✨Weekly Insight
What a beautiful week this has been. From completing my first workshop, going to DC to partake in a big video and photo job at Howard University, to designing the layout page of a big offer that’s coming in January, I’m feeling very grateful.
I don’t believe any of this would have been possible if I was still drinking. It’s crazy how MUCH I’m able to take on and still want to do more.
Sobriety is truly expansive.
✍🏻Essays
You promise yourself every morning: today will be different. You track your drinks. You build spreadsheets. You’re only going to have one on weekends, only after 5pm, only with dinner. You find countless ways to make it seem like you’re in control.
But by 5 o’clock, that promise dissolves. One becomes two. Two becomes three. Days or drinks—you know the pattern.
What if the problem isn’t that you’re trying too hard? What if the problem is that you’re trying to control something that was never about control in the first place?
In week 3 of my 10-part series on the pain points of sobriety, I’m exploring the two-year tracking journey that taught me nothing works until you let go—and the neurological reason why your brain keeps overriding every promise you make to yourself.
Week 3: Lost Control in Sobriety
10 Pain Points of Sobriety is a weekly series where I explore the real pain points of quitting alcohol—the uncomfortable truths that surface when initial motivation fades. I didn’t need alcohol to be creative; creativity was already part of my life. Alcohol stole the time and energy I could have spent creating. It was my escape from feelings of inadequa…
💡Disrupt the Pattern
“What project are you postponing until you feel ready to drink less?”
The core insight: Managing your drinking has become the project—consuming the creative energy meant for your actual work. You’re not blocked because you lack talent or time. You’re blocked because you’re spending your best energy on the wrong project: negotiating with yourself about alcohol. The cycle tightens as you manage drinking, feel blocked from creating, drink to cope with that frustration, wake up knowing you still haven’t started, then manage again.
The action? Stop managing alcohol entirely for seven days and redirect that mental energy to engaging with your postponed project—even for just 15 minutes. Because your project is worth starting now, not when you drink less—letting go of managing alcohol is what clears the block. You were never truly blocked. You were just working on the wrong project.
Episode 005 - Disrupt the Pattern
Disrupt the Pattern helps creative professionals break the alcohol cycle that keeps you from addressing the real areas blocking your creativity—feeling blocked, drained, or hidden. Each episode uses a randomized question generator to spark real-time reflection—no scripts, no planning, just honest exploration of what’s potentially blocking your creative …
🎙️Clear Conversations: Creative Minds in Sobriety
“It was fun until it wasn’t.” That moment of clarity hits differently for everyone. For Jason from The Monkeymind Meditation Club, it came after waking up in London with no memory of how he got home, realizing he was sinking fast.
Eight years ago, Jason was the loudest voice at the bar, first one ordering shots, the guy who’d party until morning. Two-day benders turned into three, then four. His marriage had ended, his work had fallen apart, and he’d forgotten the “work hard” part of “work hard, play hard.”
But here’s what he discovered on the other side:
“The rest of your senses come back online. And so suddenly a brighter color comes into your life. And sound and connection and life, vibrancy.”
Jason now teaches meditation without the woo-woo—no incense, no apps, no awkward sitting positions. Just practical tools for sitting with what’s here without pushing it away or drowning in it. He works alongside Jomo, the world’s first meditating monkey, helping people discover that even in the middle of sorrow, moments of peace can be found.
His philosophy is beautifully simple: you feel what you feel when you feel it.
Episode 027 with Tyler Donohue on November 20th at 3p EST.
What happens when you stop apologizing for wanting more? This week I’m sitting down with Tyler Donohue, a writer who’s built her life around that exact question. After calling off an engagement and leaving behind a life that looked perfect on paper, Tyler traded security for a suitcase and started writing essays that blur the line between confession and cultural critique. Her Substack, Girl Resting, explores desire, creativity, and what it means to build a life that’s your own idea—not someone else’s blueprint. She’s been published in The Cut, lives nomadically across continents, and writes with the kind of raw honesty that makes you feel less alone in your own hunger for something more. Tyler credits sobriety with stripping away the fantasy and revealing what she actually wanted—proving that clarity doesn’t diminish desire, it sharpens it. If you’ve ever felt like your appetite for life makes you too much, this conversation is for you.
🌟 More From This Week
This was a big step for The Sober Creative—giving my first workshop. I was nervous as to be expected, but I noticed those feelings and it was different this time. It wasn’t feelings of lack, it was feelings of abundance. Excitement. “I get to do this work.”
Even when the workshop was over I was questioning myself in how it went, but still I was proud. It’s been a long journey from once was managing each day of depressed emotions and alcohol.
P.S. You can view past newsletter editions here.
What’s Next For You?
🎯 Alcohol may be quietly impacting your creative potential.
Below is a 5-minute quiz that reveals exactly how it’s affecting your specific creative expression—and how alcohol might be maintaining it.
🧐 You may already know alcohol could be impacting your creative potential.
Each step forward is an act of becoming the person you want to be.
Thank you for being here.
Josh