by Kris Oyen | Nov 3, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Robyn. She is 49 years old from Columbia, SC and took her last drink on June 30th, 2020.
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[02:39] Thoughts from Paul:
We have all heard the word recovery, but what does that mean? And does it ever end? Paul recently came across a line he likes that says, “If substance use or drinking no longer interferes with your ability to live a productive and loving life, then recovery has been achieved.”
Using the logic of this line, Paul shares with us several ways that we can see if recovery has been achieved. Maybe you’ll have to (or get to) attend meetings or chats for the rest of your life or maybe your recovery has already been achieved. So now what?
A simple answer is don’t go back to drinking but in addition to that, sticking with the pack or community that helped you achieve recovery in the first place is a good start.
[07:54] Paul introduces Robyn:
Robyn is 49 and she lives in Columbia, SC with her husband, stepdaughter and two pit bulls. She is an office manager for a transportation company and enjoys reading, playing games and spending time with her family. Robyn was previously interviewed on episode 306.
Robyn grew up very shy and quiet and never really felt she fit in. The desire to rebel was building up and when she moved from Maine to South Carolina towards the end of high school, she viewed it as an opportunity to try new things including alcohol and other drugs.
After graduating high school, Robyn met someone and ended up getting married at the age of 18. She didn’t realize the issues he had, and it was her first exposure to an abusive relationship with an addict.
Fortunately, she was able to escape that relationship but jumped right into another one that she considers her first real relationship. Their drinking looked normal for their age but over time, it started to create cracks in their relationship, and they split up soon after moving away from friends and family.
Feeling abandoned again and not knowing anyone, Robyn started going out and meeting people at bars alone after work. The relationships she had were with others who partied like she did, which helped her ignore the addictions that were creeping in. Her codependent nature found her feeling stuck in another abusive relationship, but over time she was able to start pulling away and made attempts to regulate her drinking.
After their break-up, Robyn began a close friendship with a friend from work. With his influence and help, she began to explore her traumas and started to organically cut back on her drinking as he rarely drank. They eventually began a relationship, and Robyn happily assumed the role of stepmother to his two children. She still drank, but it looked very different, and “mommy wine culture” made it seem ok.
After the sudden death of Robyn’s mother, she took on the role of caretaker to her stepfather. This meant helping him with his grief and moving him closer to her. The drinking was beginning to become unmanageable. In September 2017, she discovered the upside of quitting drinking through a Google search that led her to Holly Whittaker and Annie Grace.
Upon discovering that going alcohol free could be a good thing, Robyn began to read a lot of quit lit and found podcasts. She told her husband about her struggles and felt a weight lift immediately. A few months later she joined Café RE and being part of a community was life changing. There were several stops and starts and she almost gave up quitting just before the announcement of the first Ditching the Booze course. That was the fuel Robyn needed to try again.
Recovery Elevator
You took the elevator down, you gotta take the stairs back up.
We can do this.
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by Kerri MacFarlane | Oct 15, 2025 | Alcohol Free, Blog, Helpful Tips, The first Year
Spiritual healing after quitting alcohol can be subtle, surprising, and deeply meaningful. It’s also the focus of Part 3 in our three-month series on the healing that takes place in your first year alcohol-free.
In Part 1 we explored physical healing, and in Part 2 we covered mental healing. Now, we’re shifting to something less tangible but equally powerful—your connection to self, others, and the world around you.
Let’s dig in.
🌱 Spiritual Healing After Quitting Alcohol: What May Happen in Week One
- For many, nothing profound happens immediately. That’s normal.
- But you might have had a moment before your last drink when time seemed to pause—a flicker of presence that let you really see where alcohol was taking you.
- That moment of clarity, however fleeting, may have been the start.
🍃 First Month of Spiritual Healing After Quitting Alcohol
- Your intuition might quietly peek out and ask, “Is it safe to return yet?”
- You may feel a pull toward nature—a walk in the woods, leaning on a tree, or just sitting still under the sky.
- You might experience a few moments of pure gratitude—not for things, but for being.
- Even something simple, like watching a bird or a breeze in the trees, might hold your attention longer than usual.
🌌 Spiritual Growth and Awareness in Months 1–6 Alcohol-Free
- Synchronicities start happening—those “too weird to be coincidence” moments.
- You begin to feel the emotions of others more deeply, maybe even animals or the earth itself.
- You start listening to your intuition and trusting it.
- Your connection to something greater than yourself—something that doesn’t come in a bottle—starts to take root.
- Authentic wisdom bubbles up. Sometimes you surprise yourself with what you say (and yes, you sound a bit like a fortune cookie).
- You begin to sense the universe has a sense of humor—and you’re in on the joke.
✨ Spiritual Healing in Year One of Sobriety: A New Connection to Life
- You start to notice the spaces between life’s events, not just the events themselves.
- You realize this journey isn’t about becoming someone new—it’s about unbecoming what was never really you.
- Books like The Power of Now, The Dao, or The Artist’s Way might find their way into your life—often “accidentally.”
- You may pause before killing a spider, recognizing you’re both part of something shared.
- Decisions shift—you’re guided more by intuition than logic.
- Material things matter less. Moments matter more.
- You find yourself standing in awe of a canyon, a sunset, or a mountain—and feeling it all in a way you never used to.
- You begin seeking wisdom from ancestors, indigenous cultures, spiritual texts—things you once dismissed.
- You may start meditating or exploring your inner self.
- You discover flow states—where time disappears, and presence takes over.
🌊 Long-Term Spiritual Healing and Transformation in Sobriety
- You begin helping others heal, not by fixing, but by simply walking alongside them.
- You value silence and listening as much as speaking.
- Gratitude becomes your default mode—less about what’s missing, more about what already is.
- Creativity returns: music, poetry, painting, dancing—even spontaneous singing while cooking. (The Artist’s Way is a great guide here.)
- The dream world and waking world start to dance—you dream of an owl, then see one the next day.
- Your inner child reawakens—you feel playful, curious, light again.
- You feel less like a wave, more like the ocean. Life moves around you, but it no longer knocks you down.
- You stop labeling life events as “good” or “bad”—they just are, and somehow, they all fit.
- You begin to trust that everything is unfolding exactly as it should.
- And eventually, you realize:
What you’ve been searching for all along has been inside you the whole time.
🌟 The Healing Never Stops
So here we are—three parts, three layers of healing: physical, mental, and spiritual. This list? It’s just the beginning.
Sobriety doesn’t just take something away—it gives you back a connection you didn’t know you were missing. The healing deepens, the awareness expands, and the sense of peace grows.
Whether you’re a week in or years down the road—keep going. You’re not becoming someone new. You’re just remembering who you were all along.
📖 Missed a part? Catch up here:
👉 Part 1: Physical Healing After Quitting Alcohol
👉 Part 2: Mental Healing After Quitting Alcohol
#SpiritualHealingAfterQuittingAlcohol #AlcoholFreeLiving #SobrietyJourney #YearOneAF #EmotionalRecovery #SpiritualGrowth #SoberCurious #HealingInSobriety #RecoveryElevator #ThisIsAF #ConnectionIsTheOppositeOfAddiction
by Kris Oyen | Aug 18, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Amy. She is 41 years old and lives in Raleigh, NC. She took her last drink on December 12th, 2023.
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October 2026 we have a new retreat we have yet to do. This is an in-person alcohol-free ukulele retreat taking place in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. There will be ukulele instruction in the mornings and Spanish immersion courses in the afternoon.
[02:01] Thoughts from Paul:
Addiction is disconnecting with the self and your fellow humans. More sobriety is connection with the self, your fellow humans and more. “I” equals illness, “we” equals wellness.
Quitting drinking is a perfect circle. Your drinking crisis is an opportunity for someone to help. Phrased with 12 step verbiage, your first step is someone else’s 12th step. And when you find your footing, you can then assist someone else in their drinking crisis.
When the soul is hurting, the healing only happens when you’re not alone. And speaking of being alone, listeners, you are not alone. You are not the only one who struggles with alcohol. You, along with the other listeners, are seeking not only sobriety but seeking a deeper connection with all. Seeking answers that the bottle can’t deliver. You are in the right place.
[07:37] Paul introduces Amy:
Amy is 41 years old and lives in Raleigh, NC with her husband and a three-year-old son. Amy says she is a theater nerd and does improv comedy for fun.
Amy grew up in the southwest side of Chicago where she says her father was an alcoholic. She has memories of being a child at AA and Al-Anon meetings with her parents as well as memories of her father taking her to bars when they would tell her mother they were somewhere else.
Amy had her first drink when she was 15 while going to a concert with older teens. There was a bottle passed around the group and they all got drunk. Later that night she was found in the field of the concert venue by paramedics and taken to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.
She began to live a double life throughout high school and college. Amy saw that if she got good grades and joined all of the clubs, she would get praise and recognition. On the flip side she would drink very hard, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to get alcohol poisoning. Only after going to grad school in New York was Amy able to calm down a bit.
After COVID, Amy and her husband were doing IVF. Amy says she didn’t drink much at this point, but after having the baby, she suffered from postpartum anxiety which led her to daily drinking as a tool to cope with it. Over time she would begin to try moderation but limiting herself to two drinks was difficult and led to binges.
Amy’s last bender was at a holiday work party. The next day she found herself hungover and asked herself how her drinking was any better than her father’s was when she was younger. She knew that she may be heading down a dangerous path, so Amy decided to call the local AA helpline.
Amy began going to AA meetings and found a sponsor. She shares that her mother was a great support because of her experience with Al-Anon and she understood what Amy was going through.
One of the best things for Amy was burning the ships and gaining accountability. Even after 18 months, Amy admits there is white knuckling at times. She realizes that after 25 years of drinking, it doesn’t all heal within 18 months, but she is grateful to be where she is and says that since getting sober, she hasn’t missed a day of her son’s life.
Amy’s parting piece of guidance: everything that she was looking for while getting drunk can be found in recovery and she found it in Café RE and AA. Take what works and leave the rest.
Recovery Elevator
It all starts from the inside out.
I love you guys.
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by Kris Oyen | Jul 21, 2025 | Podcast
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Today we have Thea. She is 55 years old from Madison, WI and took her last drink on February 10th, 2019
This episode brought to you by:
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We have just a couple of cabin spots left for our upcoming retreat in Bozeman, Montana. This retreat is from August 6th through 10th.
Coming in January 2026, our AF Ukelele Course. Registration for that opens in December.
Also coming next year in October 2026, we will have an in-person ukelele retreat where we’re having Spanish instruction in the afternoons. This will be in Costa Rica. More information will be coming soon about that event.
[02:45] Thoughts from Paul:
On the journey into an alcohol-free life, it almost always consists of a chapter where we are trying to control the uncontrollable. But something takes place that we aren’t aware of and that’s that alcohol has become uncontrollable – and we haven’t realized it yet.
You might be asking yourself if your drinking has reached that point and may have searched for a sobriety podcast because there were aspects of your drinking that you were unable to control. The longer you try to control the uncontrollable, the less sanity you are left with.
Paul wants you to ask yourself if you are trying to control the uncontrollable thing. He and many of us have learned that we cannot control our drinking, but the opportunities are endless in what we CAN do without alcohol in our lives, the same can be true for you.
[07:06] Paul introduces Thea:
Thea is 55 years old, grew up in a small town in Wisconsin but now lives in Madison with her husband of almost 30 years, and they have three grown boys. Thea works in education. She loves to cook, bake, read, and attend sporting events.
Thea says she drank a little in high school, but it wasn’t out of control. After going to college where the culture involved binge drinking, Thea drank more. Being someone that didn’t suffer from hangovers, she never looked at her drinking as a problem.
Thea met her husband after college when they married and had three kids. She says she would binge drink occasionally, but not enough to create red flags and her husband can take it or leave it. Thea says she didn’t drink during her pregnancies or drink every night, but as her kids got older and needed her less, she fell into the habit of drinking more.
Thea would drink socially but preferred to drink covertly at home where she could have as much as she wanted. Over time she began to feel like she needed the alcohol to function and was becoming physically addicted to it.
A few years later, some family members had an intervention with Thea. The message she took away was that she needed to hide her drinking better in the future. The following summer, Thea’s sister-in-law called her out on her drinking again, and they went to the ER. It was recommended that she go to a detox center which Thea refused to do. She opted to detox on her own, which is not recommended. After doing that, she enrolled in an IOP but was just going through the motions to try and become a normal drinker again – she had no intention of quitting.
Thea feels she was getting nudges from God to address the issue. It wasn’t until February 10th, 2019, that the message finally got through. Thea was very sick and throwing up blood. She was in and out of the hospital dealing with the symptoms of her failing liver. Thea feels that something finally clicked, and she has not wanted to have a drink since that first day when she went to the hospital.
After two years sober, Thea started listening to podcasts and reading quit lit. She eventually found her way back to AA and it feels like home this time. Thea is very open about her recovery with her family and is grateful they never gave up on her.
Recovery Elevator
It all starts from the inside out.
I love you guys.
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by Paul Churchill | Jul 14, 2025
November 7th - 14th 2026 Registration OPENS Friday, May 1, 2026 Sober Ukulele Retreat Costa Rica 2026 Strum, Speak Spanish & Soak Up Paradise – Alcohol-FreeNovember 7th – 14th 2026 | Venado, Costa Rica | Limited to 20 Travelers Ready to Trade Your...
