Lauren Burnison – Pioneering the Sober Travel Movement and Adventures of a Single Mum
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Lauren Burnison is the founder of We Love Lucid, the UK’s first alcohol-free travel company, and a trailblazer in the sober travel movement. From couch-surfing with nomads on the Mongolian steppe to snorkelling with sharks in Oman, Lauren has spent her life seeking off-the-beaten-path adventures—and this year, she took a two-month road trip through Spain and Portugal in a micro camper with her four-year-old daughter to celebrate ten years of sobriety.
In this candid conversation, Lauren shares her journey from self-destructive habits to sobriety, how travel became her school of life, and the joys and challenges of being a single parent exploring the world. She talks about starting We Love Lucid, the lessons learned while traveling solo and with her daughter, and how adventure can transform the way we see ourselves.
Explicit content: We touch on drugs, drinking, and addiction.
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Show notes
Who is Lauren
Coming from Northern Ireland Originally
41 years old
Founder of We Love Lucid - The UK's First Alcohol-free Travel Company
Being a single mum to a very energetic 4 year old girl
Being an aspiring writer
Reflecting back on her early years
Being very creative, loving animals, and growing up in the countryside
Where her love of travel came from
Starting to learn Spanish in school and how her teacher inspired her
Having a knack for learning languages
Finding a diary entry from when she was 15 years old
Having an ambition to learn Spanish and French and wanting to live in Spain
Getting to visit Spain at 16 on a sports camp
Having her eyes opened and feeling invigorated while travelling on the road
Why A’Levels were such a slog and hated being told what to do
Being confident about travelling
Deciding to travel around South America
Getting into drugs and going down a self destructive path
Heading back home to go to university
Spending 6 months in Barcelona - working in a pizza restaurant and living in a tent
Getting her degree
Being taken further down the path and still being self destructive
Making changes at 32
Wanting to explore and see more of the world - spending time in South Africa
Getting in more and more trouble
Turning 30 and heading to South Korea to work as an English Teacher
Having the best and worst moments of her life
Hitting rock bottom and deciding not to drink ever since
Getting in trouble, and having the fear of losing her life
Partying with Chinese Dwarfs
Seeing how bad her behaviour had gotten
Feeling and being alone on this part of the journey
Drinking 4 nights a week
The hardest part - being faced with this situation of not knowing who she was
Who is Lauren? Having to deal with difficult emotions.
Feeing so vulnerable
The night she decided to quit drinking
Creating ‘We Love Lucid’ and how it helped her stay connected with the sober community
Visiting the vast empty spaces in Mongolia
Growing up with horses and riding horses
Wanting to ride horses in Mongolia and how it turned in to a trip of self discovery
Trying to figure out the next steps
Why life is not just good or bad - it’s a mixture of everything
Heading to the South of Spain and doing a workaday experience over there
How the idea for - We Love Lucid came about
Not having a positive view of sobriety
Thinking about her experiences as a sober person travelling
Starting to run the trips
Why the trips are all about connecting with sober people
Cycling from Beer to Soberton….
Why not all projects turn out how you want them to
Not wanting to be a quitter
Getting to 70 miles…..
Why it was a bit of a failure, but also a valuable lesson at the same time
Riding up the East Coast of Korea on a bike to North Korea
The goodness of people
How travel and adventure changed after having her daughter
Feeling as though her world has been shrinking
How it affected her mentally - with not being able to travel
The realities of being a single mum in Scotland
How her life seems so normal
Starting to go away with her daughter
Being on a road trip in Portugal for 1/2 months
Trying to escape the winter in the UK
Needing to stay in the UK and going with that
Starting to accept the reality
Wanting to start her blog - “Adventures of a single, sober mum”
Being able to afford a micro camper
Why trips are a condensed school of life
The beauty and joy of the quiet moments
Walking with 12 women on the Santiago de Compostela
Mandy Manners - Sober Coach
How to connect with Lauren
The stigma around being a single parent
Wanting to feel more empowered
Final words of advice for other women
Change is possible
Being inspired by Terence McKenna
Try something hard, push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Social Media
Website: www.welovelucid.com - The UK's First Alcohol-free Travel Company
Instagram: @welovelucid
Substack: adventuresofasobersinglemum.substack.com
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