Lisa used to think of airports as "bars with hallways." Anna recently discovered that, after more than 25 years of sobriety, she was still terrified of navigating a foreign country by herself.
Welcome to sober travel, where the challenges apparently never stop evolving.
Lisa takes us back to her first solo business trip, roughly two months after getting sober, when she had to fly to San Francisco for a notoriously booze-soaked law firm retreat. Her survival strategy involved candy, pretzels, trashy magazines, hiding as far from the airport bars as possible and handing the hotel minibar key straight back to the front desk. She also called her sponsor constantly, which turned out to be considerably more helpful than the candy.
Anna's sober travel revelation came much later, during a recent trip to Italy. Despite having traveled extensively, she'd never fully appreciated how much she relied on other people to handle the logistics. Suddenly she was alone in Rome, trying to find the right train to Florence and discovering that being a successful adult doesn't necessarily mean knowing which Italian train car you're supposed to be in.
The payoff? Arriving in Florence, realizing she'd done it herself and experiencing the particular joy of waking up in a beautiful city with absolutely nobody else's agenda to follow.
We talk about how sobriety keeps offering new firsts, why facing a fear you didn't even know you had can be so satisfying and how travel changes when you're interested in the actual destination rather than where you can get drunk or high.
And in this week's petty resentment, we tackle an important modern etiquette question: If you're having a perfectly good text conversation with someone, what gives them the right to suddenly CALL you?
Seriously. Who agreed to that?
What is Recovery Rocks?
Ever wonder what it's like to go on your first sober date? Or survive a wedding without liquid courage? How about dancing stone-cold sober or dealing with your first breakup without wine?
If so, you're in luck because you can join bestselling authors and longtime sober friends Lisa Smith and Anna David as they talk to guests—and each other—about addiction and recovery, including all the “firsts” that come with sober living. From awkward to amazing, cringe-worthy to surprisingly poignant, they’re discussing what it’s like to experience life without substances.
Lisa is the author of the award-winning memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar, while Anna wrote Party Girl, a comic novel about addiction and recovery in the vein of Rachel's Holiday and Postcards From the Edge. Together, they explore the real-life moments behind the kinds of stories that shape how people understand recovery.
Whether you're newly sober, sober-curious or just want to hear some honest stories about recovery, Recovery Rocks is here for all of it.
Because as it turns out, when you can remember everything that happened, life gets a lot more interesting.
New episodes weekly. Real stories, real recovery, real talk.