Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast · Stefanie Wilder-Taylor

Little Addictions: What Happens After You Quit Drinking with Catherine Gray

·54 min·2 clips

Rock bottom moment that led to 12 years of sobriety and recovery

Stephanie opens the conversation by introducing Catherine Gray and her new book, Little Addictions. Gray says the book took up about eight months of the previous year, and that she is proud of it and glad she did it. The book sits at the center of the exchange. From there, they widen out into the afterlife of quitting drinking, including the odd substitutions and small compulsions that can take the place of alcohol once the obvious problem is gone. Stephanie pushes on the idea that every return to day one should carry the same emotional burden. Gray answers with the broader view that recovery is not a single staircase and that different people need different kinds of support. They name several recovery paths. Women for Sobriety, Refuge, SMART, AA, reading, online community, and a self-built program all come up as valid ways in. Gray says her way in was voracious reading, the Facebook group, the friends she met there, listening and talking, and building her own program. Stephanie meets that with her own belief that shame is a bad guide. The two of them come back again and again to radical honesty. Gray says she lives by it, and that even when she slips and says something inaccurate, she usually goes back and corrects it because that instinct feels central to who she is now. That detail gives the conversation its texture. It is not a polished sobriety manifesto. It sounds like two people who know how much weirdness lives inside recovery and are willing to laugh at it without flattening the pain. The show keeps its footing in lived experience rather than tidy advice. There is no grand theory here. Instead, the episode keeps pointing back to what helps: community, self-knowledge, and a willingness to keep trying without turning every misstep into a personal failure. Gray also leaves room for the reality that sobriety has made her life better in ways she could not imagine while drinking. The conversation closes on that plain gratitude, plus a reminder that if the book lands with readers, she wants them to DM her and share what they thought.

As heard by us

A candid sober check-in on what keeps tugging after the bottle is gone.

This episode sits in the uneasy stretch after quitting drinking, where the real test is not the decision itself but staying steady. Stephanie Wilder-Taylor keeps it close and conversational, while Catherine Gray gives the discussion shape through relapse, radical honesty, and…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want sobriety talk that gets past white-knuckle clichés.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Drunk-ish - A Sobriety Podcast