Labels in Sobriety: What Are They and Do We Need Them?
Sober Awkward
Victoria Vanstone
4.8 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2025
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this retrospective episode, Hamish and Vic dive into the world of labels in sobriety. From “alcoholic” to “sober curious,” these words can carry a lot of weight—but what do they really mean? And more importantly, do we even need them?
We explore how labels can empower some people while feeling restrictive or unnecessary to others. Are they a helpful tool for understanding and connection, or do they create more pressure and division?
Join us as we unravel the complexities of labels in the sober space, sharing our own awkward experiences and asking the big questions: What defines you? And do you need a label to live your truth? It’s a thought-provoking start to a deep conversation about identity and sobriety.
You can listen to the full episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/02RBIqvlhMWrGPB6RGpiRq?si=dbe80edd428e4f60
Show Notes -
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Show Notes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I recently was interviewed for the Daily Mail, which is always a bit scary with these sort of tabloid papers, |
| 0:12.6 | because you're never quite sure what they're going to say. |
| 0:15.6 | And we're talking about labels today, so this is a good topic to start with. |
| 0:20.3 | They put on the front page, I'll start at the |
| 0:24.4 | beginning actually, I got a text in the morning from a friend of mine saying, you're in the |
| 0:29.1 | daily mail today, which I knew I was going to be shed, but the pictures are not of you. I was like, |
| 0:33.4 | what do you mean? And she texted me the link and I opened it up and it was a picture, |
| 0:38.0 | three pictures actually, of somebody standing on a mountain like going, yay, a random woman |
| 0:43.8 | and somebody in a hospital bed. Yeah, and I think these were three different women. I don't |
| 0:48.4 | think it's the same person even the same person. So that I was like, oh, fucking hell, |
| 0:53.3 | what are they going to have written if |
| 0:54.8 | they've just used pictures of a random person? And one of the things I said to the journal was, |
| 1:00.2 | look, this is not a rock bottom story. There is no drama here. Sometimes there is no drama in |
| 1:05.5 | over drinking. It's just somebody in their bedroom sitting with their finger on their pulse, |
| 1:09.9 | wondering if they're going to die. There's no big, you know, vomiting on a room from a people and making a fool out of yourself |
| 1:15.2 | sometimes. It can be quite a private thing, especially if you're just sober curious and it hasn't |
| 1:20.4 | got extreme and you're just questioning your alcohol. All that is happening is it's something |
| 1:24.6 | going on in your brain. So I didn't want this to be like rock bottom mother or drunk mother or anything like that. |
| 1:31.3 | Anyway, the headline ended up being alcoholic mother. |
| 1:35.6 | Yes. |
| 1:36.8 | Which I found unusual because actually she then wrote, I think so she, in the second paragraph it was, I, you know, Vic said that she |
| 1:45.6 | wasn't an alcoholic, but, and continued the sentence, it's like, why have you put |
... |
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