Dear Vernon

Dear Vernon is a sobriety podcast brought to you by The Luckiest Club. Each episode tackles real questions about sobriety, recovery, and life—submitted by members of the TLC community and listeners who are navigating it all in real time. The Luckiest Club (TLC) is a global sobriety support community founded by Laura McKowen, bestselling author and a leading voice in modern recovery. With daily meetings, proven programs, and a thriving community, TLC provides a compassionate, dogma-free space for people to get sober, stay sober, and thrive in a life of recovery.

Dear Vernon is a society podcast hosted by The Luckiest Club, with 14 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

The Luckiest Club hosts Dear Vernon, a society show with 14 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #14

  EP 14: What We Really Think About Brad Pitt Drinking Again

  Sep 1, 202655 minS1

  This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen and Eric Johnson are back with a new episode of Dear Vernon. Brad Pitt was sober for seven years. And then he wasn't. And a lot of people had a lot of feelings about that, including several people who reached out to Laura directly, asking some version of the same question: why does this make me so angry? Laura goes into the Esquire piece that started it all, which is actually pretty brief on the subject. Brad mentions getting overconfident a couple of times, going back to drinking, and deciding he can have a few but has to be professional about it. That's basically it. And yet somehow those few sentences sparked a conversation that clearly needed to happen. Eric shares his honest complicated feelings about Brad Pitt as a person, and why the news made him sad more than anything else. He talks about what he hears in the way people like Bradley Cooper and Dax Shepard talk about their sobriety versus what he's always heard from Brad, and why sincerity and conviction are things you can usually sense even through a screen. Laura shares a story about her dad and how she sees parallels between his drinking (and sobriety) habits and Brad's. They also get into the question of moderation itself, what it actually feels like to try to set a limit of two drinks and spend the entire day negotiating with yourself about what two even means, and why that exhausting mental math is its own kind of answer. If you've had feelings about the Brad Pitt news and couldn't quite figure out what they were about, this one is worth a listen. Laura also wrote about this on her Substack. It's free and available to everyone. Read it here . If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? Submit your question , and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey. We start October 1st, use code FALL26 to save at checkout when you join before Septmeber 7th. The Sober 90 - foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady - for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life - focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

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  Dear Vernon

  EP 13: What Does It Actually Mean to Do the Work?

  Aug 6, 202626 min

  This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson, CEO of The Luckiest Club, tackle a question that comes up constantly in recovery spaces, and one that honestly deserves a much better answer than it usually gets. The question: what does it actually mean to do the work? If you've spent any time in sobriety communities, you've heard this phrase. Do the work. And if you're anything like the person who submitted this question, you've probably nodded along while privately thinking: okay but what does that mean? Is there a list? A job description? Because if someone would just tell me what to do, I would do it. Laura and Eric get into what doing the work actually looks like in real life, and it turns out it does come down to a few core things, even if nobody ever spells them out clearly. Laura breaks it down into two buckets that are simpler to name than they are to actually do. The first is getting honest with yourself and with other people. Not in a confess everything to everyone kind of way, but in the quiet, ongoing practice of noticing when you're hiding something, avoiding something, or keeping a secret that's slowly making you sick. The second is looking at the patterns in your life where there's real friction and asking yourself honestly what your part in that pattern might be. That second one sounds straightforward until you actually try to do it, and then it turns out to be most of a lifetime's worth of work. Eric adds the piece that Laura and he both agree is non-negotiable: you cannot do this alone. The work has to happen in community. Not because you're weak, but because so much of what drives our pain is unconscious, and we genuinely cannot see our own blind spots without other people reflecting them back to us. They also talk about why people who experience addiction are, in a strange way, forced into doing this kind of deep work in a way that most people never have to. And why that's both the hard part and, eventually, the gift. If you've been waiting for someone to hand you a tidy list of steps for sobriety, this episode is for you. Fair warning: there is no list. But Laura and Eric make a pretty compelling case for why that's actually okay. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Join our Push Off from here Workshop , August 22-29, 2026, led by TLC Founder, Laura McKowen and TLC CEO, Eric Johnson. Have a question for Dear Vernon? Submit your question , and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90 - foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady - for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life - focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

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  Episode #12

  EP 12: Do You Really Have to Start Your Day Count Over?

  Jun 25, 202625 minS1

  This week on Dear Vernon, Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson, CEO of The Luckiest Club, tackle a question that's been sitting heavy with one of The Luckiest Club members. She had 183 days sober. On vacation with her husband, she ordered a virgin daiquiri, took a few sips, and realized it had alcohol in it. She caught it, sent it back, and asked for water instead. But then her husband, who's been in AA for years, told her she had to reset her count back to zero. Non-negotiable, he said. Now she's wondering if he's right, and if six months of progress just got erased over something that wasn't even her fault. Laura and Eric don't hold back on this one. They talk about what actually matters here: she caught the mistake, told her husband, told the waiter, and brought it to her community instead of hiding it. That's the real story, not some arbitrary rule about restarting a clock. If the show resonates, please leave a review and share it with someone who needs it. Have a question for Dear Vernon? 👉 Submit your question , and it might be featured on a future episode. Get a FREE week of The Luckiest Club here! Need more support? We offer three 13-week programs designed to meet you exactly where you are in your sobriety journey: The Sober 90 - foundational work to get you through the early days The Sober Steady - for those with some sober time who need more resilience and tools The Sober Life - focused on the deeper work of emotional sobriety

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  Episode #11

  EP 11: Is It Normal to Keep My Sober Friends Separate?

  Jun 4, 202628 minS1

  <p>This week on Dear Vernon, The Luckiest Club Founder Laura McCowen and The Luckiest Club CEO Eric Johnson are answering a question that came in directly from a member with almost four years of sobriety—and honestly, it's one a lot of people can relate to.</p><p></p><p>She loves her sober friends. They've been her lifeline. But they exist in a completely separate world from the rest of her life, and that separation feels strange to her. Almost like keeping secrets. So she wants to know: is this just how it is?</p><p></p><p>La...

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  Episode #10

  EP 10: The Violence of Self-Improvement

  May 19, 202638 minS1

  <p>Getting this episode recorded and out was like pulling teeth, but here we are. We couldn't let this question go unanswered, it's that good. A listener asked, "I'm sober, but finding myself shopping, scrolling, and using food as a way to fill that void where alcohol was, how do you (Laura and Eric) feel about this?"</p><p></p><p>Laura McKowen, Founder of The Luckiest Club, and Eric Johnson CEO of The Luckiest Club, talk about their own experiences with transfer addictions and some guidelines that might help listeners understand if their habits are a problem.</p><p><...

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