Laura McKowen
Laura McKowen is a writer, recovery advocate, and community builder whose honest, unflinching writing about addiction, sobriety, and the journey toward an authentic life has earned her a devoted following and established her as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary recovery literature. Her work is characterized by literary quality, emotional courage, and a refusal to simplify the complexity of human experience.
McKowen’s path to writing and advocacy ran through her own struggle with alcohol dependency, which she has documented with remarkable candor and grace. After years of high-functioning addiction that coexisted with a successful career in marketing and corporate communications, she got sober and began writing about the experience — not as a cautionary tale, but as an exploration of what it means to truly live, rather than escape life’s difficulties. Her writing found a wide audience among people in recovery, those considering sobriety, and anyone who has used external substances or behaviors to manage internal pain.
Her memoir, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (2020), was published to broad critical acclaim. The book offers an intimate, beautifully written account of her journey through addiction and into sobriety, exploring with equal honesty the losses and unexpected gifts that accompanied that transition. It received praise from writers, clinicians, and recovery advocates alike for its literary merit and its capacity to reach readers who might resist more conventional recovery narratives.
McKowen is also the founder of The Luckiest Club, a sobriety support community that brings together people navigating early sobriety and long-term recovery in an environment defined by honesty, warmth, and peer connection. The community has helped thousands of members around the world find support and belonging in their recovery journeys.
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Refinery29, Medium, and numerous other publications. McKowen’s work matters beyond the recovery community because it touches on universal questions about honesty, identity, belonging, and the courage required to stop managing pain and begin feeling it — and ultimately, to move through it toward genuine freedom.