Alex Meets Tawny Lara, host of Recovery Rocks

Meet Tawny! Tawny is an NYC-based millennial who writes about the intersection of sex and sobriety. Her work is featured in  Playboy, Men’s Health, Huffington Post, Writer’s Digest, Mic, The Temper, Audiofemme, a sex column for SheSaid, and two essay collections: The Addiction Diaries(LaunchPad 2020) and the forthcoming reimagining of Sex and the Single Girl (Harper Perennial 2022). She is the co-host of Recovery Rocks podcast and story developer for the Webby-award winning podcast, F*cking Sober. In this episode Alex interviews Tawny about her sober journey and how she ended up doing the work she is doing now! Tune into Tawny's podcast, Recovery Rocks, at this link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/recovery-rocks/id1437414525 . Tawny can be found on Instagram @tawnymlara . Join Alex for yoga, meditation, and coaching at www.themindfullifepractice.com.

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Transcript

Intro
Welcome to the "Sober Yoga Girl" podcast with Alex McRobs, international yoga teacher and sober coach. I broke up with booze for good in 2019. And now I'm here to help others do the same. You're not alone and a sober life can be fun and fulfilling. Let me show you how.

Alex
All right. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another episode of "Sober Yoga Girl". I am super excited to have Tawny with me here today. And Tawny is a writer and a podcaster. She is the host of "Recovery Rocks", and she is all the way in New York City. So welcome, Tawny.

Tawny
Hey, it's so great to be here, Alex.

Alex
Nice to have you here. And Tawny and I have a connection that we did our yoga teacher training at the same yoga school in Bali, me in 2017, and her in 2018. So we actually got connected together through one of our yoga teachers, which is a kind of cool, fun fact.

Tawny
Yeah. That when you messaged me about that, I'm always excited to connect with another sober person, of course. But then when you mentioned Zuna yoga, I was like, oh, my God, I'm even more connected to her.

Alex
It's so cool. So tell me a bit about yourself, kind of who you are, and where you're from.

Tawny
I am a writer in New York City, and I grew up in-- I was born in Northern California and then moved to Central Texas when I was eight. So I grew up pretty much in-- like I would go back and forth between Texas and California, but I pretty much grew up in Texas. I lived there for 20 years, and then I've now been in New York for six years. So, hopping around the coast.

Alex
And how did you start drinking?

Tawny
I was, you know, it's a very cliche story. Just introduced to drugs and alcohol at a party, you know, like, it's interesting so, like I mentioned, I'm from Northern California. My father is a heavy metal musician, and my mom was his groupie. So I grew up in, like, the heavy metal scene. Like, I was around sex, drugs, rock, and roll, you know, like, I was around that. It was very normal. And even if I wasn't around it, I was like, we were watching MTV all the time, like, it was just like this culture you know of indulgence. I would say. So I just grew up with that being the norm. But when I was personally, like, introduced alcohol as something that was possibly for me, was at you know party, at a high school party. I was going through, like, you know something really heavy, like something really traumatic. And it was just like, I felt like I had been around it enough. But I was never drawn to it until I went through something traumatic. And I was like, screw it. Yeah. I'll try it. And it was-- I was 15. And, you know, I kept binge drinking until I was 29.

Alex
Wow.

Tawny
Yeah.

Alex
So I started drinking around the same age 15, a similar kind of thing. And stop drinking in my 20's as well. So there's a lot that I can connect to and relate to that.

Tawny
Now I look at a 15-year-old and they look like infants, and I'm like, oh, my God. Why are they drinking? Why are they smoking?

Alex
I know, totally. So young. And so how did your alcohol consumption increase over time?

Tawny
You know, I started working in the restaurant industry, which I think was probably my biggest downfall. If you know any listeners who have worked in the restaurant industry, they understand. It could be a pretty self-destructive environment. And I was a bartender for, like, ten years. So I just--you know it just, like, really escalates when your whole life is in a bar. It just you know started as a fun thing I did at parties on the weekends. And then it turns into you know, I was never one of those wakes up in the morning and start drinking type of people. And I bring that up because people think that's when you have to stop drinking. You know. So I think that's an important distinction to make where you know when I did drink, I drink to excess. I would go days, weeks, months without drinking. But when I would, I would blackout and I would do stupid things. I would put myself in dangerous situations. So, you know, I think it's important to provide that nuance because we're-- substance abuse is depicted as someone who loses everything. And that can be the case. But not always.

Alex
Yeah. And that is something that I can connect you with as well, because I was never, like, the morning drinker. And I was a teacher all throughout the time that I was having a problem with my drinking. And I think there's such a-- people have such a headspace of, like, you have to hit rock bottom before you get help. But I think it's Belle Robertson who says "you can hit a low bottom, so you don't have to get all the way to rock bottom before you recover".

Tawny
Yeah. I mean, it's to be, like, completely reductive, like, you don't have to become morbidly obese to get healthy or to change your diet. You know, like, your life doesn't need to be at risk to make a change. That's all I'm trying to say.

Alex
Yeah. And that's a great example.

Tawny
I mean, I guess you could even argue your life is at risk. You know, my life was at risk during those, the decade and a half. You know, I never had, like, an official rock bottom. But you could argue that I was living in a rock bottom because I was not taking care of myself.

Alex
And when you're blacking out and putting yourself in those vulnerable situations, it's pretty scary.

Tawny
Totally. Yeah. I think about some things that I used to do. And I'm just like, how did I live through this? Why did I put myself through this? I just want to hug that little girl and be like, you don't need this.

Alex
So tell me about what was the turning point for you then. When did you decide to start with your sober journey?

Tawny
Yeah. So also, like, a super anti-climactic story. I mean, I'm at a pub and Soho you know downtown Manhattan, and I'm hanging out with some friends and we're having drinks. I think I might have had, like, three or four pints over the course of a couple of hours. So it was a pretty light, light event for me. But I was talking about how you know, I don't have enough time to write. And my friend was talking about how she doesn't have enough time to audition. You know, but there was something that really snapped in me when I left the pub because you know I went into the pub and it was daylight. And then I left the pub and it was you know, street lit. There was something in that switch of like, you just spent four hours talking about how you don't have time to write in a pub. You know, It finally clicked, I guess. And I felt-- it just felt different. Like I woke up the next morning and I was just feeling kind of groggy and you know didn't go to my workout. You know, I just like, I just looked in the mirror. I was like, this isn't cute anymore. Like, what are you even doing? Like, you moved to New York to be a writer. Why are you just talking about it? I didn't realize it at the time. But that was my last drink.

Alex
Wow. And that's so interesting that you say that because I feel that so many people, it's like something that they--like for me, it was something I suddenly realized when I was sober. I was like, wow, I have so much more time. Right. Like it was an amazing thing. And I've accomplished more in two and a half years than I did in my whole drinking career. But you're the first person I met who said that that was something that occurred to them you know in the moment of still drinking. I was like, wow, I don't have time because this is what I'm doing with my time. That's a huge kind of like, aha, moment.

Tawny
It really was. And you know, so I decided to, you know, being a writer who likes to do social experiments, I decided to keep myself accountable by giving up alcohol for one year. I was about to turn 30. So I was like, great. I'm not going to drink alcohol for this year, and I'm going to blog about it. And, so that will keep me accountable for both writing and not drinking. And, you know, here we are, five and a half years later, and I'm still sober, happily sober. But you know in that year, I really learned that, like you were saying in sobriety, you realize how much more time you have often more money because you're not getting wasted anymore and you're not spending money on drinks and then the stupid drunken purchases anymore. So it just, like, about halfway through it just felt-- I was just like, I'm not looking forward to the end of this year. I was like, this is great. So I just never went back to drinking. And, you know, the blog has since turned into a documentary and a podcast.

Alex
That's amazing.

Tawny
Freelance writing career and you know writing a book. And it's so ironic because I quit drinking because I didn't have time to write. And now all I write is about sobriety.

Alex
Wow. That's amazing. What an amazing story. And I love how it happened just so organically. You're like, this is going to be my accountability thing. And now it's just like evolved and grown. And here you are.

Tawny
I mean, I feel like you have to approach a creative project like that. You know, like if you have a particular goal for this--I mean, I guess it doesn't hurt to have a goal for something, but it's like you can't hold on to that so tightly. You really have to trust that things are just going to work out the way they're going to work out. And you really only have control over yourself and how you know react to things. Because I think that was a big difference for me because I was so, like, obsessed with goals, goals, goals before and the fact that this just happened because I was open, you know, like, it felt--it's just not really validating.

Alex
That's amazing. So tell me more about what different tools you use in your early days of sobriety to help you. I know the writing helps you stay accountable. What else was kind of in your toolkit?

Tawny
Yeah. So I did not go the traditional AA twelve-step route. I've been to a handful of meetings, and I'm so happy it's an option. And it's a free support group all over the world. You know, I think that's amazing. For me, I really resonated with yoga and meditation and you now writing, the blogging, of course, but also, like, journaling, like, just for myself and just getting-- exercise was a big one. Like, they say, you have to replace you know when you give something up, that's that big, you have to replace it with something else.  And my first six months of sobriety, I ran a half marathon, which I would never do now. But that was like I had all this energy and all this anxiety and you know all these new feelings that running definitely helps at that phase.

Alex
Amazing. Yeah. I can totally relate to that. Just like a period of time or that window in which you just, like, doing so many-- I think it's Emily Duce posted like, you know, you take up all these random hobbies and sobriety, and now you're like a salsa dancing, like, horoscope reader or whatever.

Tawny
Exactly. It.

Speaker 1
Yeah. That's amazing. What was the hardest part for you about sobriety?

Tawny
I think-- I didn't realize this at the time, but with some perspective. I think the hardest part was that I didn't find some sort of peer support until about a year in and that I didn't realize it was hard at the time. But I can now see that what I was struggling with. I had just moved to New York. I was a five-month New Yorker you know when I quit drinking, so I didn't have-- my friends and family weren't close they were all back in Texas. So everyone that was around me was pretty new in my life, and none of them were in recovery. They were normal drinkers. So I realized by me not finding a therapist or some sort of peer support. Everyone around me kind of became my de facto emotional support animal. And that was a horrible place to put those people in. And I can see that now because I didn't realize what I needed. And since I approached Sobriety as a social experiment, I didn't think I had a drinking problem. I was just you know, like I wasn't, like, in recovery. I was just not going to drink and see what happened. I really missed that first year of sobriety is so important. And so I felt like mine was just busy, like, creating content, not really processing those emotions as I probably should have. It's kind of roundabout answer, roundabout answer but--

Alex
And how did you eventually find that peer support? What was that like?

Tawny
Well, I started with the therapist about a year, about nine to ten months into Sobriety. I got a therapist, and that was huge. That really helped me learn you know boundaries and appropriate conversations to have with my friends and family and how my friends and family could help. And instead of just pouring everything on to them, and then you know I shopped around like I found-- there are tons of support groups, like, if AA is not for you, there's so many. So I Googled, and I just tried different things that worked for me. And I found something that resonated, and I can't recommend it enough. Like, if you're listening and you're on the fence and you're like, no, I don't need peer support. I guarantee someone in your life wishes that you had at least a therapist or someone to talk to that was qualified to support you through this, you know.

Alex
Yeah. It's so true. It's so true. And I also didn't have a lot of live connection until later on in my sober. Actually, when I founded my community, that was my first live sober connection. And again, I didn't realize how much I was missing it, but it's just like being in a room of people who get it. And if you were living in a culture that's dominantly drinkers, then you're not going to find that in your regular community, right?

Tawny
Yeah. You need even if it's just one person like you really just need someone to feel solidarity with, or you know at least there's the podcast. There are books, there's like at least there's a lot of resources. So if you don't want to go, like, a peer support route, there are tons of other people at least talking about it. And sometimes listening to a podcast can kind of be, like going to a Zoom meeting. You know.

Alex
Yeah. Totally. Yeah, an amazing podcast out there or audiobooks. I got--


Yeah, there's tons.

Alex
Quit Lit audiobooks. Yeah.

Tawny
Exactly. And that is so great. Because you know when I got sober five and a half years ago, there wasn't like Quit Lit was like an emerging genre. It wasn't the thriving genre that it is now, you know, like, there was a handful of stories that I felt that I resonated with, and it was predominantly male-dominated. And now it's just like a bunch of awesome women talking about alcohol-free life. And so it's a great time to question your relationship with alcohol.

Alex
Totally. There are so many good resources. And I keep saying, one of my clients said, I should make a bookshelf because people are always recommending stuff. And I have this vision of creating a bookshelf web page, putting all the recommended books on, and I just haven't gotten to it. It's on my to-do list, though, because they're just too many out there.

Tawny
They'll love that. Well, you're going to have to leave space, too, because there's so many coming out.

Alex
Yeah. Totally. So tell me about your writing. So you talked about how your writing started as just kind of, like, accountability. And now I know you do a lot of writing about sex and sobriety. So tell me about that.

Tawny
Yeah. So, you know, in early sobriety, I found myself well, you know, in early Sobriety, you meet yourself, you know you're meeting the person that you were hiding from. For me, it was 15 years, you know? So there's a lot there. And for me, a big part of that was sex and sexuality and you know repress sexual traumas and just things that I didn't want to deal with and drinking, quote, help me procrastinate on that. But then when you stop drinking, it's like, okay, I guess I kind of have to. I mean, you don't have to face your problems. You know some of us choose to. And I did. You know I went down that journey of, like, sex and sexuality and learned that my relationship with sex and with, like, love interests or lust interests was often dysfunctional. And I used sex as a form of validation in a very similar way that I use drugs and alcohol, you know? So all of that is to say, I was going through this and there wasn't a ton of resources on sex and dating in Sobriety specifically. So I like to say that you know my work now about sober sex and dating is really like for younger me because I was so lost and I didn't know where to start. All you hear is don't have sex the first year, don't date the first year. That's really the only advice that you're given, but it's like, but then what? And then what if I don't wait the full year? How do I talk about dating without alcohol? How do I talk about-- how do I ask for what I want in the bedroom without alcohol? Like, all of these really scary things came up that I didn't know I struggled with. So you know that's really where all of my work is now is just being that resource. And there's still not a lot of conversation about it six years later.

Alex
Well, it's a very vulnerable topic. I imagine. It's very vulnerable for you and, I and admires that because I definitely am not there to be talking about it myself. But I can so relate. And I think everyone, many people who are on the sober journey have had similar experiences.

Tawny
Yeah, absolutely. The more I talk about it, the more responses like that, that I get or, like, I get DMs like, thank you for having this conversation. People asking me questions of, you know, how do I tell this guy that I'm seeing that I don't drink alcohol? Or you know I want to ask my husband to do this, but I don't know how to do that without a glass of wine first. And I'm just like, wow, people are starved for this conversation. You know.

Alex
Totally.

Tawny
Even people that still drink, you know, like, that's what my biggest surprise was that I thought that the conversation was really just going to be, like, sober folks or at least sober curious. But there are people that, like, have a, quote, normal, healthy relationship with alcohol, but they're interested in this work because they're like, oh, yeah. Like, I use alcohol as liquid courage sometimes . I'd love to not do that like that's blowing my mind that those people are interested, too.

Alex
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. And you mentioned in your book that you're working on writing a book. What is that about?

Tawny
Yeah. I'm writing a book about sober sex and dating and relationships. The how-to guide that I needed six years ago.

Alex
Love it.

Tawny
I'm finally writing it. So, yeah, I'm excited.

Alex
That's amazing. What stage are you along in that? How is that process?

Tawny
Very beginning stage. You know, so stay tuned. But it's something I've committed to for, like, 2021 I drastically cut back on freelancing, and I'm just, like, I'm focusing on you know book proposal, getting an agent. Really, like, selling this book. You know, that's my 2021 vision. And then, you know, that's where all my energy has been. So send all the good vibes.

Alex
That's amazing. And you also host "Recovery Rocks". So tell me a bit about that.

Tawny
Yeah. My friend Lisa Smith, and I, she is the author of "Girl Walks Out of a Bar". She was a lawyer in New York City who had a cocaine and alcohol addiction. So that heard a memoir about her experience. So yes, she and I co-host, and it's called "Recovery Rocks" because we talk about recovery and rock and roll. Lisa and I met on Instagram, and we just really clicked. And I think our podcast resonates with listeners because, you know, Lisa, she's 20 years older than I am. She comes from that traditional, AA twelve-step background. And I'm, you know, a millennial who's doing my own thing. But the great thing about it is that we're coming from different perspectives, but we're always meeting in the middle, like, we very rarely disagree. I think listeners are seeing that there are so many different ways to get sober. There are so many options. And I think having two different perspectives from different age groups provides some nuance to the conversation.

Alex
That's amazing. And I'll definitely have to check out "Girl Walks Out of the bar". I haven't heard of that one. So cool. And what is your-- I mean, I guess you kind of mentioned your book is coming up, but what is your vision for your work in sobriety? Like, where do you want to take it?

Tawny
You know I'm writing this book on "Sober, Sex and Dating", so I would just love to keep-- I hope that this is the first of many books about sober sex because it's like, like, everything there needs to be multiple books and multiple people having these conversations. Yeah, I think it's an important topic, and I would love for more people to have it and for people to read the book and share it. And kind of like I was saying about the blog, like, you can never really have, like, a specific goal or idea. I guess you can have an idea of where you want something to go, but you can't be so laser-focused on it. You can't obsess on that. I can really just pour my heart into the book and trust that it's my best work and you know hope that people receive it.

Alex
That's amazing. I have one last question for you. If you were to give advice for someone if someone was looking for advice for starting their alcohol-free journey, what would you recommend?

Tawny
It's a great question. I think my biggest. My biggest lesson was that I spent so much time comparing my relationship with alcohol to other people's relationship to alcohol. And what I mean is like when I was binge drinking, I'd be like, well, at least I don't drink as much as she does. Or at least my life isn't that bad. Like, I would just compare. And so like that gave me permission to keep drinking. So all of that is to say, don't compare your relationship to alcohol with someone else's. Only, you know, if it's a problem. And if you're finding yourself Googling, do I have a drinking problem? I hate to say it. You probably do. And that's okay. That doesn't mean you have to stop drinking forever. It doesn't mean anything other than maybe take a step back and reevaluate some things.

Alex
Yeah, this is great advice. That's awesome. And I totally--I've done the Google, the Google, do I have a problem?

Tawny
Of course, you take the test or like, if you have eight out of ten, I'm like, well, I don't really have eight. Maybe it's just seven. Just like, mental gymnastics, but it's like if you're Googling anything like that, it's like yeah, it's probably you.

Alex
Well, Tawny, thank you so much. This was an amazing episode. It was so nice to finally get down, to get to sit down with you and chat and hear your story, which is so inspirational. And I'm sure lots of the listeners will be interested in checking out your work and your show and finding more about what you do. So, thank you.

Tawny
Thank you for having me.

Alex
It's amazing to meet you. Take care.

Outro
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of "Sober Yoga Girl" with Alex McRobs. I am so, so grateful for every one of you. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next one and leave a review before you go. See you soon. Bye.