SOBER LOS ANGELES
We asked these clean and sober individuals with various lengths of recovery time what their experience is like being sober in Los Angeles
BY PAULO MURILLO
SMALL WORLD
“I’m very grateful and very blessed to have gotten sober in Los Angeles and to have access to so much sobriety. I remember when I went to Tulum and to the Dominican Republic, the recovery meetings were scarce. I feel so privileged that no matter what time of the day it is, I’m always able to find a meeting. I also love that it is a small world and I’m always able to connect with someone sober. I’m pretty open about my sobriety and my journey, so I love finding other sober people. The most challenging part of Sober L.A. is that some of the Westside meetings can be a little cliquey at times, and it can take some time to find where you really fit in. The meetings are about recovery, and they are not about putting on a show, or being seen. It’s actually about the 12 steps and bringing recovery to a newcomer. It’s about learning more about how to better your life and how to better somebody else’s life. I love that.”
—Megan Trgovich, sober since November 8, 2018.
BUTTERFLY EFFECT
“I would say sober Los Angeles has connected me to everything I enjoy doing. You meet so many people just by going to different meetings every day. I noticed I was lacking fun in my life, so after a meeting and fellowship, I mentioned I was new to LA and I didn’t have any a lot of friends. One of the guys said he was in a gay kickball league. He introduced me to kickball, and then dodgeball, and some other sports, and now I play in a sober kickball team in the same league with guys I met at various meetings. It’s been great. One of the guys I met at kickball connected me to a different job. And then I ended up getting connected with the school I work for today. There are event jobs I’ve done in the industry that are through people I’ve met in the rooms. It’s like the butterfly effect. Almost most of my social life has ties to sobriety in LA. I love that sobriety is so big out here that if I want to make new friends or do something different, all I have to do is usually bounce to a different meeting.”
—Kyle Edwards, sober since January 1, 2024.
MY COMMUNITY
“I think it’s wonderful because there are so many meetings and I feel like there are so many people to build a community with. That’s something that I didn’t really have in regular life, so it’s always new. It’s kind of like a thing in LA to be sober at this point. I don’t know if it’s just like my Higher Power showing up, but I feel like I know a lot of people that are either sober, or they’re getting sober, or people struggling with their addiction right now. It’s been great for me because I can always have someone to talk to. The sober challenges in LA are around meeting people that are serious about being sober. There are a lot of people that have sex on drugs and then there is the stigma of being sober where people act like life is over and they can never have fun again. So that can be hard. On the one hand, there’s a good group of people that are sober and you have people that are struggling. I kind of have to be very mindful when I do go out to events that are not sober. Mostly I just try to find my community.
—Carlos Collins, sober since June 27, 2022.
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