Tag: sober

Recovery Chat with Middle School Students

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Sharing my recovery story to a group of 100 middle school students was a little intimidating. While I’ve done lots of public speaking on the topic of addiction, the audience has always been adults who were somewhat interested in sobriety or mental health. I worried that these kids would be bored by the 33-year-old woman telling them not to do drugs. I remembered being their age, bored as hell by D.A.R.E. and rolling my eyes at adults who told me to “Just Say No”. I thought about what 12 year old me would have wanted to hear; what would have made the idea of getting wasted sound like a bad idea even though celebrities glamorize it and post InstaStories of themselves popping champagne and Xanax while hitting a vape pen.

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tawny sober nyc

three. years. sober.

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My last drink was on November 29th, 2015. It was a pint of delicious Paulaner Hefeweizen from the historical Fanelli‘s pub in SoHo. I drank this pint with two dear friends and their pints, after work. Our four-hour conversation shifted from New York City madness to what we want to be when we grow up to complaining about annoying customers and their demands of high-end yoga pants. I whined about not having enough time to write - the reason I moved to New York City. As we bonded over more pints, time seemed to stand still - until it didn’t. Our plan was to have one beer. Four hours later I was enjoying a beer buzz that can only be achieved from several beers as I navigated towards the PATH train.

I think of this day often. Sometimes I wish my last drinking episode consisted of more booze and more drama so I could have gone out with a bang. A few beers over four hours was tame for me. It’s not the story you see on TV or in movies where a person loses everything, has a dangerously low rock bottom, and then they decide to quit drinking. I’ve grown to appreciate what us sober folks call a “high bottom”. It’s important to share these stories, too. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to lose everything to wake up and see that alcohol was a significant roadblock - a roadblock that I kept putting in my own way - for more than a decade.

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tawny Sober nyc rock n roll

Destination Addiction

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My addiction to personal development started small, just like my issues with substance abuse. I didn’t think getting stoned on the weekends in high school would turn into a 13-year lifestyle of binge drinking and excess. In the same vein, I didn’t think that reading self-help books would lead to a three-year downward spiral of searching for “the best possible version of myself.”

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Tawny Sober Sobriety NYC Recovery

How I (Finally) Knew I Had a Drinking Problem

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This is one of the most common questions that I’m asked. Looking back, I’d say that I knew I had a drinking problem when I started questioning my relationship with alcohol. The years leading up to the day when I quit drinking were filled with sporadic breaks from booze…just to prove to myself that “I didn’t have a problem”. Those years were also filled with Googling questions like, “Am I an alcoholic? Do I have a drinking problem? Should I quit drinking?”. I did a series of mental gymnastics in an attempt to convince myself that since I didn’t NEED alcohol every day, I was fine. I looked at how the media and Hollywood discuss addiction. I didn’t relate to any of those stories, so again, I was fine.

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You Gotta Believe

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My dad, Dave Starr, is a heavy metal musician. He’s dedicated his life to his craft, writing melodies on bass and guitar. My childhood time with him was often spent at band rehearsal, hanging out in the recording studio, and joining him at his then-day job in a music store. Being surrounded by men head banging with hair longer than mine has always felt like home to me. Growing up in the San Francisco metal scene laid a unique foundation for me before mom and I relocated to Waco, Texas in 1994.

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Kate Spade’s Red Scarf

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Kate Spade’s tragic suicide is a stark reminder that even women who appear to have it all can be suffering, often in invisible ways.

As a wealthy and successful designer who built her career on all-American designer handbags, Kate Spade is not the type of person one would imagine could do something like this. And that’s a problem. Society has an ideal image of what things “should” look like.

Click here to read the full article on A Women’s Thing.

 

We’re Award-Winning Filmmakers!

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During the holidays last year, B. Rae and I made a documentary about our recovery stories. We named it Fixed Up after Chip & Joanna Gaines’s show, Fixer Upper, that takes place in our hometown of Waco, Texas. B. Rae and I have been social media friends for over a decade, and are both reformed party girls working to make a change in the recovery world while living on the East Coast. But we never met in person until the day we started making this film. We thought the idea of making a movie about this might be interesting…and clearly it was. Last night, we won an award for “Best Hope Film” at the New Jersey Recovery Film Festival!!! The presenter/festival director, Chris Capaci, said our film provides hope and progress in the recovery community. 🙂

But let me back up a bit to describe how our magical day began…

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Tawny Sober NYC writer

A Writer, With a Blog

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I’ve taken a step back to observe how two years of blogging has resulted in me finding my voice as a writer while simultaneously distracting me from writing. Listicles, branding, image, oh my!

At age 14 I wrote articles about progressive topics for my local newspaper, loving the fact that my voice was being heard. Even if it pissed people off. In high school I studied broadcast journalism, loving the prep work and screen time of being on the morning announcements. In my early twenties I “interned” (hung out unpaid) for a radio station, loving the platform to talk about music and current events with interesting people. I’m currently the music editor for NY Yoga & Life Magazine. I love chatting with musicians about their yoga practice, yogis about their playlists, and any other way the two worlds can intersect. I took a similar approach to sobriety: journalistic and explorative.

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Relapse Happens

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Let’s take a minute to talk about relapse and its role in recovery. It happens. A lot. Recovery is fucking hard. It’s nonlinear. Recovery (in relation to substance abuse) doesn’t necessarily mean sobriety or complete abstinence. At the end of the day, we are just humans who have been through some shit. We are looking for love, validation, encouragement, opportunity, and myriad other things. Continue reading “Relapse Happens” →

Sober, Silent, and Sequestered in Bali

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I recently spent a month in Bali with my dear friend, Cam. We explored Ubud for a week, reconnecting over delicious/cheap AF Indonesian cuisine, countless rounds of kill/bang/marry, and hours of intellectually stimulating conversation. The next 3 weeks were spent sequestered with 30+ people from all over the world (Australia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, The UK, Lithuania, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Sweden, Holland, and Norway) at Zuna Yoga‘s 200 hour yoga teacher training. In addition to learning how to teach yoga, I also learned about these beautiful humans and their cultures.

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