Sobriety

In October 2024, pop music star Liam Payne fell to his death from the balcony of a hotel in Argentina. The former member of the globally popular British boy band One Direction had gone on a three-day drug and liquor binge inside his Buenos Aires hotel room. Preliminary information from the forensic examination showed Payne had taken high doses of “pink cocaine,” a dangerous mix

The word “phobia” denotes irrational fears. For instance, Arachnophobia, a Hollywood horror film from the early 1990s, is named after the fear of spiders, which is irrational when we consider that 99 percent of arachnids pose no significant threat to human health.  Nifaliophobia is the irrational fear of being sober. However, discussion of this mindset shouldn’t be limited to its literal meaning. Although we can think

There was a time in the life of Michael McDonald, one of the founding fathers of the 1970s California rock style that evolved into soft rock and yacht rock, when he finally surrendered to reality and decided to recover from a lifetime addiction to liquor and drugs. In 1997, three years after hip-hop stars Warren G. and Nate Dogg famously sampled McDonald’s hit “I Keep

In November 2023, Canadian actor Dean McDermott was interviewed by the British newspaper The Daily Mail about the status of his journey to sobriety. At the time, McDermott was staying in a sober living home after spending 40 days in a drug rehabilitation clinic to recover from chronic alcohol and cocaine abuse, and he had been there for two months while getting divorced from Hollywood

In modern American society, there are two places where you can fully appreciate its rich diversity. The military is one, and Alcoholics Anonymous is another. The former is an institution, while the latter is a community, but they’re both comprised of people from all walks of life who share something important in common: a life-affirming desire. Those who join the military do so to serve

In the long history of ladies who sang the blues and lived tragic lives, the death of Amy Winehouse at the age of 27 is particularly painful. Winehouse died in 2011 from an accidental alcohol overdose during a relapse episode. She had completed a residential detox and recovery program in the Caribbean just a few months before she was found dead in her London apartment

Recovering from substance addiction requires you to embark on a journey that could last anywhere from a few weeks to several years. In the Alcoholics Anonymous program, for example, some individuals become active sponsors who frequently attend meetings and collect multiple bronze chips for their years of sobriety. Psychology researchers estimate the average length of time people stay active in AA and similar programs is

In the world of social media celebrities, Caroline Calloway is one of the most enigmatically controversial. Calloway is a young and attractive woman who posted digital content about her life as an American student in England. In 2015, just two years into her newfound career as an influencer, she received a $100,000 advance fee to write an anthology of her Instagram activity, but she quickly

In May 2023, the founder of the popular blog Dooce, which focuses on life advice for American mothers in the Generation X cohort, was found dead at her home in Utah. Heather Armstrong took up blogging in the early 2000s as a personal project that featured her musings about balancing work, relationships, spirituality, and addiction recovery. Dooce started off as a "mommy blog" that only

In 2016, a study conducted by researchers from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and Stanford University focused on how long alcoholics participated in 12-step programs. The target horizon for the study was 16 years, meaning the findings were gleaned from individuals who could affirm they had been sober for at least that long. On average, these individuals participated in programs such as Alcoholics