178 Connected Calm Life with Lane Kennedy178 Connected Calm Life with Lane Kennedy
You're Sober! Now What?
Tamar talks with Lane Kennedy about her journey from early drinking and a double life to over 25 years of sobriety, meditation teaching, and brain-based relapse prevention. The conversation highlights anger, fear, women-centred community, and how recovery can keep expanding long after the substances are gone.
46:04•7 Feb 2022
Calm, Connection and Long‑Term Sobriety with Lane Kennedy
Episode Overview
- Lane describes how a seemingly glamorous life masked deep isolation, physical decline, and a growing awareness that her drinking was not normal.
- Early recovery centred on mutual aid meetings, sitting in the front row, listening, and copying the actions of women who had the kind of sobriety and presence she wanted.
- She identifies unaddressed anger and fear as drivers of harmful behaviour, sharing a street rage incident that pushed her towards deeper emotional work.
- Meditation and neuroscience became tools for Lane to understand her brain, calm explosive reactions, and support relapse prevention by fixing dopamine pathways.
- Both Tamar and Lane stress that recovery can keep evolving through community, honest emotional check-ins, and a willingness to peel back new layers even after many years sober.
“My name is Lane Kennedy and I am a person in long-term recovery. I have not had a drink or any drugs that come in the form of white powder or any snickers bars since December of 1996.”
What drives someone to seek a calmer, more connected life after years of addiction? In this chat, long-term recovery meets brain science as Lane Kennedy shares how she went from a vodka-fuelled double life in the fashion industry to more than two decades of sobriety and a career as a mindfulness and meditation teacher.
Lane describes starting drinking at 12, blacking out for two days, and still choosing to drink again because it felt like a solution to an uncomfortable home life. Later, a colleague bluntly telling her, "you smell like vodka" planted the first seed that her drinking wasn't normal. Her turning point came when she was welcomed into a recovery meeting with "a little dixie plate of cookies and a cup of coffee" – a simple moment that changed everything.
Early recovery for Lane was all about listening rather than talking, cramming into a beat-up Volvo with other women and copying the habits of someone who "exuded something that I wanted because I was empty and she was full of life." She and Tamar swap stories about diet cola, chicken-and-broccoli diets, and the surprise of finding that sober life can actually be fun. The conversation then shifts to what happens after the initial foundation of sobriety is built.
Lane talks about hitting an "anger" bottom years into recovery, screaming at a stranger in the street with her child in the car, and how that moment pushed her towards meditation and neuroscience to understand her brain and emotions.
She links unprocessed anger and fear to physical issues like inflammation and sleep problems, and argues that learning how the brain works is "100% relapse prevention." You’ll hear how online recovery friendships, women-centred communities, and the Change Your Brain masterclass are giving people in sobriety fresh tools and connection. If you’re wondering what comes after "just not drinking," this conversation might spark your next step – what layer of your own recovery are you ready to peel back?
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