About
I'm Wayne Ergle.
I drank for over twenty years. I've been sober since 2018. Life Beyond the Bottle is the practical, self-directed recovery I wish I'd had when I was trying to find my way out.
My story
I grew up in Atlanta, born in 1962. My parents divorced when I was ten, and the home I grew up in after that was a hard place, with a stepfather who drank. I found my footing in sports and friends, away from the house.
I had my first drink at fourteen. By my college years it had a hold on me, and it kept that hold for more than two decades. Near the end I was drinking close to two bottles of vodka a day. I tried to stop more times than I can count, across twenty-two years, before it finally took in 2018.
The early days of sobriety were the hardest work I have ever done, rebuilding a life one piece at a time. In 2019 I started leading SMART Recovery meetings in Nashville, and I have now led more than four hundred of them. Sitting with people at every stage of recovery, week after week, taught me more about this than anything else ever has.
I spent most of my working life in technology. In 2023 I left the corporate world to do this instead. Today I am in the best stretch of my life, and I want to help other people get here too.
Why I built it
The resource I needed and could never find.
When I was trying to get sober, I wanted one thing I could never quite find: something straightforward and practical that met me where I was and told me the next right thing to do. So I set out to build it.
It started as a workbook. It has grown into Life Beyond the Bottle: a secular, self-directed recovery app with a guided daily path, real tools for the hard moments, a private check-in and journal, and a companion to talk to any time. It meets you on day one and grows with you for years. It is the resource I needed and did not have.
I hate addiction. Left unchecked it takes your life, and it takes a toll on everyone who loves you.
I built this to put real, practical help within reach, and to show what I know firsthand: change is possible. I am proof of it.
The newsletter
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