Stop romanticizing the bottle. 

One of the key pieces to the puzzle is to stop putting alcohol on a pedestal. Start seeing it for what he truly is, instead of what marketing portrays it to be. 

What is alcohol really? I'll tell you.

A cancer-causing carcinogen

A depressant 

Increases anxiety

Disrupts your REM sleep

Ethanol (yes, gasoline)

Did you know?

Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States.

Every 50 minutes, a person dies because of driving under the influence of alcohol.

There is nothing to romanticize about a poison that can kill you. Sure, a glass of wine here and there will not kill you, but you know if you're on this page, that isn't you. Add the emotional rollercoaster you feel after you've drank when you told yourself you wouldn't, and that's the icing on the cake. 

It's time to start looking at alcohol as something that doesn't give but only takes. It takes our sanity, our health, and ultimately our soul. 

Are...

You just have to keep working at it.

The answer to, how do you finally get an alcohol-free lifestyle to stick?

There is no magic pill that is going to do the work for you. Sure, you may try Antabuse or Nalextrone (I'm not a doctor so discuss those options with a medical professional), but no matter if you take medicine to help you or not, it's not going to "cure" you.

They may take the option of drinking off the table or make drinking look less appealing, but the reasons you drank, to begin with, are still there, and until you work on those, you'll keep going back to your same old patterns.

The more you become aware of your triggers, thought patterns, and how you've used alcohol to cope in the past, the better you will become at dissecting the thoughts and CHOOSING to look at alcohol differently. This all boils down to doing the work.

Doing the work may be going to therapy or working with a coach. These two avenues actually help you look at the underlying issues and work on them so...

Happy Thanksgiving Mamas! Here are a few tips to help you on this holiday.

1. Make a mocktail or enjoy a nonalcoholic beer. NA beer may be a trigger for some, but it helps them beat the craving without them having to feel excluded or asking a lot of questions from family members or friends. Tons of recipes for mocktails on Pinterest too!
2. Have an exit plan. If you're going to someone else's house for Thanksgiving, make sure to have a plan in place so that if you start seeing your will run out, then you can simply get up and go for a walk or make an Irish goodbye. Most importantly, park your car where you won't get boxed in.
3. Eat all the food you want! Use all those extra calories that you aren't drinking for all the mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pie!
4. Reach out to a friend or a sober community like this one.
5. Move your body. Go for a walk, dance, do some yoga, stretching. When we move, our body dopamine gets released. Dopamine is the same feel-good chemical that...

Once upon a time, there was a girl from a small town in Connecticut who felt she was never good enough.

Not pretty enough.
Not athletic enough.
Not outgoing enough.
Not smart enough.

She grew up in a household where "perfection" was expected and led to the small views she had of herself.

She went to college, and started to let herself be free, but not the free you're thinking of. Free of the grips of her mother's hold. Free of the constant criticism. Free of the strict rules.

She drank until she blacked out. Slept with random men, and did not know her worth. She jumped from man to man looking for that love she was missing in childhood.

She got pregnant, and finally knew what love was. Love was putting someone else's needs above your own. The love that only a mother knows. She wondered why her own mother couldn't love her the way that she loved her son.

She made it her mission not to raise her son as her mother had raised her. She did the exact opposite of what her mother did and...

One of my favorite women in this sober community asked me a question last week in my stories. It was pretty profound and made me take a step back, so I told her I would answer it for my 3 year soberversary blog post. Her question was, "How proud of yourself are you that you started such a successful and inspirational place for women to share and bond? How do you go about telling non-sober women what you do when asked?”

On 11/14/16 when I stepped foot into detox I had no idea where I’d be 3 years later. I mean I didn’t even know if this was my “rock bottom”. I had tried to get sober two other times before this and thought I could moderate, and look at where it got me. Would that same mindset lead me to slip up yet again? Not this time my friends. This time was different. The hell of racing thoughts, blurry vision, and wondering if I was going to die from these withdrawals was what I needed to be like, “Alyson cut the shit! Because if you...

Yesterday I had posted on the @sobermomtribe Instagram page about options and how we can’t tell anyone how they SHOULD get and stay sober. We all have a unique journey, past, and many other circumstances that shape what path will work best for us. In no way was I saying that AA was bad. In fact, I listed AA as an option, and a choice that I had tried at the beginning of my journey and it wasn’t my thing. But that’s ok. I had other tools in my toolbox that have kept me over 3.5 years sober. 

I had posted other options that people may use, such as coaching, therapy, podcasts, quit lit, etc. You get the idea. Of course, I knew that someone would eventually come on and defend AA, which is fine; that’s their path and they are passionate about what has worked for them. Then it turned ugly. People who were advocating AA saying that if you don’t do AA, then there’s no way to achieve long term sobriety. That if you’re not in AA, then...

You know those people that I’m talking about, right? Those that say I’m drinking red wine for the antioxidants. Um, you can get your daily dose of antioxidants without ethanol in it. Blueberries, grapefruit, watermelon, broccoli, carrots, and the list goes on are foods that you can eat without a side of cancer-causing carcinogens.

This week the American Cancer Society published NEW GUIDELINES for alcohol. The previous recommendation was if you drink alcoholic beverages, limit to no more than one drink per day for women and 2 per day for men. The new recommendation is to AVOID alcohol altogether.

I think many of us have been waiting for this day. I’m shocked that this happened right now and not a couple of years down the road. Finally, what a lot of us have been saying for years has been brought to light, and it’s a great feeling to be validated. Below are a few more reasons why these new guidelines are amazing.

1) Isn't it easier to stop or not do something...