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Sober Vibes Podcast
Welcome to Sober Vibes, where sobriety meets empowerment! Hosted by sober coach, author, and mom Courtney Andersen—who’s been thriving in her alcohol-free life since 8/18/2012—this podcast is your go-to space for real talk, proven strategies, and inspiring stories from women who are redefining what it means to live without alcohol.
Each week, Courtney dives deep into the topics that matter most—from conquering cravings and navigating social settings to rebuilding confidence and finding joy in sobriety. Whether you’re newly sober, in long-term recovery, or simply curious about life without alcohol, the Sober Vibes Podcast delivers the support, insights, and encouragement you need.
Join a like-minded community and discover how sobriety can unlock a healthier, happier, and more fulfilling life. Don’t just get sober—let’s thrive together!
Sober Vibes Podcast
Sober Empowerment with Jessica Stipanovic
Episode 184: Sober Empowerment with Jessica Stipanovic
In episode 184 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen welcomes Jessica Stipanovic to the show. They discuss the positive changes that happen when one lives a sober life. We discuss her transition from a private battle with alcoholism to becoming a public advocate for recovery, touching on the concept of "more being revealed" as life unfolds, bringing new insights and opportunities.
Jessica lives her best life out loud. She is a writer, business owner, and the voice behind the Sober Living Stories podcast.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Positive changes that happen in sober life
- Recovering out Loud
- Jessica's story of addiction and recovery
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Hey, welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast. I'm your host, courtney Anderson. You are listening to episode 184. If you are new here, welcome. I'm glad you're here, and if you are a good person of the world who's been listening to day one, I appreciate it. I got a great interview today and with this guest we are talking about how the decision to stop drinking alcohol affects your life in a positive way, and I just love her story. Our guest today is Jessica Stepovic and she is the host of the Sober Living Stories. She's also an author and that's the podcast, the Sober Living Stories and an author, so she's a cool chick. I really enjoyed our conversation and just vibed with her, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as well.
Speaker 1:Before we get started okay, I'm going to do this one more time. Third time is the charm. I'm going to try hosting another sober vacation. If you have not filled out the form with Trova Trip and you are interested in coming, I want you to fill this out and I'm going to give about a week on this. Okay, to gather more data in case anybody new wants to come with us on this trip, and you will just fill out the questionnaire and how much you can spend on it, where you want to go? Just a couple quick questions, it's not long. You want to go? Just a couple quick questions, it's not long, and then I will let you know where everybody chooses, because it's always just one spot.
Speaker 1:So this past one we tried doing I tried doing a trip when we weren't on, when I was on a break, trover Trip wanted to do another one, which was great, because I do totally want to do this and this trip is going to be in 2025. Because when I talked to the girl again, I was like we need to push this and this trip is going to be in 2025. Because when I talked to the girl again, I was like we need to push this out, because I would like to give people a longer amount of time to get ready for this and just know when I launch it, I will email it to and blast it on my socials, and then whatever podcast is coming up after we decide which place we're going to go to, then I will announce it on that. Okay, because it is it's like the first people, the first 10 people, who sign up for it get a discounted rate, and so then you just have to put down your deposit on it. So when we this past time in the wintertime, it was supposed to be for Costa Rica and then that did not happen. So I still want to go to Costa Rica, but it really all depends on where you want to go and how much you want to spend, and we would.
Speaker 1:I am looking for a chill trip. I don't want to be ziplining in a forest. I would like to chill on the beach and do a couple of light activities and just get to know one another. So if you have not filled that link out in that survey, the link is in the show notes below, or reach out to me in my DMs on Instagram and I will send it to you. So, like I said, after I get all the information and finalize the trip, then I will announce the trip. Okay, enjoy this episode and I will see you on the next one. Hey, jessica, welcome to the Silver Vibes podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi, it's so good to be here. Courtney, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for being here and also, too, we talked what like a month ago, so I was on your podcast. So I will link your podcast to the show notes below and the good people of the world can go and listen to that one. So you just had a huge milestone happen to you yesterday. You want to share what that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I celebrated 19 years of continuous sobriety yesterday, so June 10th was my last ever. And yeah, 19 years. It was a good day and I reflected a lot on, as you normally do, I think, when your years pass. You just kind of think about when more is revealed and you're just like, wow, this happened. And it's like we live so many lives before we land on this one.
Speaker 1:When you talk about more being revealed, because I think this is a good one what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Well, even this morning I was thinking about past, tense and like, here I am in Florida, raising a family, have a business, helping run another business with my husband, and I think of how many different lives happened prior to me getting to this one, to like the one of like health wellness. This is where I landed and it's amazing, it's really incredible to think back. And, of course, coming on here, I knew what we were going to talk about and I celebrated 19 years yesterday, but it was only this year that I talked openly about that. So for 18 years I was very private about my sobriety because I was part of a 12-step recovery program and that's the path that I took and chose and it really saved me.
Speaker 1:So I have high honor for that, but I also respect the tradition of that Was that hard for you to transition into then talking about it, because you were not the first woman that I have talked about or talked to about that where they's. They came from the 12 step background and then it was. It was almost like a push and pull of them wanting to talk openly about it, but then it was like, okay, but then you don't like. This is what I, this is what I've known, so how is that for you?
Speaker 2:Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I I was very like I'd like I felt like a very strict recovery upbringing as far as because I just I really didn't want to, I really wanted to stay. I didn't want to have back and forth sobriety, and so I took it very seriously 19 years ago and I listened for the first time to direction. I did things I didn't want to do. I got very comfortable doing things I did not want to do, but I was in a place where I really wanted my life to get back and I desperately wanted to get well, and so that required me to no longer rely on myself in this one area because I had, like I was so self-sufficient up until that point. So, anyway, I really adhered to the 12 sets just worked for me, I really, and it works for so many people but not for everybody. So for me this year or the past two years, I was always a writer and I always wanted to write a book and I had finished my rough draft and I knew that I had to create a platform for that to kind of launch into the world eventually, and so I started my own podcast and what I did was I started to highlight guests who overcame and we're now living like their best version.
Speaker 2:But prior to that launch, I was on a podcast where I shared my story for the very first time and it was difficult because for three days afterwards, oh, I just felt like gosh, should I have done that? There was such a fear of like well one. It took me a long time to decide to do that because I didn't want to violate anything that I thought, yeah, I just honored where I came from, how I was doing things, and I just wanted to make sure I was solid in my intent. And when I was, then I did it. And it was hard because, after it's said and done, you're just like, oh no, people that I know don't know that part of me, but I got to tell you it was such a turning point in everything and nobody ran away.
Speaker 2:Everybody just ran toward me. I was like, yeah, that's incredible, because it is very hard to find anyone that I know who does not if they're not affected by it themselves. They have somebody a friend, a distant cousin, a relative, a coworker who's been affected by that. It was an open door I took and I had seen somebody on I think it was Instagram, and she said I had two sobriety dates or something. One was my true one and then one was my coming out, yeah, speaking openly.
Speaker 2:And it opened me to a whole, whole, whole, entire different group of people no yeah, don't you feel though freer?
Speaker 1:oh my 100 open door, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations, congrats on 19 years and then congrats, too, on talking about it openly and then starting or starting your podcast talking about it openly. And so, starting your podcast talking about it openly, and so it's definitely a process, and one that is freer and, I think, one I truly. I respect everybody if they want to be private or not, but honest to God, because I had started sharing 30 days in back on my sobriety journey in 2012. And for me, I had to live that and it just added an extra layer of accountability, it added an extra layer of healing and it gave me a freedom to be like okay for me, of how I saw it, of I'm not going to whisper, talk about my recovery. I'm proud of this and I just, I think for anybody, once you start telling people that you are sober when you're ready to, it just frees your soul, yeah, and just helps you in such a different way where you're like okay, then people know this about you and this is not something that you have to go around and be quiet about. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:What was the point, though, that took you up to when you quit drinking? And I'm not too sure if drugs were part of your story too, but what took you to the point where you said enough was enough 19 years ago?
Speaker 2:Well, prior to the very last day, you have these people that speak into your life like whether it's a sentence and you just remember it or it gets you mad. And I remember for myself I guess it was in my early 20s and I was living out in California and just landed the role of Anna Delamico on ER. So we were just in the mix of all of her hype and it was just a nice time to. It should have been a really fun time. I always wanted to be a writer. I had started a job at a publishing company in Agora Hills called Valley of the Sun Publishing and with a really great family like Dick and Tara Sefton. It was like a metaphysical publishing company at that time and I was doing their PR. So it was like this incredible time.
Speaker 2:And I remember coming home one day and she said to me Maria said to me I had like a six pack or something. I just stopped. And she said to me do you think you might have a drinking problem? And I remember thinking, no, I mean, everybody drinks after work, but I would like drink and go for a run and then I would come home and drink with dinner. But I remember thinking about what she said because I knew that she knew what she was talking about because she had it in her own family, where I did not. And she's a really strong person she was then and I respected her. So I think a couple of days later I thought why'd she say that?
Speaker 2:And ironically it was such short time thereafter that I ended up leaving that house in the Hollywood Hills, moving across the expressway and getting my own one room, like clothes still in bags, still going to my publishing job. But things shifted dramatically. And they talk about that invisible line that you cross into alcoholism and that was my story alcoholism. And I can pinpoint and tell you that in that, in that one room flat in Laurel Canyon, is where I absolutely crossed that line and my drinking was never the same and it was like a really a really contrasting view and yeah, that's where it really kind of went.
Speaker 1:So how long were you in that period of time, in that one?
Speaker 2:For a bit and I ended up and I knew that it like I was in a desperate place. I didn't know what was happening because, like I didn't have anyone around me that had suffered from alcoholism or anyone in recovery, so I just I really didn't know what was going on, but I knew that something was really wrong and I ended up moving back to the East Coast home and for the next, I would say, eight years, near decade. I sought a solution for that and at first, like I said, I didn't know what it was. So it's not like I went to get help for alcoholism. I went to endocrinologists, psychologists, psychiatrists. I changed, I was just looking for an answer to why I felt so wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that answer. When did you get that answer?
Speaker 2:Years later. I did a lot of. I was misdiagnosed, I was put on medication for something I didn't have for two and a half years, which in a sense could have saved me because it kept me home, but ultimately I knew that wasn't it.
Speaker 2:And I have not since been on anything like that for 20 years. But I, when I came to that answer, I did a lot of geographical changes. I traveled far and wide just seeking, seeking answers and I just bounced around countries and I thought I would just take myself out of this place long enough to return so that I would come back my old self. And it never happened. And it didn't happen until much later that I realized that well, I'm taking myself there and I'm not okay and so fast forward.
Speaker 2:I think of my brother, because I remember I was leaving once and thinking I was doing this for everybody, I'm going to leave and come back better. And I remember him saying I was going to Indonesia, I had like five items in my bag I always traveled solo and I remember him saying, hey, when are you going to be back? And I was like I don't know, maybe a year, and I never thought I think of that word, self-seeking and I never thought, like what about him? Like I think of my kids today, if my son said to my daughter I'll be back in a year she'd be like where are you going?
Speaker 2:And I did that with friends and fast forward. For me the turning point was my very last night, after I had my own home in Ormond Beach, florida, and I it was like a difficult night. I came home. I remember I had driven that night Absolutely should not have been driving. I reached under my bed and I pulled out some papers, like I couldn't fall asleep and I thought, let me just grab some photos and stuff.
Speaker 2:And I started reading a letter and it was a letter that my grandmother's friend had written to her and she was talking about the devastation that had happened within her family recently because her granddaughter, who was an active alcoholic like me at the time I'm going to head to Miami on Monday I'll go, I'll check myself in and that Friday she had gotten into the car to go to Miami and she was drunk and as she was leaving her neighborhood she hit and killed a little girl.
Speaker 2:And the letter was talking to my grandmother about the devastation that her family felt because she was arrested for vehicular manslaughter. And this was just a normal girl, that just yeah, the repercussions of. And I remember in that room, in that moment I always thought that my drinking was just affecting me and it was very, very clear to me in that moment that the message was that it wouldn't be me who would be hurt by my actions, but it was it would affect someone else, and that was completely unacceptable to me. And as soon as I had that information, like I literally heard a voice come down and say to me I'm going to give this to you one more time, please take it. And I like I heard that audibly and I said so I said out loud okay, I will, and I never drank again that night we've all been there.
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Speaker 1:So many of us had, and that was like meant to be for you to find that letter from your grandma Was your? Is your grandmother still alive or at that time?
Speaker 2:She was at that time and she was a very big supporter of me and she has since passed, but, yeah, she was always very supportive and she loved. She loved that I was sober. My whole family is very supportive of me not drinking and, yeah, they've always been.
Speaker 1:Wonderful A true gift. So did you go straight into AA at that point the next day, or did it take you a minute to get there? What was your? What?
Speaker 2:was kind of your recovery plan. In the morning. I remember waking up, I remember looking in the mirror and I and I and it's funny cause I I write about this a lot Like I looked in the mirror and I looked in my eyes and there was such like a like a blank vacancy behind my eyes that I thought like active alcoholics should be like admitting themselves into the hospital.
Speaker 2:But I was just like getting ready to go to work and it's like at what time? So I called a friend she was my very first like mentor in all of this that morning and I said and she kind of followed me all those eight years, always answering the phone, never, not once answering the phone for me, and I said, okay, I'm done. And she said, okay, well, you know what to do. And from that point on I started to do things that I hadn't done the other times and that looked like showing up when I didn't want to show up, being incredibly uncomfortable in situations and just, and I took direction for the first time in my life from people that had more time than me and I was very dead serious about it and I didn't care what someone had said to me.
Speaker 2:This is not a popularity contest. Someone had said to me this is not a popularity contest, do not care about anyone sitting next to you or what anyone else is doing around you in your life. To me it was like a real life-saving mission. So, yeah, and I got around really good people and I still know so many of them right this moment and they just showed me how to, yeah, just live different and to put that down, because it's like a physical disease that affects us in so many ways. But you know, cravings are real and I had to know how to deal with that.
Speaker 2:And yeah, they taught me. They showed me the way.
Speaker 1:And I think that's really important of what you said, of that you really do you have to start doing things differently, right, like you cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again, because you will not get different results. And once you do start to do things differently, then that's when the real change happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I had someone tell me. She said when your head tells you to go north, you turn the blank around and you're going to go south. And you're going to do that for a while, because you're just going to retrain yourself and like you don't think that that's what's required. You don't think, like, how do I have to relearn how to do stuff? But it's just the way that it is.
Speaker 1:It's the way that it is. It's a rediscovery of yourself without alcohol, and that does require for things to for you. You might want to kick and scream like a five-year-old, but if restaurants are currently triggering, you, get carry out. You cannot continue to sit in restaurants for the first couple of weeks. If that is your trigger, you have to stop doing that thing, and it's very habitual too. But you've got to stop yourself in the tracks and like nope, can't do this. This will not lead to the desired result that I want.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, it's like an internal decision and once you make it, then you just move forward and follow suit until, like they say, the abnormal becomes normal. Right, like yeah, and it just becomes life, and it gets so good that you wouldn't want to stop.
Speaker 1:Right. So how did the decision to stop drinking affect your life in such a positive way? And I mean I've, throughout this podcast I have. I have shared the positive ones, but I always like to hear from other people that one decision really opens up your life.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah Well, it's like the barstool mentality, when you're sitting on a barstool and you're like I'm going to do this and I'm going to go here.
Speaker 2:But nothing comes to fruition. You're just talking and like here's a good example. And all those years that I was bouncing around like using a plane, like a cab, I was always writing. I was always like wherever's a good example. And all those years that I was bouncing around like using a plane, like a cab, I was always writing. I was always like wherever I was, I would, I would take a cooking class in in a boot and like write about it but, I, never submitted.
Speaker 2:I never published and paid. It was never a working profession, really, when I stopped drinking I started freelancing for like a paper and a magazine and within short time I went from eight years of no publications nothing, to open-ended articles, to working freelance and in short time had over like 150 published and paid articles. But I'm not saying that because that's something, but that's just like the perfect example of like everybody has it in them, like whatever they're going to do.
Speaker 2:And then you grab onto these habits and these life-changing, detrimental like detours and you just squash it and it's like it doesn't have to be that way. It can totally come back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what period of time when you quit drinking did that? Did those published articles start happening?
Speaker 2:Oh, within like three years, within my first couple of years. Yeah, short time, right, short time, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it afforded me like a just a whole new life, like in all areas, big and small. Even like somebody had invited I was living in Colorado for like a hot minute and they were like, hey, do you want to go to the Denver game? And I was like I don't like sports, spectator sports, I don't want to go. Yeah, not really. But then I was like, well, let me go. Like I never went there sober and I went and I had an incredible time. I will never say no to tickets, ever again. Somebody said, hey, you want to go out to eat? In Florida they have like crab legs, these long crab legs, and I'm like, no, I'm from the East coast, I only eat blue, blue claw crabs Maryland crabs.
Speaker 2:I don't want those. And then I was like wait. And he's like maybe you do, maybe you like them. And I went there. I was like, oh, you can like wait. And he's like maybe you do, maybe you like them. And I went there. I was like all you can, so you're just eating them forever. You're like I love them, like you just. I started riding horse like I just did so many things that I never did never did or thought I didn't like to do, but I just kept it open.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you really get to know yourself and you really get to. Yeah, like you said, like you rediscover who you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was thinking of that yesterday, of just like this I think after quitting drinking is a huge life turning event and people have many of them in their life, of these life altering events and whether it's becoming a mom, a loss of somebody, a total career switch, quitting drinking. It really is a process. It's like okay, once you especially too, for quitting drinking, once you get over that hump of where the focus is not I'm not going to drink today. Everybody is different with that. Some people after 30 days they're like cool, I'm not thinking about it. Some people it takes them years and years and years not to think about it on a daily basis. But once you get over that hump, then it's really like okay, who am I now? Right, like you just said. Like well, I always just said that I only ate the East Coast main crabs right Like now.
Speaker 1:I want to try something different and I think, for anybody who's listening to this in the middle of that change right now, that to know that it's okay to change your mind and again figure out who you are, because when you quit drinking, it's a total rebrand of yourself, right, right, and you might have a best friend that you loved and adored. And then you got sober, you quit drinking and you're like this person's really not my cup of tea anymore. It happens with people.
Speaker 1:This isn't just like a food thing or a place that you thought you might once hated, Like it's people in your life too, where you wake up in your sobriety and you're actually like you're not that cool. And that even could be your father. Like so it's a totally different situation, because you wake up and you have this clarity. The clarity hits one day and you're just. You re-examine your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Like I think that speaks to like the morality comp, like the moral compass of like who we are, it totally changes. And when you surround yourself with people that say, yeah, we show up, or like we actually keep commitments, like you're not, yeah, you're supposed to keep commitments, and I'm like, oh okay. And so you start to, if you have better relationships, you start to reconcile old relationships, you start to be more outside of yourself and for others, which I think is so helpful, especially early on when you're struggling and you're trying to get your footing. Reaching out and helping other people takes you outside of that focus of you and what you're doing, and it's so helpful to kind of your growth. And then the offshoot of that is you're helping other people because you're you're now like you know what it feels like.
Speaker 2:So there's that empathy and that concern and care for people who are like really under it and it just grows from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is an internal positive way for you that when you quit drinking, something that happened for you internally that was a positive?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing that happened to me and it happened in my third year was that I forgave myself. Yeah, 100%. It was a profound. It was probably the most profound thing that's ever happened to me in my life. To be honest with you, how was that process?
Speaker 1:like for you.
Speaker 2:Well for me. I remember when somebody I was listening to somebody speak and he was saying that he forgave himself and he was drinking like green tea. And I was like who is this guy? I was like pounding like 12 cups of coffee a day. I needed forgiveness but had no idea how to do that. I so desperately wanted that. And here he was like up there standing so freely talking about his life.
Speaker 2:And I remember that specifically, and what ended up happening was the way that I came to that for myself was I kept saying please, forgive me. I thought that was the prayer that I had to say. And what I realized I had read Marianne Williamson and she was pivotal in actually helping me get sober, something that she had said. I was at a conference that she had in Washington DC and in one of her books I remember her saying that's not the right prayer. The prayer is instead to acknowledge what has already been done for me.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, and it hit me one day when I struggled with one of my the hardest thing that I probably did in my past, and I remember coming home that day and I went to say the prayer and I thought, no, I'm going to say instead, please allow me to acknowledge what's already been done. And I didn't even get done with that sentence and everything in me just shifted and changed and I cried for like three hours and I remember that month I stayed really quiet because I had such a peace around me that I never experienced before and it didn't go away. And every morning I got up I just went to work and I didn't want to talk to anyone because I didn't want it to leave. And yeah, it was a gift, it was a true gift and I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 1:And yeah, it was a gift, it was a true gift and I'm very grateful for that. When, in that process of the forgiving, did you just feel like it was almost like the elephant was lifted off of your chest? Because that is a lot to hold on to and a lot of people do have not forgiven themselves Everything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything was lifted off Everything. Right and I think it happened because of work I had done previously on forgiving other people, like looking back at my past and who I had hurt or where there needed to be forgiveness given or received, and I started doing it like out there, first because I couldn't do it for myself yet and because I had positive experience. I really had positive experiences with that throughout. Whether they received or not, I had a positive experience from it and then it ultimately allowed that to be gifted to me.
Speaker 1:Love it, I love it. Well, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:I am at wwwjessicastepanoviccom. S-t-i-p-a-n-o-v-i-c and I'm also on Instagram and that's going to be shifting a little bit soon, but I'm there at Jessica Stepanovich and I do a weekly Sunday newsletter every week with episodes from my podcast. Just, you can find everything there. It's like an all-in-one.
Speaker 1:And I will link everything below in the show notes when are you shifting to?
Speaker 2:I am shifting to. I have a rough draft of my memoir that's sitting there waiting for me to tackle. I love it, which is the love of my life, and I will get back there. But I mean, I added 30,000 words and I think I love the original 20. So that editing mountain is one to be climbed very soon.
Speaker 2:But I've been like adamantly putting out a weekly podcast on the Sober Living Stories podcast. Love every guest that comes on. They just shed light into my life and they're highlighted for all their goodness. And now I'm shifting to an online business, which I really am wanting to support female entrepreneurs, but I'm really wanting to support them in a way that I run a home business with my husband. I run these other things. I have three children. There are so many different. It's like a balancing act. It sure is, and that's what I want to help them with. So I just trying to put that together and that'll be a separate account, but I don't have that out yet. I'm excited for it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so your current Instagram account. You're not going anywhere with that. You'll still be running that and the new one when it comes time. Okay, all right, perfect. Well, I will list everything in the show notes below. Thank you so much for sharing your story and again, congrats on 19 years.
Speaker 2:That's huge Thank you and thank you. Thank you for having me and also thank you for having such an incredible platform for women.
Speaker 1:Absolutely All right. Well, you take care, and good people of the world keep kicking ass and taking names. Games.
