DAY 227:
my time in nyc is quickly coming to a close, and to be honest? kind of relieved. it has been a gift to come back, to temporarily linger in a place that i called home for the last decade, but i find myself wishing myself back to CA. foreign feeling, especially since i spent the last ten years shit-talking LA and my family by saying, “Well, if the Big One hits at least someone in my family will survive” like a fucking sociopath.
nowadays, my words & actions show that i love my family (and California!) and i would care if they died (where am i going here?), so i’m ready to be back with them. got two weeks left of teaching Comedy Writing to high schoolers in person, which feels insurmountable while trying to recover from covid fatigue.
but, hey. i’m still sober. i want to be sober. and i’m more committed to this newsletter than ever.
I’M SHAKING SHIT UP! MY BRAIN IS HEALING AND I’M TRYING TO BE CREATIVE! and so, i’m excited to share this week’s newsletter with you— an interview with the Queen of Sober Sex writing, Tawny Lara! it will come out in two parts, and the audio will be available for paid subscribers next week. i got a lot out of my conversation with Tawny, and i hope you do too.
if you would like to gift a subscription, you can do so by clicking below:
and there will be a Paywall at the end of the newsletter that will allow you to gain access to extra juicy content about Holly Whitaker and her book Quit Like A Woman ! gossip, uh-oh!
Interview with Sober Sexpert Tawny Lara
Tawny Lara is a Bisexual NYC-Based writer, public speaker, and Webby Award-Winning podcaster who’s made a name for herself as The Sober Sexpert in the online recovery space.
Tawny sent me a text at 11 AM on the dot:" “Zoom link expired.” i had rescheduled twice— due to covid, and had forgotten to update the time on my Zoom account. she’s a Capricorn who does NOT like wasting her time, and i’m newly sober— it’s a miracle if i wake up before 11 AM. i sent her a new link, opened my laptop, and her bright smile popped up on my screen. she sat in front of a white fold out screen with scattered hand-painted pink flowers, her curly hair piled up on her head and her glasses on, ready to talk.
PP: What is your sober date?
TL: November 30th, 2015.
PP: That's amazing. Right on the cusp of the holiday season.
TL: I know. I moved to New York, June of 2015. And so I got sober here, which is wow. I don't know that I would have gotten sober if I stayed a bartender in Texas, you know they say to not pull a geographic and not move. <laugh> I don't know that I could have done it any other way.
PP: What impacted that decision?
TL: I think it's important to share that I didn't have a traditional rock bottom story that we see on film or television. I didn't lose everything. I didn't lose anything. <laugh> I definitely drank too much and I put myself in very dangerous situations, but the moment that I decided to stop drinking, I was in New York, sitting in a pub with some friends, talking about how I didn't have time to write. And something just clicked in my brain on that walk to the train.
TL: I was just like, I just spent four hours in a pub talking about how I don't have time to write. Maybe there’s something there, you know? So the next morning I woke up and I was like, okay, I'm not gonna drink for a day, then for a week. That turned into: my 30th birthday was coming up, and I was like, okay, I'm not gonna drink for a full year and I'm going to write about it. So that'll keep me accountable, you know? So I started a blog called SobriTea Party where I just blogged about all that goes on during what I now see is early sobriety. But at the time it was just a social experiment, asking myself, why am I drinking? What do I get out of this? It was this experiential, Gonzo journalism, deep dive. Here we are six and a half years later and it clearly worked.
TL: You know, as soon as I quit drinking, it helped me find my voice as a writer, I got more bylines. Great career opportunities came my way. My mental health improved. But it's not all roses <laugh> as you know. But for the most part, my life improved.
PP: Wow. I'm just, I'm seeing so much, so many parallels. I'm almost 30 now, I'm writing about being newly sober. That’s all so interesting.
PP: Obviously there's so much lore around being the drunken artist or the tortured artist. And I feel really excited to hear that you really just found the opposite [to be true], which is the truth, right? Like the more you're present for your work, the more your work benefits <laugh>, you know?
TL: Yeah. I mean, for me, definitely. That's how it was. I mean, you know, the Hemingway, right? Drunk write, edit sober— that clearly worked for him. But yeah, [writing sober] works for me.
PP: That’s— I love that.
PP: And then, just so people know what you've done, I would love to hear about your favorite pieces that you've written in the last six years.
TL: I think my favorite is a piece in Writer's Digest that goes more in depth of what we just talked about, how sobriety helped my writing career. And then on the sober sex side, I wrote a piece for Playboy about pegging a Trump supporter. And it was, I think, still to this day, probably my most proud piece. The byline, of course, but also I think that might be some of my best work.
PP: That's awesome. Yeah. And then too, I mean…. I recently broke the seal. I finally had sex in sobriety.
TL: Hey!
PP: I was absolutely— I mean, not terrified, but it, you know, it had been a long time since that happened. And so I love that you write about sex and sobriety. My therapist actually wrote an analytical, psychological text about sex in sobriety.
TL: Is it Annabel?
PP: Yes. Anadel Barbour. Yeah.
TL: <laugh>, it's your therapist. I love it. Amazing.
PP: EMDR changed my life.
TL: Good. I love to hear that.
PP: I was in therapy for the past 10 years and I love talk therapy. I think it was super important. Not only to learn how to verbalize emotions, but that entire experience was so healing. However, EMDR felt like the graduate school of therapy, where all the things that I had talked about, [EMDR] got me to the point where I could get to that place of processing those things. She's amazing. She's been sober for like 20 years.
TL: Yeah. She's great. I definitely reference her book in mine. It's really cool. What she wrote about the experiment that she did.
PP: Y'all should meet, you guys would love each other?
TL: We've emailed a bit already.
PP: I love her. I love her so much.
TL: Tell her hi.
PP; I will. I will.
PP: But yeah, I mean, you know, there's the experimental sort of psychological phenomena of it, but I think that there's something really refreshing about how you approach it. And I think before I got sober, cause we had met at the Tango <affirmative> uh, what was that called?
TL: It was like a salon, I think.
PP: Yeah. And I just remember being very intrigued by the fact that you were sober, but also I think prior to sobriety, sober people felt unapproachable. I knew that sobriety was in my future. Like I could feel it.
TL: I know we all know at some point.
PP: <laugh> Yeah. Like I know I can't do this forever, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. Granted, I'm glad it did. I think those of us who get sober younger are very lucky. I just remember being sort of floored by the fact that people can show up sober to things. It didn't make sense to me. And so, thank you for your work. Thank you for showing up so boldly in a space as a sober person because I think it's only by seeing dynamic sober people that you understand that it’s possible, that it's a good thing.
PP: You know, that it's not a devastating thing. I mean, granted, there is devastation involved of course, but at the same time, I have so much more fun sober than I ever did drunk. Which is so antithetical to everything that you would ever think and what we've been socialized to believe.
PP: And so I guess I would be curious about the beginnings of sex and sobriety being your topic and also just your advice.
TL: Yeah. In early sobriety, I had that blog, I was posting about it on social media. And then, of course, the conversation just as a human dating, and sex comes up in my life. I was really intimidated by sober sex and sober dating. And I had to do a lot of really deep work of realizing I've never been on a date, sober. I’ve had sober sex, like if I was in a long term relationship, but the relationship was still very boozy.
PP: mm-hmm <affirmative>
TL: Alcohol was a third party in the relationship, for sure.
TL: So the thought of meeting somebody brand new without alcohol seemed impossible. I just didn't know how to do it. I knew people did it, you know, so I started writing about it because I was just wanted to know, I can't be the only one feeling feeling this confused, feeling this overwhelmed. I got a lot of moral support from the online sober community. And then once I did start to put myself out there and go on sober dates, I put sober on my profile, then I’d take sober off of my profile. You know, I figured things out.
TL: I think the biggest thing that I learned was how important communication is, which you and I, as people who've been in therapy for a while, know, but to someone who's newly sober, that's kind of a new concept.
PP: <laugh> True.
TL: You know, because alcohol really inhibits your ability to form genuine connections, to have empathetic conversations with people. It literally shuts up that part of your brain. So when you're dating without alcohol, even if you're not sober, even if you just go on a date without alcohol, you're forming genuine, mindful connections, even if they don't go to the second or third date. A lot of my sober dates were more meaningful than some long-term drunken relationships, if that makes any sense.
PP: Oh yeah, it does.
TL: I learned how to advocate for what I wanted, communicate what I want, communicate what I don't want. And, if that doesn't work for someone, then it's a really clean, like, okay, this isn't gonna work. You know, where back in the day, I would've drank through that. And then I thought I could change them. I'm exhausted just thinking about all the mental gymnastics that I did.
PP: *hard relate*
TL: Before you date sober, you really have to spend a lot of alone time. Date yourself, get to know yourself without alcohol, get to know your body without alcohol. I always tell people to masturbate as much as you can in early sobriety, because A) it feels good. And B) there's not a lot else to do. Masturbating and getting to know my own body in early sobriety helped me unlearn some of those tropes of what I should like in bed versus what I actually do.
PP: Mm mm-hmm <affirmative>
TL: And then once I figured out what I like, then I could communicate that with a partner.
PP: I love that. I love everything you said. Yeah. I'm really blown away by this idea of, you know, even just a few dates being more meaningful than a two and a half year long relationship. I totally experienced that. Where a two week thing took me a month to get over, whereas a two year relationship, in which I was smoking weed every day, I was like, I'm done. <laugh> Good riddance. Thank you, goodbye.
PP: I would love to hear about what you're working on now.
TL: I'm working on a book about alcohol free sex, dating, and relationships. And it is kind of like what we were just talking about with being inclusive. It's not just a book for people in recovery. It’s asking readers to examine the role that alcohol plays in their love lives, whether they're 20 years sober, whether they do dry January every year or whether they have zero interest in giving up alcohol, but they're just interested in the conversation.
TL: So, it talks about alcohol free dating, alcohol free date ideas. I have a whole chapter on herbal aphrodisiacs. I'm obsessed with that right now. Cause that’s a common question I get: how do I get in the mood without liquid courage? You know? So it's giving readers practical tips on how to navigate this very scary dating world, without alcohol.
PP: I cannot wait to read your book.
TL: You know how glacial publishing moves. They're fast tracking my book and it's still, it comes out next September. You know, about that <laugh>
PP: I do. I'm so excited though. To just even think about the concept of liquid courage and how often people outsource.
TL: As someone who used liquid courage for a long time, I think there's something magical about that effect.
PP: Right. But also at the same time, like now that I have to genuinely feel something to do it, I understand how kind of disingenuous that is in a certain way.
TL: Totally, totally. And that's exactly it— liquid courage is a facade. It’s not real. Alcohol is lowering your inhibitions and we need inhibitions to stay safe, to stay sane, to take care of ourselves, to be aware of our surroundings— we need inhibitions. All liquid courage is doing is removing that inhibition so you can fully express that feeling that's already inside of you.
PP: You right.
TL: So this book really tackles that. Like you said, we outsource these moments of confidence and bravery to alcohol. Like, why do we do that? And here's some other ways to do it in a more genuine way.
PP: I love that.
if you like what you read, please leave a comment. the more you engage with the post, the more i know what you like!
alright folks, tune in for more next week when i send out the second half of our conversation— we talk about consent, aphrodisiacs, and even more!
Did you enjoy this first interview? Would you be interested in me interviewing other sober people?
hungry for more? or you just want to support more work like this? get a paid subscription to hear what we say about Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like A Woman.
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