Ep 178. Solo Episode: What Does Spirituality Have To Do With Sobriety?Ep 178. Solo Episode: What Does Spirituality Have To Do With Sobriety?
Behind The Smile with Ash Butterss
Ash Butterss reflects on how her relationship with spirituality has grown through sobriety, shifting from scepticism to a daily practice centred on a higher power. She shares practical tools like prayer, meditation and service, and links them to healing self-hatred, people-pleasing and the inner emptiness that alcohol once masked.
27:12•7 Jun 2026
Spirituality and Sobriety: Ash Butterss on Filling the Hole in the Soul
Episode Overview
- Spirituality is presented as separate from organised religion and can be any higher power that is not the individual.
- Simple, consistent practices like prayer, meditation, journaling and gratitude form the foundation of Ash’s sober life.
- Alcohol is framed as a former solution to a deeper spiritual disconnection, with spiritual connection becoming the new solution.
- Regular spiritual practice builds a “spiritual bank” that supports handling difficult times without returning to old behaviours.
- Service, kindness and showing up with love, rather than perfection or rigid rules, are central to how Ash understands being spiritual.
“When I first got sober, I thought that my problem was alcohol, when in fact alcohol had been my solution to this spiritual malady, this hole in the soul.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol? For Ash Butterss, the answer slowly turned into one word she once resisted: spirituality. In this solo episode of Behind The Smile, Ash shares a candid preview of a chapter from her memoir, all about how her spiritual life has grown over six and a half years of sobriety.
She’s clear from the outset that she’s not talking about organised religion or some “man in the sky”, but a deeply personal connection with a higher power that started, quite simply, with the ocean. You’ll hear how Ash went from feeling like an imposter saying the word “God” to building a daily routine of prayer, meditation, gratitude, and quiet acts of service.
She talks about praying to the sea in early recovery, using AA prayers like the Third Step Prayer and the Prayer of St Francis, and later moving into “freestyle” conversations with her higher power: asking for guidance, direction, and the willingness to be useful. Ash also explains her idea of a “spiritual bank” – each meditation, prayer, journal entry, and gratitude list becomes a deposit that helps her stay steady when “life gets a little lifey”.
She links spirituality directly to sobriety, describing alcohol as a former “solution” to a deep sense of disconnection, and a spiritual life as the new way she fills that old hole. This episode speaks to anyone in recovery who’s suspicious of anything too woo-woo, yet quietly longs for more peace.
Ash keeps it real, admitting she still has panic attacks, ego flare-ups, and self-doubt, but now has tools to sit with herself, treat herself kindly, and show up as a more loving human. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at spirituality but still felt that “hole in the soul”, this conversation might make you rethink what a spiritual life in sobriety could actually look like for you.
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