For about twenty years, Tiffiny Yaxley was the one who made the party happen. Figure skater, geologist, entertainer, the girl who would moon a room full of people because she thought it was hilarious. She built that reputation on purpose. And somewhere along the way she stopped liking the person she had built.
She'll tell you there was no rock bottom. Just a Friday at 10 in the morning at a stressful job, when she caught herself already craving the drink she wouldn't have until after work. Then an Instagram ad for a 30-day challenge, which she clicked because it made a joke about alcohol and your bowels. She signed up with a group of complete strangers who had no idea who she was. She stopped drinking in May of 2022.
What came after surprised her. The clear-minded days brought back mornings, hot pink mountain peaks at sunrise, and a version of herself she actually recognized. They also brought a depression she had been calling weakness for years. So she did what she has always done. She drew it. Panel by panel, her character The Graphical Bear became the way she processed what she couldn’t say out loud, and eventually became a book she can hold in her hands.
This conversation covers all of it, including the parts that are still hard.
Show Notes
[02:25] Small Town, Big Reputation
Tiffiny grew up in a small town in northern British Columbia. Her first drink was New Year’s 2000 for the millennium, at 16, at a party in her boyfriend’s dad’s logging truck garage.
She stayed pretty mellow through high school and first year university. Then she got into her geology major, found her group, and found the party culture that came with it.
A figure skater who loved to perform, she leaned into being the center of attention. The more she drank, the sillier the stunts got, and the reputation stuck.
Key Insight: The image took two decades to build and she outgrew it long before she knew how to change it.
“I spent the better part of 20 years really developing and building this kind of image that after a while I really wasn’t happy with but I didn’t know how to change it for quite some time.”
[04:56] Chasing the “Unicorn Amount”
Her dad quit drinking cold turkey in his mid-30s when she was around 10 or 11. Years later, that gave her a model: if he could do it, so could she.
From about 30 to 38, she wasn’t happy with who she was when she drank, but she kept drinking enough to pretend she was. The dopamine hits from the attention were hard to let go of.
She hunted for moderation, what she calls the “unicorn amount.” Her husband was the only one who saw the aftermath, including the nights she ended up on the kitchen floor in what she describes as a puddle of sadness and shame.
Drink two or three was what she calls the TSN turning point. She rarely drank during the week and was, in her words, a classic binge drinker.
Key Insight: The scariest moment wasn’t a rock bottom. It was noticing a craving in the middle of an ordinary workday.
“this is a little weird that I’m having this extreme craving to just go get absolutely shmammered. And it’s 10 a.m. on a Friday because I want to escape what I’m doing right now.”
[09:05] A Funny Ad and a Group of Strangers
Dry January and Sober October never stuck. She would hit three weeks, decide it was dumb, and feel disappointed in herself.
An Instagram ad for an online 30-day challenge caught her because it was funny. She signed up, and it worked partly because the group was completely separate from her real life. Nobody there knew who she was.
On a business trip to Ontario she listened to Annie Grace’s audiobook and related hard, even though she didn’t feel like someone who was falling apart.
When she told a coach she had 10 days, the reaction was immediate and enthusiastic. She realized that felt better than friends clapping when she fell off a stage.
She came home from that trip good at her job and not hungover, and the early wins started stacking.
Key Insight: The community was the variable that changed the outcome.
“I think I wouldn’t have been able to do it had I kept trying to do it alone.”
[13:52] The First Six Months Were the Hardest
She quit in May, which meant summer patio season, birthdays, and mountain bike rides that end in a beer. The Rockies have a short summer and everyone is outside for it.
She drank non-alcoholic beer at the same speed she used to drink, nine in one Friday, mostly to have something in her hands. It showed her how fast she had been going.
She made excuses at first, telling people she was doing a 90-day challenge. Then friends started coming to her privately saying they wanted to slow down too, and asking how she did it.
The hardest part was mourning who she used to be and letting people down who wanted that person back.
Key Insight: The self-consciousness was mostly hers to carry, and almost nobody else was watching.
“helped me figure out that I could be there and no one actually gives a shit if you’re drinking or not. Everyone’s in their own head so much.”
[17:59] Getting the Mornings Back
Sleep improved fast. So did her ability to sit back at a party, listen, and contribute when it mattered rather than run the room.
She learned what she actually enjoys versus what she thought she enjoyed. Live music yes, dancing yes, staying out past 11:30 no. Arm wrestling, also no.
A lifelong morning person from years of 6 a.m. ice times, she had been trading sunrises for hangovers, including the walks where she puked in a snowbank and felt she had shortchanged her dog.
Now she does the “poop loop” around her circle street with the dog, even at minus 30, to catch Alpenglow turning the peaks hot pink. That walk is on the cover of her book.
Key Insight: The mornings turned out to be worth more than she expected.
“Mornings were something that I just value so hard and didn’t really realize how much I liked them in the quiet.”
[26:02] How the Graphical Bear Became a Book
She created the character in 2014, two days after a Halloween party she spent mostly in a friend’s bathroom. The first drawing was a bear barfing.
Calvin and Hobbes was her safe space as a kid when she was scared or anxious, so comics were already where she went to feel better.
She draws by hand and scans it. She loves a Venn diagram, an XY chart, a bar chart, and uses them to show how life’s variables relate.
About a year into quitting, she brought the bear back and started pairing comics with written stories on her blog. Her coach Gary, who joined the episode live, pushed her to put them online. Her aunt, her childhood figure skating coach, was the first to tell her how much she related.
People kept saying the same thing, so she self-published. She later showed the work at the art gallery in Golden for a month and did a book reading.
Key Insight: Drawing it gave her somewhere to put the feeling, and something real to hold at the end.
“I wanted to have something tangible that I could hold and be like, I built that.”
[34:30] The Demon, the Doctor, and Asking for Help
Four and a half years in, she still has hard days, and a lot of them come down to not feeling good enough. In the book, that voice is a character called the demon, sitting opposite the dog like the devil and the angel on her shoulder.
She went to her doctor frustrated. She meditates, does yoga, quit drinking, eats well, sees her coach weekly, and was still crashing. The doctor told her sometimes people’s brains are different and they need help.
She resisted medication at first. After a couple of bad episodes and her husband telling her he was worried, she did her research, talked to her mother who is a nurse practitioner, and accepted it. She also started seeing a therapist.
A friend in her late 60s read the blog and the comic that went with it, then asked her own doctor about antidepressants. She told Tiffiny her life has never been better.
Key Insight: She reframed help the way she would treat any other injury.
“I broke a bone. I would go to the hospital and have the doctor help me fix it. There’s something here that I’ve been trying to fix on my own and maybe I should actually accept some help.”
[40:24] Why It’s Called a Practice
Tiffiny and Josh both landed on the same thing: you can do all the work and still need a lift some days. It ebbs, it flows, and it is never perfect.
She has charts about this. Quality of life trends upward over time, with all the ups and downs still in the picture.
Looking back through three years of comics, she can see comics she drew early that still describe how she feels today, and she can also see the baseline move. She didn’t know art therapy was a thing when she started doing it to herself.
The final comic in the book is a Venn diagram about success, with fame, money, and feats of strength on one side and a cozy place to have coffee on the other.
She has taken close to a year off from comics to paint and do watercolors, but she has a sketchbook and a phone full of ideas, and November in the Rockies is a slow season.
Key Insight: Progress is real even when it doesn’t feel like it.
“Because sometimes the journey is great and you’re on the top of a mountain and you’re getting powder turns. And then all of a sudden you fucking crash into a tree well and now you’re stuck.”
Key Quotes
“Because you’re becoming a new person, and the new person is actually who you are, not who you think you should be.” — Tiffiny Yaxley
“I drew it because I felt so ashamed of myself and so sad that I am doing this all the time that I was like, if I can make it into a joke, and people laugh at it, then it’s okay.” — Tiffiny Yaxley
“Depression’s a real thing, and I just kind of thought I was weak and shitty.” — Tiffiny Yaxley
“And I think partly why I want to talk about it and why I wrote the book is because if you don’t see other people doing it, you’re so much less willing to try it.” — Tiffiny Yaxley
“And there’s no way I would have built this without stopping drinking.” — Tiffiny Yaxley
Resources Mentioned
Annie Grace’s book — the audiobook Tiffiny listened to on her business trip to Ontario, published as This Naked Mind
Calvin and Hobbes — the comics she read as a kid when she felt scared or anxious
Art therapy — a formal practice she discovered only after years of doing a version of it on her own
Alpenglow — the sunrise light on the snowy peaks near her home in Golden, BC
Where to Find Tiffiny
Website and blog: thegraphicalbear.com — new comics posted with the story behind each one, plus a mailing list so you get an email when one goes up
Email: thegraphicalbear@gmail.com
Her book: The Graphical Bear: Expressing the Feels Through Art
Every panel in the book is drawn by hand. It covers about three years of her life, it's funny, and it's honest about the parts most people leave out. She'll tell you the goal was never to make money, which is part of why it's worth supporting. Grab a copy here.
Thank You
A heartfelt thank you to Gary Allen, KarenC-Book Collector📚⚖️🗽🗳️🧿♒️, Martinique Akinfosile, Flora Acosta, and many others who joined us live for this conversation, and to Tiffiny Yaxley for her honesty, her humor, and her willingness to talk about the parts that are still hard. Your presence and engagement make these conversations possible.
Ready for Your Own Reset?
Tiffiny tried to do it alone for years. Dry January, Sober October, the hunt for what she called the unicorn amount. What finally worked was a set window of time, daily support, and people in her corner while she figured out who she was without a drink in her hand.
That’s exactly what The Sober Creative Reset is built to give you.
It’s 30 days of 1:1 coaching designed to help you wake up feeling like yourself again. You get four 60-minute sessions, daily check-ins, trigger and pattern mapping, tools for your energy and rhythm, real strategies for social and work situations, and support when you stumble.
It’s made for people who feel worn down by what alcohol is taking from their work and their energy, and who want clarity without a traditional recovery framework. It’s $497 for the first 30 days, then month to month, cancel whenever you want.
Tiffiny said the first six months were the hardest, and that the wins built on each other once she got a few. The Reset is about getting you those first wins with someone in your corner.
Looking for the group part? Tiffiny put it plainly: "I think I wouldn't have been able to do it had I kept trying to do it alone." If that's what's missing for you, The Sober Creative Collective is $49/month for your first three months, then $79/month, cancel whenever you want. Real people, live, with me in the room.
