Monday Sep 25, 2023

The Intersection of Sobriety and Sexuality

The Intersection of Sobriety and Sexuality

Tawny Lara is an NYC-based writer, podcast host, and sober sexpert. Her writing has been featured in Playboy, Men’s Health, and the Huffington Post. Her most recent book, Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze, is available now!

 

In this episode, you'll hear:

  • You don't have to reach rock bottom to decide to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol.
  • How did her environment have to change when she got sober?
  • What does it mean to "date yourself," and why is it an important step on the journey to sobriety?

Tawny tells us she was the stereotypical bartending party girl when she was living in her hometown of Waco, Texas. She didn't have a traditional rock bottom moment, instead, she felt like she was constantly living at rock bottom. She was binge drinking regularly, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, and entering into unhealthy relationships. Eventually, she realized something had to change, so she bought a one-way ticket to New York to get serious about her writing career. Your problems are going to move with you no matter where you go, but for Tawny, leaving the bartending scene in Texas allowed her to escape the patterns she was stuck in and become the writer she knew she could be. However, after she moved to New York, her partying decreased, but she was still drinking regularly. At 29 in 2015, she realized that alcohol was standing in the way of her being the best version of herself. She decided she would give up alcohol for her 30th year and start a blog about it. What started as a year-long social experiment to hold her accountable turned into 8 years without a drink and a thriving career showing others you can thrive in sobriety.

Alcohol abuse is often a symptom of a larger problem. For her, those larger problems were undiagnosed anxiety, depression, and PTSD. Once she quit drinking and started yoga, therapy, and developing healthy relationships, she was able to meet her real self, address the real issues, get on proper medications, and stop self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. After she removed the alcohol, she finally had to deal with the repercussions of her past actions. Tawny says "That is the work". The hard part is figuring out why you drink and how you can replace that with healthy coping mechanisms that you can use every day.

Tawny's first anniversary of sobriety, 2016, is the same year she met Lisa on Instagram. Tawny went to Lisa's book launch, and the rest is history. Together, they have been co-hosting the Recovery Rocks Podcast for the past 5 years. Recovery Rocks is part of Tawny’s passion to live sober out loud and show people that you can have fun, date, network, have great sex, and live a great life without alcohol.

Tawny's new book, Dry Humping, is about this intersection of sobriety and sexuality. When she gave up alcohol, she felt like she had no idea how to date, let alone have sex without drinking. Between the social stigma of sobriety being boring or the "liquid courage" we think we need to engage in social activities, she has had to do a lot of unlearning problematic tropes and figuring out who she is in a world that expects certain behaviors from her. Women are taught their role is to please others, and that leads to a lot of their dating and sexual activity being performative. Mathew and Tawny end on an interesting conversation about how porn and social expectations impact men and women in different and surprisingly similar ways. Tawny also talks about the impact alcohol and drug abuse have on the LGBTQ+ community, her bisexuality, and how sobriety changed her relationship with her own identity.

"When I got sober was really when I met me for the first time."

In this episode, you'll hear:

  • Why was Tawny drinking to excess?
  • Why did she feel like she needed to get sober?
  • You don't have to reach rock bottom to decide to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol.
  • What are some of the stigmas surrounding sobriety?
  • How did her environment have to change when she got sober?
  • What does it mean to "date yourself," and why is it an important step on the journey to sobriety?
  • Sigmas around sexuality for women and how porn impacts the way people think about sex
  • How alcohol impacts the LGBTQ+ community

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