Sober Strong01 · Start tonight
The 30-Day Survival Calendar
The thing I'd hand you on your first morning. Day-by-day, phase-by-phase, free.
Get the Calendar ↗About me
I was the drinker.
I was the friend you saw at brunch with mimosas. I was the wife who poured her first glass when the kids' tablets came out and her third when the dishwasher started. I had a Costco-sized Pinot Grigio in the fridge most weeks and a fancy glass to drink it out of.
The PR for the lie was excellent
Well — I was a lot of things. But that was the one I dressed up the best.
I wasn't what AA would call "A status." Nobody had ever taken away my license. No doctor had ever shown me a number that scared me. I never lost a job, never lost a marriage on paper, never lost custody of my kids. On paper, I was crushing it. The PR for the lie was excellent.
And here is what nobody warned me: that is more dangerous than rock bottom. Because if you never fall, you never have to look up.
[ The lie I told best ]
If you never fall, you never have to look up.
What it cost me
Friendships I will never get back.
Here's the part I don't think I talked about enough in the early videos, because I was still figuring out how to say it.
Alcohol cost me friendships I will never get back. Real ones. Best-friend ones. Twenty-years-of-history ones. One drunk night, one explosion, one thing said that you can't unsay — and a whole relationship dies right there in the kitchen. I have a list of people in my head I would call tomorrow if I thought it would do any good. It wouldn't. Alcohol burned those bridges down to the concrete.
And my marriage. I almost lost that too. Not in a courtroom way. In the slower, uglier way — where Johnathan started becoming the guy who carries his wife out of every party. Where he stopped being my husband and started being my caretaker. Where I'd go from zero to ten in forty-five minutes and he'd absorb every bit of it and then drive us home and put me to bed and get up with the kids in the morning. He started to resent me. I would have resented me too. We were married, but we weren't partners. We were a drunk and the person managing her.
That marriage is not the marriage I have now. The marriage I have now I built — we built — sober, on purpose, on hard days, one boring Tuesday at a time.
How it ended
July 10, 2023.
I quit drinking on July 10, 2023. I was on day 45 of 75 Hard. The night before, I'd ordered mimosas at Top Golf. I woke up the next morning with the kind of low-grade poisoning that doesn't even register as a hangover anymore because it's been your baseline for years, and something in me said: enough.
That was it. No DUI. No intervention. No ultimatum.
The truth is, there had been one moment that started the clock. My daughter looked at her dad and said "Daddy, that's killing you" while he was opening a beer. I was standing right there. And I knew — I just knew — that I could not be the next domino. The kids were paying attention. They are always paying attention.
The mimosas at Top Golf were just the day I finally listened.
That same night — day 45 — I poured out every bottle of alcohol left in the house. I sent a friend a picture of it. I still have that picture. Day 76, the day I had originally planned to celebrate finishing 75 Hard with a watermelon margarita, I had a double scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream instead. That's the truth of how the switch flipped. Not a sermon. Ice cream.
[ How the switch flipped ]
Not a sermon. Ice cream.
How I climbed out
I didn't do this alone.
I want to be really clear about that, because the loneliest part of getting sober is thinking you're the only one.
I started filming in my kitchen on September 25, 2023, about two-and-a-half months sober. I had no plan, no production, no lighting setup, and no idea what I was doing. The first videos are rough. I still leave them up. They're proof.
And then something happened that I did not see coming. People started showing up. In the comments. In my DMs. Strangers — actual strangers — telling me they were proud of me. More strangers told me they were proud of me than people in my own life. That community is what rebuilt me. Every comment from a mom on day 4 white-knuckling it through a Friday night. Every guy in his truck on his lunch break typing "this is me." Every woman who said "I haven't told anyone but I haven't had a drink in 11 days." Those are the people who dug me out alongside Johnathan.
That's why I make these videos. That's why we will not stop. If we can help one person, that is all we care about. Period. Johnathan — a retired Army veteran and the guy who quietly handles every camera and every cut you see — and I have built this thing one video at a time from a house in Boise. We are not a media company. We are two people who decided the kids deserve sober parents and a community deserved a place to land.
700 videos and 19.4K subscribers later, here we are.
What I believe
Alcohol isn't the problem.
Pain is the problem.
The 5 p.m. dopamine crash after a hard day with the kids is the problem. The wedding where everyone has a glass except you is the problem. The grief you never let yourself feel, the trauma you never named, the body you don't recognize anymore — those are the problems. Alcohol is what we use to deal with them. It works for about an hour. Then it makes everything worse for the next two days.
That's the 2-day tax. I'd been paying it for 21 years.
You don't fix this with willpower. Willpower is a joke. You can white-knuckle it for about a week and then your nervous system files for divorce. You fix this by taking the choice off the table. You don't decide every night whether you're drinking. You already decided. For me that was 75 Hard — a structure that didn't ask my opinion. You fix it by figuring out what you were trying to medicate underneath the drinking. And you fix it by burying the version of yourself who drank and getting up the next day as somebody new.
You don't need a rock bottom. You can choose your own.
What I'm not
Not a doctor. Not a therapist. Not in AA.
I'm not a doctor. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a counselor. I have never been to rehab and I have never set foot in an AA meeting. This is not medical advice. Everything I share is what worked for me and what has worked for the 150+ guests I've sat down with on this channel — and you get to decide what to do with it.
I'm not going to tell you you're an alcoholic. I'm not even going to use that word about myself. I think "alcoholic" is either a label people hide behind or a label people hide from. I'm not interested in either one.
[ The whole pitch ]
I'm just a year ahead of you. That's it.
Off-camera
Boise. Two kids. Two dogs.
I live in Boise, Idaho, with Johnathan, our two kids, and our two dogs. I go to church. I lift heavy things at 5 a.m. because my brain works better when my body is tired. I drink coffee like it's my job. I cry more than I used to. I'm a better mom, a better wife, a better friend, and a worse drinker. I'll take that trade every single time.
I lost my grandma in December 2025. I worked out the morning of her funeral. I didn't drink to get through it. I didn't need to.
If you're still reading
The fact that you're asking is the answer.
You wouldn't be here if some part of you wasn't already asking the question. Three places to go next.
02 · Watch
The most recent video.
Or scroll back to the rough ones. Both are honest. 700+ videos and counting.
Watch on YouTube ↗03 · Get in the room
The Sober Strong Community.
A small room of people doing this with you. Weekly group calls, daily check-ins, 7-day free trial.
See the community ↗I'll see you on the inside.— Meghan