The Best Alcohol-Removed Wines for Thanksgiving: Expert Picks from Mo and Heather Lowe

Thanksgiving brings together our favorite things—family, food, and the little rituals that make this holiday feel like home. As we dust off old cookbooks for the perfect dressing recipe or debate canned versus ho...

Labor Day Weekend 2024 something got me, but let’s back up and start at the beginning. I am 6 ½ years sober and a sober coach. Alcohol has nothing to do with holiday weekends anymore.

The days of last chances to soak up summer and get wasted in pools and boats are long gone. In part because I am so...

This Thanksgiving, I hosted six straight days of company.

At one point, I helped host a crowd of 15. Another night, 13.
An open-door week-long mix of family and friends passing through our Illinois home from Colorado, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

Ages six to 77.
Three dogs.
Beautiful chaos, me...

It is 2016. I am on a sober experiment, maybe 14 days in, and it is the 4th of July. We are out of town, spontaneously visiting friends. One of them works in hospitality and got us a beautiful hotel room in a nearly sold out city. When we check in, there’s chilled champagne for us, a sweet note, and...

The details are very foggy, but I have a drunken Easter story. 

For the life of me, I can’t think about why I would have been without plans or my family on Easter, but one year it happened. Maybe I chose it? Or maybe some Easter celebrations were held on different days? I have no idea. I really ...

I thought St. Patrick’s Day was my favorite holiday. 

I look good in green. I like corned beef. I was raised on beer.

One look at me and you would swear I was a jolly Irish soul. 

I am 5 years sober. 

After decades of drunken shenanigans involving day drinking and green beer, it turns out ...

I was talking with a client last week and she mentioned the weekend might be hard. 

Why? 

Because it’s Labor Day, a three day holiday weekend, and the end of summer.

It hit me that I hadn’t even thought about that. 

I did have a trip out of town for my Aunt’s Funeral services at the ...

There was a moment this weekend where I picked up a glass of whiskey,

so I could wash the table underneath so we could play cards after dinner. 

I put my nose in and smelled it.

It smelled so good!!! 

It gave me a warm, boozy, fuzzy feeling just to sniff it.

I knew I would love the burn going d...

My first sober Cinco de Mayo was something to anticipate and get through.

Something to white knuckle and endure or tolerate.

Cince de Mayo was another milestone drinking holiday that I was about to do sober for the first time.

Similar to St. Patrick’s Day.

I always drank on these occasions...

People love to joke about the strange, foggy time between Christmas and New Year’s—like it’s some kind of twilight zone.

For many people, it probably is.

It definitely was for me.

Before sobriety, this week meant bouncing from one holiday party to the next. I’d do the bare minimum to get showe...