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The Longing Lab
Do you ever find yourself so fixated on longing that you can’t enjoy the present? Longing for a lover, an exotic destination, a lost loved one, or a past time in your life? The Longing Lab takes a deeper look at the science of longing and the culture that drives us to long for what we don’t have. You can expect insightful conversations with individuals uniquely qualified to talk about longing. Host, Amanda McCracken, has written or spoken about her own addiction to longing in national publications like the New York Times, Washington Post, & the BBC. The goal of the Longing Lab is to inspire individuals to make positive changes in their lives. Look for her book, When Longing Becomes Your Lover (Hachette), in fall of 2025!
The Longing Lab
Sober Sexpert Writer Tawny Lara on the benefits of booze-free sex & dating
Episode 5: Writer Tawny Lara speaks about her own sobriety journey, how she became known as the Sober Sexpert, and the benefits to booze-free sex, dating and relationships.
With the help of yoga, meditation, therapy, and writing, Tawny Lara quit drinking in 2015 right before her 30th birthday. But she says she found that she didn’t know how to date without alcohol. The now 36-year-old NYC-based millennial known as The Sober Sexpert is writing a book called Dry Humping: a Guide to Booze-Free Sex, Dating, and Relationships (Quirk, Summer 2023), a guide book, she says she needed when got sober. Her work is featured in Playboy, Men's Health, Huffington Post, and two essay collections: Sex and the Single Woman (Harper Perennial 2022) and The Addiction Diaries (LaunchPad 2020). She is the co-host of Recovery Rocks podcast and story developer for the Webby-award winning podcast, F*cking Sober.
Connect with Tawny at: www.tawnylara.com
In this episode, we talked about…
- The biphasic effect of alcohol
- The social and physical benefits of booze-free sex, dating, and relationships
- Tawny’s journey to sobriety
- How being a bartender impacted who and how she dated
- The false notion of liquid courage
- Why you shouldn’t use alcohol to power through sex or mask your sexual identity
- How alcohol encourages false longings and numbs true longings
- Disassociation during sex
- Why it’s important to know what you like and do not like sexually while sober
- Why alcohol neurologically makes it hard to truly connect with someone
- Sober dating ideas (hint: add movement)
Quotes:
"Binge drinking, that’s just what you do when you are a bar tender. I was the weird girl bringing shots to a table of people who just wanted to have a glass of wine. "
"I didn’t have sober hook ups. And even if I was sober when sleeping with my partners, we were probably hung over or going out for drinks later that night."
"When I’m talking about sober sex and dating, it’s not just removing alcohol from the equation but examining the role alcohol plays in your sex, dating, and love life."
"Alcohol can numb your longing and also give you a false longing. You might want something drunk that you don’t want when you’re sober."
"When I removed myself from the bar scene, I quickly learned who were my friends and who were my drinking buddies."
"I am bisexual and I embraced my bisexuality in sobriety. I had several queer friends who have come out in sobriety. It’s common."
"The most important part of sober dating is spending time dating yourself, figure out who you are without alcohol, what you like and don’t like."
"I woke up one day and realized that my drinking was standing in the way of me working on my writing. TV and film make it seem like you have to lose everything before you quit drinking. I saw where my life was going and didn’t want to go there, so I got ahead of it."
Resources: Sober Dating 101: A Guide to Romance and Sex to the Newly Sober
Let's Connect: www.amandajmccracken.com