Advertise on podcast: Dear Vernon

In this episode of Dear Vernon, Eric Johnson and Laura McKowen respond to a parent who recently found alcohol and vapes in their 14-year-old daughter's room. They know their own alcohol use has affected their daughter, and they want to help her avoid going down the same path. Laura shares what these conversations have looked like with her own daughter over nearly 12 years of sobriety, from bringing her to recovery meetings as a little kid to navigating parties, alcohol, honesty, and independence as a teenager. One of the biggest things she's learned? You don't need one big, perfect Talk. In fact, that's probably not how this works. Eric shares what these conversations look like now that his own kids are older, including a daughter in college and a 21-year-old son. The parenting doesn't stop when they're 18, and neither does the opportunity to be someone they can come to. They talk about: Why secrecy around addiction can create shameAnswering the question your kid actually asked (without turning it into a TED Talk)The difference between being honest and oversharingWhy Laura's approach changed as her daughter became a teenagerCreating a relationship where your kids can tell you the truth, even when you don't love the truthTalking about alcohol without making it tabooWhat to do with the regret you may carry about how your drinking affected your kidsLetting other trusted adults be part of your kid's support systemWhy modeling sobriety may matter more than finding exactly the right wordsHow these conversations change as your kids become adultsThere isn't a perfect script for this. Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson aren't pretending there is. But you can be honest. You can keep the conversation open. You can let your kids see what sobriety looks like in real life. And no matter how old they are when you get sober, you get to start showing them something different now. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety Join us at Kripalu this spring

This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson are back with a new episode of Dear Vernon. Brad Pitt was sober for seven years. And then he wasn't. And a lot of people had a lot of feelings about that, including several people who reached out to Laura directly, asking some version of the same question: why does this make me so angry? Laura goes into the Esquire piece that started it all, which is actually pretty brief on the subject. Brad mentions getting overconfident a couple of times, going back to drinking, and deciding he can have a few but has to be professional about it. That's basically it. And yet somehow those few sentences sparked a conversation that clearly needed to happen. Eric shares his honest complicated feelings about Brad Pitt as a person, and why the news made him sad more than anything else. He talks about what he hears in the way people like Bradley Cooper and Dax Shepard talk about their sobriety versus what he's always heard from Brad, and why sincerity and conviction are things you can usually sense even through a screen. Laura shares a story about her dad and how she sees parallels between his drinking (and sobriety) habits and Brad's. They also get into the question of moderation itself, what it actually feels like to try to set a limit of two drinks and spend the entire day negotiating with yourself about what two even means, and why that exhausting mental math is its own kind of answer. If you've had feelings about the Brad Pitt news and couldn't quite figure out what they were about, this one is worth a listen. Laura also wrote about this on her Substack. It's free and available to everyone. Read it here. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey. We start October 1st, use code FALL26 to save at checkout when you join before Septmeber 7th. The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson, CEO of The Luckiest Club, tackle a question that comes up constantly in recovery spaces, and one that honestly deserves a much better answer than it usually gets. The question: what does it actually mean to do the work? If you've spent any time in sobriety communities, you've heard this phrase. Do the work. And if you're anything like the person who submitted this question, you've probably nodded along while privately thinking: okay but what does that mean? Is there a list? A job description? Because if someone would just tell me what to do, I would do it. Laura and Eric get into what doing the work actually looks like in real life, and it turns out it does come down to a few core things, even if nobody ever spells them out clearly. Laura breaks it down into two buckets that are simpler to name than they are to actually do. The first is getting honest with yourself and with other people. Not in a confess everything to everyone kind of way, but in the quiet, ongoing practice of noticing when you're hiding something, avoiding something, or keeping a secret that's slowly making you sick. The second is looking at the patterns in your life where there's real friction and asking yourself honestly what your part in that pattern might be. That second one sounds straightforward until you actually try to do it, and then it turns out to be most of a lifetime's worth of work. Eric adds the piece that Laura and he both agree is non-negotiable: you cannot do this alone. The work has to happen in community. Not because you're weak, but because so much of what drives our pain is unconscious, and we genuinely cannot see our own blind spots without other people reflecting them back to us. They also talk about why people who experience addiction are, in a strange way, forced into doing this kind of deep work in a way that most people never have to. And why that's both the hard part and, eventually, the gift. If you've been waiting for someone to hand you a tidy list of steps for sobriety, this episode is for you. Fair warning: there is no list. But Laura and Eric make a pretty compelling case for why that's actually okay. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Join our Push Off from here Workshop, August 22-29, 2026, led by TLC Founder, Laura McKowen and TLC CEO, Eric Johnson. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson, CEO of The Luckiest Club, tackle a question that's been sitting heavy with one of The Luckiest Club members. She had 183 days sober. On vacation with her husband, she ordered a virgin daiquiri, took a few sips, and realized it had alcohol in it. She caught it, sent it back, and asked for water instead. But then her husband, who's been in AA for years, told her she had to reset her count back to zero. Non-negotiable, he said. Now she's wondering if he's right, and if six months of progress just got erased over something that wasn't even her fault. Laura and Eric don't hold back on this one. They talk about what actually matters here: she caught the mistake, told her husband, told the waiter, and brought it to her community instead of hiding it. That's the real story, not some arbitrary rule about restarting a clock. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

This week on Dear Vernon, The Luckiest Club Founder Laura McKowen and The Luckiest Club CEO Eric Johnson are answering a question that came in directly from a member with almost four years of sobriety—and honestly, it's one a lot of people can relate to. She loves her sober friends. They've been her lifeline. But they exist in a completely separate world from the rest of her life, and that separation feels strange to her. Almost like keeping secrets. So she wants to know: is this just how it is? Laura and Eric both talk about how different friend groups naturally serve different purposes. Your sober friends know your inner world in a way that's hard to explain to anyone on the outside. That's not a secret, that's just intimacy. And it doesn't mean something is wrong with your other relationships. They also talk about how this tends to soften over time. The hard line between your sober world and everyone else tends to blur as sobriety becomes less of a focal point and more just...who you are. Laura shares a story from a recent trip to Italy with non-sober friends (and the Instagram comment that followed) that perfectly captures how much can shift with time. This conversation is a good reminder that not every friendship has to go deep to be meaningful. You need the friends you can say everything to. You also need the friends you can just watch the game with. Both matter. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

Getting this episode recorded and out was like pulling teeth, but here we are. We couldn't let this question go unanswered, it's that good. A listener asked, "I'm sober, but finding myself shopping, scrolling, and using food as a way to fill that void where alcohol was, how do you (Laura and Eric) feel about this?" Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson CEO of The Luckiest Club, talk about their own experiences with transfer addictions and some guidelines that might help listeners understand if their habits are a problem. They also talk about how there can be harm in the need to constantly seek self-improvement. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

This week on Dear Vernon, The Luckiest Club Founder, Laura McKowen, and The Luckiest Club CEO, Eric Johnson, are answering the question "how do I tell people I'm not drinking?" and this is one we hear all the time. We've had close to a dozen people write in asking some variation of this question, so we knew it was time to answer it on the podcast. Truthfully, the answer you give your colleagues might be different than the answer you give to close friends and family. Laura and Eric give a few examples that they use in different situations and they'll share some of the responses and questions that they've got about their drinking. They also briefly touch on sober dating and how and when you might disclose this to your date. This conversation serves as a reminder that you don't have to tell everyone, but you do have to tell someone. Leaning it to a sober community is helpful way to gain the confidence to say "I don't drink." If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey and registration is open now: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety Want to learn more? We're hosting a Q&A Friday, May 1, 2026. You can register here!

In this episode of Dear Vernon, Eric Johnson and Laura McKowen respond to a question that doesn’t get talked about enough: What if you get sober… and you still can’t feel anything? The listener who wrote in shared that they hadn’t cried in years — not while drinking, and not in the months after stopping. No big emotional release. No tears. Just… nothing. Eric and Laura both know that feeling. They talk about: how alcohol can numb your emotions for a long time — even after you stopwhat it means to be in a kind of “freeze” or shutdown statewhy some emotions show up before others (and why it’s not usually sadness first)how anger, fear, and shame can block access to deeper feelingsand why your body might not be ready to go there yet Laura shares about her own experience with not being able to cry, both in early sobriety and while being on antidepressants for many years, and what it’s been like to slowly feel things come back online. Eric talks about how long it took for him to get there too, and how emotions didn’t come back all at once, they showed up in layers. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

In this episode of Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson dig into a question that comes up way more than people talk about — what do you do when sobriety just feels... boring? The question came in from a member who's 60 days sober, a busy working mom, and feeling this strange flatness she can't quite name. Laura and Eric unpack why "boredom" in early sobriety is rarely just boredom, and what's really going on underneath it. They talk about: Why drinking feels like fun (and why that's kind of a lie) The brain chemistry behind early sobriety flatness — dopamine deficits, anhedonia, and why the color seems to drain out of everything Why "I'm bored" often really means "I have no idea what I actually like" The Runaway Bride moment: figuring out how you like your eggs when you've always ordered what someone else wanted Why action has to come before inspiration (not the other way around) How to find joy in the small stuff when you don't have time for big stuff Why going big and letting it fly isn't actually fun — it's just loud This one's for anyone sitting in that strange in-between place where the chaos of early days has settled and you're left wondering... now what? 🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question, and it might be featured on a future episode. Get A Free Week Trial of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90- foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady- for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life- focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

Eric and Laura are back for another episode of Dear Vernon. Eric almost showed up in a dress shirt and tie. He didn't. Instead, he rolled up in his hoodie and baseball cap after a bowl of Cinnamon Pebbles. (He has no regrets. He will have them for lunch too.) This week's question comes from Karen, who's five months sober and asking something so many of us have wondered: when does the happy come back? Everything feels flat. Boring. Gray. She's not in danger of relapsing, she just wants to feel like herself again. Laura and Eric dig into what "happy" actually means in sobriety and whether drinking was really making us happy in the first place, or just giving us the illusion of caring less. (There's a difference. A big one.) They talk about the pink cloud (some people get it, some people — hi, Laura — absolutely do not), and why happiness might be the wrong thing to be chasing altogether. What they land on: peace of mind, freedom, and meaning. Not the fleeting "yay!" kind of happiness, but the kind that holds you up when life gets hard, which it certainly will. And for Karen and anyone else in the grind of early sobriety: the lights will come on. But you've got to change your life, not just quit drinking. Five months is huge — and it's also still early. Hang tight. You can learn more about The Luckiest Club here 👈 Yes, you can get a FREE week anytime! Submit a question to Dear Vernon

Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson tackle one of the most common (and least talked about) challenges in recovery: the profound loneliness that can show up after early sobriety. This week’s question comes from a member of The Luckiest Club who’s over a year sober and struggling with what he calls “drifting through interstellar space socially.”  The camaraderie of early recovery has faded, old relationships feel less relatable, and he’s wondering: if connection is the key to long-term sobriety, what do you do when you feel more alone than ever? Laura and Eric get real about: Why early sobriety loneliness hits so hard (and lasts longer than you think) The awkwardness of making friends as a sober adult How alcohol was a shortcut for intimacy that we have to rebuild without The vulnerability it takes to ask someone “can we be friends?” The energetic shift that happens when you stop hiding your sobriety Connect with us: Instagram: @theluckiestclub Ask us a question Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club

In this episode of Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson take on a question almost everyone in early sobriety faces: “I’m two months sober and I hate my job. I’ve been told not to make big life changes in the first year… So am I stuck here for 10 more months?” It’s a real one. There’s a lot of guidance out there about “no major changes in the first 12 months.” But is that a rule? A myth? A suggestion? And what do you do when the thing you want to change feels unbearable? Laura and Eric chat about: Why early sobriety can feel wildly dysregulatingWhere the “wait a year” guidance actually comes fromThe difference between leaving from clarity vs. leaving from chaosTrauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) and how they show up in big decisionsThe temptation to “blow it up” when feelings get uncomfortableWhy “wherever you go, there you are” matters more than you thinkHow to know if something is truly toxic vs. just uncomfortableWhy you shouldn’t make these decisions alone Sobriety doesn’t mean you stay miserable. It also doesn’t mean every uncomfortable feeling requires an exit strategy. This conversation is about discernment. And learning to tell the difference between growth and escape. As Laura says, there is sanity in community. If you’re navigating a big decision in sobriety — you don’t have to do it alone. Resources & Links✨ Join us inside The Luckiest Club Start with a free week trial If this episode resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and send it to someone who might need it. And if you have a question for Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson, submit it here — we might answer it on a future episode of Dear Vernon. See you next time.

In this episode of Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson respond to a listener question: "Are you ever actually recovered, or are you in recovery forever?" Laura reflects on what recovery means to her now, more than a decade into sobriety — how it’s shifted from something effortful and front-of-mind into something deeply integrated. Eric dives into the difference between sobriety (not drinking) and recovery (learning how to live, cope, and regulate without alcohol). Together, they talk about: The difference between being sober and being in recoveryWhy early sobriety can feel so heavy, and why it doesn’t stay that wayHow recovery evolves as it becomes part of who you areEmotional sobriety, regulation, and learning healthier ways to copeAnd why recovery isn’t about arriving somewhere perfect This is a conversation for anyone who’s wondered: “Will this always feel like work?” “Do people really do this forever?” “Does it ever get easier?” Want more support?We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in sobriety: 👉 The Sober 90 by The Luckiest Club — The Luckiest Club 👉 The Sober Steady — The Luckiest Club 👉 The Sober Life — The Luckiest Club Not a member yet? You can explore everything inside The Luckiest Club with a free 7-day trial: 👉 Start your free week Have a question for Dear Vernon?Submit it here — anonymously — and it might be featured on a future episode. If the show resonates, leave a review and share it with someone who needs it.

Welcome back to Dear Vernon, where we answer real questions about sobriety without pretending it’s simple or one-size-fits-all. In this episode, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson dig into a question a lot of you have been asking lately: What do we actually think about the new Surgeon General alcohol guidelines? 💭 And maybe more importantly… why do they feel so confusing? We talk about: What actually changed in the guidelines (and what didn’t)Why vague public health messaging can be frustrating, especially if you’re already questioning your drinkingThe idea of alcohol as a “social lubricant” (and why that framing matters)How people tend to cherry-pick guidance when they’re already strugglingWhat the research and data really says — including the landmark 2018 Lancet studyWhy clarity matters more than ever in a culture that already minimizes alcohol’s impact This isn’t about shaming, fear-mongering, or telling anyone what to do. It’s about context, honesty, and helping you make informed choices, especially if sobriety is already tugging at you. As always, we’ll keep having these conversations, because the questions don’t stop once you stop drinking. Want support beyond the podcast?If this episode stirred something up, you don’t have to sit with it alone. Here’s how you can plug into TLC: The Sober 90 — for getting sober and building a strong foundation 👉 https://www.theluckiestclub.com/the-sober-90The Sober Steady — for the messy middle (staying sober, learning regulation & resilience) 👉 https://www.theluckiestclub.com/the-sober-steadyThe Sober Life — for long-term sobriety and emotional growth 👉 https://www.theluckiestclub.com/the-sober-lifeTry TLC free for a week (meetings, community, real support) 👉 https://www.theluckiestclub.com/free-weekResearch MentionedThe 2018 Lancet Study on Alcohol Use & Health 👉 https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(18)31571-X/fulltextVivek Murthy Paper 👉 Our Epidemic of Loneliness and IsolationHave a question you want us to answer on a future episode? Submit it anonymously here— we might talk about it next. And if this episode helped, made you think, or made you feel less alone: Leave a review, share it with a friend, or send it to someone who’s quietly questioning their relationship with alcohol. We’ll be back soon. 💛

Welcome to the very first episode of Dear Vernon. We know. You probably have questions. Like… who is Vernon? And why are people writing letters to him? And how did this turn into a podcast? In this episode, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson sit down to talk through the why behind Dear Vernon—where the idea came from, what it’s meant to be (and what it’s not), and why creating a space for honest questions about sobriety felt necessary. This isn’t a show about having all the answers. It’s about making room for the questions. The ones people are already asking themselves quietly. You’ll hear us talk about: Why sobriety isn’t a straight line—and never has beenWhat we mean when we say “Dear Vernon”Why advice isn’t always the point (and listening usually is)How community, curiosity, and honesty have shaped our own recoveryWhat you can expect from future episodes This podcast is meant to feel like pulling up a chair—not tuning into a lecture. Thanks for being here. Let’s see where this goes. Have a question for Vernon? You can ask it here 👈 Get a FREE week of sobriety support meetings at The Luckiest Club 🐦‍⬛ Next round of The Sober 90 starts February 2nd, 2026. Join The Sober 90 Follow us on Instagram