This is eventually going to be a massive database that I’ve curated. Right now there’s a chance of the bot I made go look for this stuff having left some weird stuff in, or even worse having written some AI prose despite all my safeguards that it NOT DO THAT. So YMMV: I know there’s some good stuff in here because I copied and pasted it, but there might still be some slop. Tell me if there is, or you have any better links, and I’ll include them.
The Counterweight
QUITTING.GHOST.IO · THE COUNTERWEIGHT
Sober Champions.
It might feel like the good part of your life is over if you quit, but it’s far more often the opposite. Here are public figures thriving sober (note: these people are not selected for being role models themselves, which is highly subjective anyway — but if someone’s story or personality is worse than I thought let me know and I’ll yank the card)
The premise of every wine-mom mug, every after-work pint advert, every "I need this" sigh on television: take this away and what's left of you?
This list is what's left of them.
Not all of them. Not even a representative sample. Just a partial reading of public figures who put alcohol down — some recently, some decades ago — and kept building careers, families, bodies of work that don't seem to have suffered for it.
Section I
Actors
Featured archives
Long-form pieces on individual people whose recovery stories carry the load.