The Weekender 9/12/25
Love & sex addiction/a simple sweet mocktail with vinegar/finally a gorgeous NA space/visit my favorite place in the world
Every story and experience is different, but when I quit drinking, I was full of excitement and energy. I love a good comeback, a turnaround, the feeling of having a gnarly cold, and then getting to do all the things that bring you back to health in all its glory. I love it just like I loved doing all the healthy things to get me from feeling like crap after a night of excess to a week of feeling rejuvenated and almost like I had my life together, that is, until the next big party.
Deciding I was no longer going to drink alcohol was like getting to do all the wellness girly things X a hundred. It was my chance to start a new life overnight, which was refreshing, but what I wasn’t expecting was the level of effort it took to find things to do that weren’t revolved around alcohol. I mean, after the excitement and energy of it all wore off, I was left with a lot of work to do.
The Weekender is meant to add options to your alcohol-free lifestyle and to help alleviate some of the effort (mental effort mostly) that it takes to live this way. Each Friday, you will find a curated list and assortment of happenings for the non-drinker, NA drink options, book and podcast recommendations, interesting people you should know, and a variety of healthy, feel-good choices to consider and add to this intentional way of living.
THE WEEKEND AHEAD
I enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert, and I’ve never understood the love-hate relationship people have with her. She is human. She has a massive reach. She has undoubtedly done a lot of good in the world. And she has a new book, if you haven’t already heard a million times just this morning alone. It’s called All the Way to the River, and I just started the book, so I can’t speak to it, but what I can say and know is that many people in this community are going to have something to say. And I don’t want to hear it. I only want to hear about people being open to another human being having her own experience and sharing it. She just happens to be sharing it with the entire f-ing world.
“Vigilance, you must be vigilant, you must never, never rest because these people are capable of anything- so read the room, feel the room, I can read a face from a hundred yards, I can feel, I can sit in a house with ten people in it in different rooms and I can tell you what everyone is feeling, like it’s essential for me to know and monitor, track the moods and the sensations of everyone - for my own safety” - EG on RR podcast.
I could not have said this better myself, and it is a feeling/skill/mastery I have had all my life. Many labels would love to claim this exact awareness ability, but EG speaks from the experience of having a love and sex addiction. While I am unfamiliar with the patterns of love and sex addiction, I do know a little bit about co-dependency and fawning. I have a suspicion many of us do.
While I watched both the Rich Roll and Oprah interviews, if you only have time for one, watch the Rich Roll (or listen). His perspective as someone in recovery makes for a much more interesting and powerful interview. I found Oprah to be more distracting because she seemed unable to shake her obvious shock at how honest Gilbert was in her book.
While the NA market is vast, it holds a lot of crap products. And while I would love to get on a high horse and say we shouldn’t try any of the crap ones, sometimes, they just look good, even if sugar is the main ingredient.
Bitters - the NA ones here, or if you are unbothered by regular here - or if you really like a kick (which I do), splash some vinegar in.
Fun ice ball molds are available here, or you could go real fancy and pay $1200 for them - but why?
And of course, you deserve to drink it out of these gorgeous Tom Dixon Puck Coupe glasses.
NYC is getting another great feature to this AF lifestyle in the form of a gorgeous NA drink/coffee/event space in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Owner and Bravo TV personality Carl Radke will debut his new space, SOFT Bar, next week on September 17th. I love how the space looks and feels modern and beautiful. You can tell the team really took the time to consider the aesthetics of it all. I am really rooting for it!
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserGlennon Doyle will be hosting a weekend workshop at my favorite place on earth, Kripalu. If you can’t join in person, an online option is available. Kripalu is where I solidified my decision to be a non-drinker by spending eight days there, so literally ten years ago today, I was there, having my WTF am I doing with my life pep talk. If you are ever looking for a place to escape to, this place is it. I am sure Glennon will be fantastic in person; however, if I were deciding, I would opt for Glennon’s online option and save my Kripalu trip for when I could attend alone, without a celebrity hosting a weekend workshop, knowing then that it wouldn’t be crazy and packed to capacity. Some of my favorite memories at Kripalu were the quiet, winter weekends when I spent my time reading, writing, and watching the snowfall from the couches overlooking the Berkshires. I can still smell it.
Happy Weekend!
MM.
I’ve been toying with the idea of a trip to Kripalu!! And I think you just solidified that this needs to happen.