The Sober Service Awards. A curated awards directory recognizing programs and facilitators making recovery feel like a life worth living. Cool stuff. Real people. Things to do on a Tuesday night.
We organize everything into four categories: Move & Play, Create & Express, Work & Build, and Serve & Give Back. Pick a vibe, click around, find something good.
Editorial judgment. The Sober Service Awards editorial team features programs we think are genuinely good, run by people who care, with track records of actually showing up for the recovery community.
We're not paid to list anyone. We don't take advertising. Nobody pays for placement. If we wrote about it, it's because we think it matters.
Honestly? Move & Play. The hardest part of early sobriety isn't quitting. It's the question of what do I do now?
Find a Phoenix chapter. Walk into a Sans Bar pop-up. Show up to a trivia night. The rest tends to follow once you've got somewhere to be.
Most are. Many ask for sobriety (often 24 to 48 hours of it), not money. The few programs that aren't free are clearly marked, and most of those have sliding scale or scholarship options.
Recovery shouldn't have a price tag, and the programs we feature mostly agree.
The easiest way in is through Move & Play or Serve & Give Back. Most of these programs welcome family members and friends, no recovery experience required.
The Phoenix lets supporters join with the same 48-hour requirement. Sober bars and trivia nights are open to everyone. Volunteering side by side at something like VOA's Operation Backpack® is a great way to share recovery's better habits without making a big deal out of it.
If you're not sure where to start, send us an email and we'll help you think it through.
Good question, and the honest answer is that we're still growing. Most of what we feature is national or has chapters in multiple cities. The Phoenix has locations in dozens of states. VOA operates nationwide. Sans Bar runs pop-ups all over the country.
Beyond what we list, here's what tends to work: search "sober [your city]" on Instagram and Meetup. Ask at your home group, sober living, or local intergroup. Recovery community centers (sometimes called RCCs or RCOs) exist in most mid-sized cities and almost always have a calendar of events.
And if you find something cool we should feature, tell us about it. That's how this directory grows.
Send us an email at hello@soberserviceawards.org to nominate your program for a Sober Service Award. Tell us what you do, who you serve, where you're located, and what makes it worth someone's Tuesday night.
We read every submission. We don't feature everything (we're picky on purpose), but we're always looking.
No. The Sober Service Awards are independent and unaffiliated. That's part of the point. We feature what's good, not what's paying us.
Some of us happen to go to AA. Some of the programs we feature happen to be twelve-step adjacent. But the directory itself isn't tied to any one method. Whatever path you're on, you're welcome here.
Please tell us. Email hello@soberserviceawards.org with the program name and what's changed.
Keeping this directory honest matters more than keeping it big.
A program. A facilitator. A standing trivia night that's quietly saved twenty lives. We feature what's genuinely good, and we find out about it from people like you.
hello@soberserviceawards.org