This week on Sober Stories, we had the opportunity to interview Sarah Pottieger. (S01/E003) Sarah is an HR Director by day, and a sobriety advocate during every bit of her free time.
She created the account @shestayssober in the hopes of finding community when she first began her sober journey, and it has blossomed into a support group for others who were just like her before she got sober.
Sarah lives in Brooklyn with her husband and beloved cat.
In our conversation with Sarah, we talked about her experience getting married while sober, what it has been like to make sober friends, how mental health like depression and anxiety intersect with alcohol, and so much more.
For our full conversation, head to the Sober Stories Podcast (Apple, Spotify) or view the episode on our Youtube channel.
Sarah on making friends in sobriety:
“I met with them for coffee and we had never met each other before, and just to have that meeting and talk about our normal lives without having someone asking you about questions about your sobriety was I think when I finally realized the importance of having these relationships with people who are going through the same thing.
Because rather than having the conversation being focused on ‘are you okay?’ (which always is good intentioned if it’s from friends), but when you are already speaking to someone with someone who is going through the same struggle, you get to skip that part of ‘are you good?’ or ‘what’s your problem?’
We went out for coffee and I thought, this is the first time no one asked me, ‘do you care if I drink?’”
Sarah, on how alcohol impacted her mental health:
“I didn’t notice that these two things were connected for the longest time. I have had issues with depression and anxiety probably for 15 years at this point, and then PTSD for the last 10.
And my response to those feelings was always drinking. So if I was depressed, I drank. If I I was anxious, I drank. And I thought that was like, ‘okay, you’re helping yourself.’ Because you’re ridding yourself of these feelings, not realizing that I would be 10,000 times more anxious or 10,000 times more depressed for the two days after that. So then obviously I would just drink again to get it to go away.
It took a really long time for me to even understand that once I got sober I had to really feel the effects of how they intersected and how one impacted the other.”
Sarah, on her sober wedding:
“My husband had a signature drink and I had a signature drink. Mine was a mocktail, a non-alcoholic Old Fashioned or something like that. Everything was gone for my signature drink! Everyone said, ‘I love that you had that’ and all these people wanted the non-alcoholic champagne.
I was just shocked at how people were. Especially getting ready with the bridesmaids; I feel like every wedding I’ve been in you’re drinking from eight in the morning until you’re ready. I had asked all of them, ‘are you all okay if there’s just no alcohol in the bridal suite? If you need it, we can figure it out.’ And said, ‘oh yeah, we’d way rather do that,’ or ‘I don’t want to anyway, I hate drinking that early in the morning.’”
Connect with Sarah:
Email: shestayssober@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shestayssober/
Catch the whole conversation:
To catch the entire conversation, visit Sober Stories wherever you get your podcasts [Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher] or check out the video of our conversation on Youtube. While you’re listening, go ahead and SUBSCRIBE — we drop new episodes every Friday, right in time for some AF weekend inspiration.
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