide attempt, and a collection of...
-
Episode 044 - When the Body Breaks the Pattern: Phil Powis on Health, Clarity, and Building What You Can’t Hide From
Phil Powis ❤️⚡️ walked into his mid-30s running a consulting business that looked like success from every angle. Over $100,000 a month. A growing reputation. And underneath all of it, a body slowly breaking down in ways no doctor could explain. By the time a golf ball-sized tumor appeared in his...
-
Episode 043 - You Can't Pour From an Empty Cup. Becoming You Starts With Filling It.
Florence Acosta spent nearly 30 years giving everything she had to everyone around her. As a nurse. As a CRNA holding patients’ lives in her hands. As an executive director managing surgical teams, patient safety, and the invisible weight of being the person everyone else leaned on. As a...
-
Episode 042 - From the Stage to the Page: Mary Peeples on Sobriety, Self-Reclamation, and the Courage to Create Again
530 days sober and still counting — this conversation will remind you what it means to come home to yourself. Mary Peeples has lived many lives inside one. The theater kid from South Georgia who played Annie at the Fox. The boarding school girl who quietly lost herself trying to fit in. The...
-
Episode 040 - From Survival to Surrender: How a Landscape Painter Found Creative Freedom Through Healing
What happens when a creative person spends years completely shut down — unable to work, unable to feel, unable to create? For Justin Donaldson, a landscape artist who now travels the United States in a camper with his family, the answer was a long and honest journey through trauma, therapy, and...
-
Episode 039 - Spiritual Awakening in the Shower: Elif Ahmad’s Non-Traditional Recovery Journey
Elif Ahmad didn’t walk into a detox center or sit in a circle of folding chairs to get sober. She stood in a shower, held out her hands, and asked the universe for help. Within 24 hours, three years of cocaine addiction simply stopped. No cravings. No withdrawal. Just a complete severing of the...
-
Episode 038 - Living Above a Bar: A Dutch Medicine Woman’s Journey to Visibility and Sobriety
When the work of being seen becomes more important than the comfort of staying hidden Inge van de Graaf lives above a bar. Not near one—above one. The ground floor of her home is De Amer, a cultural cafe and music venue with velvet curtains, a fully stocked bar, and decades of history. For a…
more -
Episode 037 - Mistaking the Absence of Pain for Joy (And How to Find the Real Thing)
Georgia Kohlhoff knows what it’s like to have food occupy every corner of your mind. As a registered nutritionist, personal trainer, and trainee psychotherapist, she spent over two decades cycling through strict meal plans, obsessive tracking, and “intuitive eating” that spiraled into chaos. She...
-
Episode 036 - Peeling the Trauma Onion: Paul Overton on 30 Years of Sobriety and What Comes After
Paul Overton quit drinking 30 years ago, though he admits he doesn't keep close track anymore. Growing up in 1970s California as a Gen X kid left to his own devices, he started drinking at 12 or 13 and was introduced to cocaine at 16. His family normalized alcohol. Nobody was angry or out of...
-
Episode 035 - The Space Between: Sam Illingworth on Becoming Fearless with 18 Years of Clear-Minded Living
December 22, 2007. Sam Illingworth woke up in a hospital bed with his heart racing, his memory blank, and a doctor offering him the simplest advice he'd ever received: "Don't drink for a month and see what happens." That month became 18 years. That choice became the foundation for a career built...
-
Episode 034 - When Your Identity Falls Apart: Jake Summers on Relapse, Recovery, and Building a Creative Life
Jake Summers started drinking in high school in an alcoholic home where he “could basically do whatever I wanted.” He went to West Point hoping structure would save him from his addiction. It didn’t. He got kicked out at 21, went to rehab, and spent years drinking a fifth a day while working in...
-
Episode 033 - The Mic is Flipped: Choosing No to Drinking Is Choosing Yes to Yourself
For 32 episodes, I’ve sat across from creative professionals who’ve chosen sobriety and discovered something remarkable: clarity doesn’t diminish creativity—it unlocks it. I’ve listened to transformation stories, watched people articulate what they couldn’t see while they were in it, and built a...
-
Episode 032 - When Sobriety Cleared the Fog: How One Writer Went from Paralyzed to 3,000 Words a Day
Anna Gibson spent years on autopilot—smoking weed throughout her day, feeling the weight of a “demon on her back,” watching her writing disappear into unproductive fog. She knew she wasn’t doing anything. She’d smoke on the clock at her retail job. She’d look at her bag and see paranoia staring...
-
Episode 031 - From Cocaine to Clarity: Building a Life Worth Remembering
Ryan Lee spent his twenties chasing numbness—ecstasy, cocaine, alcohol, repeat. He kept his corporate job intact, hit his numbers, and convinced himself everything was fine. But underneath the performance, he was stuck. Personally stagnant. Professionally functional but unfulfilled. Using...
-
Episode 030 - When Clarity Becomes Your Most Essential Creative Tool: A Conversation with Elizabeth Austin
What happens when you build an entire writing career in sobriety—placing 30+ pieces in major publications while navigating your daughter’s cancer treatment, solo parenting, and financial uncertainty? Elizabeth Austin shows us that the answer isn’t just about what you accomplish, but about who you...
-
Episode 029 - The Perfectionism Coin: Why Shame and Control Keep You Reaching for the Bottle
What if everything you’ve been told about discipline is wrong? What if the reason you can’t stick to your creative practice isn’t because you lack willpower, but because your body is protecting you from repeating a pattern it knows will end in shame? This week’s guest on Clear Conversations...
-
Episode 028 - The Middle Ground Nobody Talks About: Denise Hamilton-Mace on Moderation, Midlife, and Creative Clarity
There’s a space between “rock bottom” and “business as usual” that rarely gets airtime in conversations about alcohol. It’s where most people actually live—questioning whether their drinking serves them, curious about alternatives, but not identifying with traditional recovery language or...
-
Episode 027 - When Sobriety Reveals What You Actually Want: A Conversation with Tyler Donohue
What if the thing you’ve been using to take the edge off is actually keeping you from the life you’re meant to live? This week on Clear Conversations, I sat down with Tyler Donohue, the writer behind Girl Resting, for a conversation that challenges everything we’ve been told about creativity,...
-
Episode 026 - When Meditation Saved My Life: Jason’s Journey from Blackout Drunk to Guiding Others Home
What happens when partying stops being fun and starts becoming survival? Jason from The Monkeymind Meditation Club knows this turning point intimately. Eight years ago, he was the loudest voice at the bar, the first one ordering shots, the guy who’d party until morning without question. Two-day...
-
Episode 025 - When Everything Falls Apart at Once: Derek MacDonald on Building Creative Stability Through Sobriety
Derek MacDonald got sober, got broken up with, and moved across the country—all in the same week. Most people would call that rock bottom. Derek called it a foundation. Four and a half years later, he’s the creator of Becoming Unobstructed, a newsletter and podcast reaching readers in 32+...
-
Episode 024 - When Grief Refuses to Be Silent: A Conversation with Alicia Cook
Alicia Cook knows something most of us spend our lives trying to avoid: what it means to transform unbearable loss into art that heals others. After losing her 19-year-old cousin Jessica to a heroin overdose when she was just 20, Alicia could have let grief silence her. Instead, she picked up her...
-
Episode 023 - When Pushing Through Breaks You: Cali Bird on the Radical Act of Being Gentle
What happens when the productivity warrior inside you finally surrenders? When chronic illness forces you to abandon every achievement strategy you’ve ever known? And what if that breaking point becomes the doorway to your most authentic creative work? Cali Bird lived the high-achieving life for...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
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
HOSTED BY
with Josh Woll
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Sober Creative Podcast have?
The Sober Creative Podcast currently has 68 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Sober Creative Podcast 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...
How often does The Sober Creative Podcast release new episodes?
The Sober Creative Podcast has 68 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Sober Creative Podcast?
You can listen to The Sober Creative Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Sober Creative Podcast?
The Sober Creative Podcast is created and hosted by with Josh Woll.
URL copied to clipboard!