Issue #95: Why I'm Still (Mostly) Sober After a Year of Not Drinking

Getting honest about alcohol with Sarah Levy.

Morning Person is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!

🎥 ‘Past Lives’ in theaters: I’d been counting down the days for this movie to out in Portland, which it finally did this weekend! Thankfully, it didn’t disappoint: Greta Lee stars as Nora, a Korean playwright living in New York. She’s married to an American, who she met at a writers’ retreat, but her domestic life is disrupted when her childhood love Hae Sung walks back into it. A meditation on relationships, who we are at different points in our lives, and the transitional moments when our life jettisons onto a new path, toward a different future.

📺 “Extraordinary Birder” on NatGeo and Hulu: Who would have guessed a show about bird-watching could be so charming, inspiring, and uplifting? Christian Cooper, whose Central Park encounter went viral in 2020, hosts this new, feel-good show with exuberant aplomb. I’ve seen two episodes so far, but the one that takes place in New York City could renew anyone’s interest in becoming an urban naturalist.

📚 Book Lovers by Emily Henry and The Perfect Find by Tia Williams: This was a tough weekend (there are a lot of ups and downs in divorces, and the downs are way down). I’m working on a piece that captures what this experience has felt like… but until then, I spent a good part of my weekend curled up with two feel-good love stories, both of which are tied to upcoming movie adaptations and have female leads who would get along famously. Henry’s deftly turns the “big city girl moves to a small town” trope on its head while William’s is about a fashion editor who falls for her boss’s twenty-something son. Easy, quick reads with more-or-less happy endings.

P.S. You bet your Manolos I’ll be watching “And Just Like That…” Season 2 on Thursday, the best/worst show of all time. Until then, I recommend the “Every Outfit” podcast based on Chelsea Fairless and Lauren Garroni’s Instagram dedicated to SATC.

I spent the last year of my 20s nervously stepping into rooms full of strangers. My Master’s in Addictions Counseling required that I attend several twelve-step meetings, to be able to understand the widely accessible treatment that has served as a beacon of hope and support since Alcoholics Anonymous’s 1935 inception. Until then, I had never attended a recovery meeting, but imagined a tableau of older men, folding chairs, and bad coffee in a church basement. To be fair, I’ve since attended meetings that look exactly like this, but many more that have expanded and challenged my idea of what I thought recovery—or someone in recovery— looks like.

Each time I stepped into an (open) meeting, in person or on Zoom, I disclosed my student status and asked for the group’s permission to attend as an observer, per my program’s guidelines. When permitted to stay, I quietly watched members share their stories and support others in their recovery from technology, marijuana, disordered eating, or gambling addictions.

When I arrived at my last meeting, an all-women’s Alcoholics Anonymous group in January of 2022, I planned to do the same I had for every other: disclose my role and respectfully watch from the sidelines.

Issue #23: I'll Drink to That (or Not)

I arrived early at the open meeting to find a seat in a comfy chair in the small, sun-drenched room and watched the women greet each other warmly. When invited to speak, I began the same disclosure I’d repeated at previous meetings, “I’m attending this meeting as a student—.” Before I could get any further, I began to cry.