Ask a Sober Oldster #21: Laurie Woolever

"Since I got sober, I am somewhat slower to react to provocations and challenges; I have developed the capacity to take a breath instead of losing my shit."

This monthly interview series is a collaboration between Oldster Magazine and The Small Bow, A.J. Daulerio’s excellent newsletter about recovery and mental health, and will appear in both newsletters. Learn more about this collaboration in this Oldster podcast/videocast episode.

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Laurie Woolever. Illustration by Edith Zimmerman.

Laurie Woolever is an author, editor, public speaker, and former cook. She has written for the New York Times, Vogue, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, and others. Woolever is a graduate of Cornell University and the French Culinary Institute. A former editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator, she has co-authored two books with the late Anthony Bourdain, for whom she worked as an assistant for nine years. She published an oral biography of Bourdain in 2021, co-authored a cookbook with the legendary baker Richard Hart in 2024, and published her memoir, Care and Feeding, in March 2025. Laurie co-hosts a food-focused podcast, Carbface for Radio, with affable shit-stirrer Chris Thornton, and is a writer for Flaming Hydra, a creator-owned newsletter collective.

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How old are you, and how long have you been in recovery?

I am 50, and I quit drinking almost eight years ago.

How did you get there? 

In the months leading up to the end of my drinking career, the signs that I had a problem with alcohol were getting messier and louder and harder to ignore. My behavior while drunk involved lots of sloppy bad decisions, things that hurt me and other people, putting my career and safety at risk. I was already deeply unhappy, and alcohol whipped my smoldering depression into a dangerous conflagration, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.

My last bender was at a weekend-long professional conference with food and beverage people, and of course the free booze was just everywhere. I noticed that my hands were shaking in the morning, until I had a breakfast drink. I got kicked out of a hotel bar for being belligerent, and I missed my flight home. The next day, I attended my first Twelve Step meeting. It took me another year-and-a-half to quit smoking weed and start taking the whole package of sobriety more seriously.

What are the best things about being in recovery?

Life is so much simpler, in the best possible way. Nothing is perfect, but I can see things for what they are. My minor depression and anxiety are so much more manageable than when I was drinking. I sleep more, spend way less money, and I’m no longer impulsively saying or doing stupid shit that I’ll have to deal with the next day. I’ve met all kinds of people through recovery meetings with whom I’d otherwise never have had the chance to connect. The specter of small talk used to fill me with dread, and sometimes it still does, but the nice thing about 12-step meetings is that they start on time, and end after an hour, so there’s less opportunity to get trapped in a conversation. Since I stopped drinking, I’ve learned a lot about boundaries and honesty and getting over myself, and all of that helps.

In the months leading up to the end of my drinking career, the signs that I had a problem with alcohol were getting messier and louder and harder to ignore. My behavior while drunk involved lots of sloppy bad decisions, things that hurt me and other people, putting my career and safety at risk. I was already deeply unhappy, and alcohol whipped my smoldering depression into a dangerous conflagration, though I didn’t recognize it at the time.

What’s hard about being in recovery?

Right now, today, the good parts of recovery so vastly outweigh the drawbacks, but every once in a while, when things feel overwhelming, I miss the option of drinking or getting high in order to escape difficult feelings. Big social gatherings fueled by group inebriation can also feel a little isolating. I went to a destination wedding last year and the food and everything about the reception was rolled out at a deliberately slow pace, over many hours, to accommodate the fact that most of the guests were on molly. I just wanted to get a piece of cake and go home.

Laurie Woolever. Photo by David Scott Holloway.

How has your character changed? What's better about you?

Since I got sober, I am somewhat slower to react to provocations and challenges; I have developed the capacity to take a breath instead of losing my shit. Even though I was (and still am) a pleaser and didn’t see myself as an egotist, I can see now that my behavior and thinking was very self-centered when I was drinking, and I’ve made progress is moving away from that. I used to feel that everything was my responsibility, that I had to control and manage everything and everyone, and I’ve gotten better at recognizing what is and isn’t my business.     

What do you still need to work on? Can you still be a monster?

It’s easy for me to slip back into unproductive ways of thinking and being, and I guess this is one way to interpret Twelve Step recovery as a “day at a time” program. All the aphorisms you read or hear in meetings or in the literature, I used to find them annoyingly simple, but they now function for me as useful reset buttons when I feel myself heading off the rails with anxiety or depression. I expect that I will continue to “grow along spiritual lines” but that I will never outgrow the need for pithy reminders. I think, I hope, that my capacity for monstrous behavior has been permanently shut down.

My last bender was at a weekend-long professional conference with food and beverage people, and of course the free booze was just everywhere. I noticed that my hands were shaking in the morning, until I had a breakfast drink. I got kicked out of a hotel bar for being belligerent, and I missed my flight home. The next day, I attended my first Twelve Step meeting.

What’s the best recovery memoir you’ve ever read? Tell us what you liked about it.

Abandon Me by Melissa Febos is the best one I’ve ever read. It showed me how substance abuse and romantic obsession can be linked, if you’re a person with a bottomless need for something that you’ll never get enough of. The level of honesty and self-knowledge with which she writes about love, sex, addiction, abandonment, family and work somehow restored my sense of dignity in a time where I felt like an absolute piece of shit about everything.

Order the book…

What are some memorable sober moments? 

During the most recent Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, there were a few moments where I realized how calm I was, how not a big deal it was to be cooking and entertaining family, and how much easier it was to do it sober. I started driving a car again, after giving it up for a long time when I was drinking and using, and I always feel weirdly proud of my ability to navigate stressful traffic situations.

All the aphorisms you read or hear in meetings or in the literature, I used to find them annoyingly simple, but they now function for me as useful reset buttons when I feel myself heading off the rails with anxiety or depression. I expect that I will continue to “grow along spiritual lines” but that I will never outgrow the need for pithy reminders.

Are you in therapy? On meds? Tell us about that.

I’m not currently in therapy, but I saw the same therapist for over twenty years, and my copings skills are better for it. I take a small daily dose of Zoloft, which I have done on and off for thirty years. I cry a lot less because of Zoloft, which is good and bad.

Laurie Woolever.

What sort of activities or groups do you participate in to help your recovery? (i.e. swimming, 12-step, meditation, et cetera)

I have a Twelve Step home group on zoom, and I have lately been trying to attend more in-person meetings. I work out regularly, and try to avoid excessive isolating, as much as I love to stay home and watch TV with my cat. I try to “be of service,” which lately means answering phones on a hotline a few hours per week, and giving blood when I can—I’m a sucker for a Lorna Doone.

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With thanks, as always, to A.J. Daulerio and Edith Zimmerman at The Small Bow for the collaboration. Check out the whole Sober Oldster series.

P.S. Check out Edith Zimmerman’s Etsy shop, where she has beautiful greeting cards and posters for sale.