#130: Work Addiction Almost Cost Alysse Bryson Her Life#130: Work Addiction Almost Cost Alysse Bryson Her Life
Sun & Moon Sober Living Podcast
Media executive and founder Alysse Bryson shares how quitting alcohol didn’t stop her from nearly working herself to death, and how heart surgery pushed her to redefine success, balance and community in sobriety. The conversation also touches on The Sober Curator, AI, and making space for diverse recovery paths.
1:04:01•19 Aug 2026
How Work Addiction and a Near-Heart Attack Reshaped Alysse Bryson’s Sobriety
Episode Overview
- Stopping alcohol is only the start; unaddressed patterns like overworking, overspending or unhealthy relationships can still cause serious harm.
- Keeping sobriety secret in a drink-heavy career can feel safer at first, but honest connection and community are crucial for long-term recovery.
- Work addiction can be socially rewarded yet physically devastating, and subtle symptoms of stress-related heart issues are easy to ignore.
- Service and volunteering can quickly shift focus away from self-pity and create meaning, especially during periods of crisis or transition.
- Sober spaces can hold many paths—sober, alcohol-free, zero proof and beyond—when there’s curiosity, respect and less judgement about how people get there.
“My worst days now are really better than my best days drunk, and I remember everything.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This conversation between recovery coach and somatic experiencing practitioner Mary Tilson and media veteran–turned–sober lifestyle founder Alysse Bryson offers a candid look at what long-term recovery can really look like when alcohol is only the beginning. Alysse shares how she first quit drinking back in 2006, long before sober curious hashtags and alcohol-free cocktail menus were mainstream.
She talks about keeping her sobriety quiet for years in a media culture where “so many business deals happened over drinks,” and how anonymity felt safer than wearing sobriety on a T-shirt. Meetings, community and a traditional programme gave her early structure, but she admits that, for a long time, she “wasn’t really getting honest” and kept many of the same destructive patterns around money, relationships and work. The heart of the episode is her story of work addiction.
By ten years sober, Alysse was a single mum, running a glossy lifestyle magazine and working 80-hour weeks. Ignoring warnings from her sponsor, she burned “the candle at every end” until work compulsivity and stress triggered emergency heart surgery at 40. She jokes about “baby heart attacks” called anginas, but the message is serious: you can be sober and still “not want to live” if you don’t address the underlying issues.
From there, you’ll hear how grief, her son’s health crisis and even the family dog’s death forced a full reset: quitting the dream job, taking time off, leaning into service work and slowly learning balance. Alysse explains how that evolution eventually led to The Sober Curator, a multi-contributor sober lifestyle platform using both human stories and AI tools to share resources for people at every stage of recovery.
If you’ve swapped alcohol for overworking, overhelping or over-anything, this conversation might have you asking: what am I really burning myself out for, and who do I want in my corner while I change it?
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