What’s expected
Seven rules, each with the reason it exists. The reasons matter more than the rules, because the reasons are what tell you what to do in the case nobody wrote down.
Don’t ask anyone how long they’ve been sober
First rule, deliberately.
It’s the question people brace for on the way in, and bracing for it is what keeps them at home instead. Nobody owes you a date, a number, a programme, or a story. If somebody offers theirs, that’s theirs to offer, and it isn’t an invitation to ask the next person.
Alcohol-free describes the event, not the people at it
Nobody is policed on their own drinking. What you do outside an event is not the group’s business and nobody is checking.
The rule is about the room: no drinking at the event, whatever the venue happens to serve. People are at these for very different reasons, and several of them aren’t sober and aren’t trying to be.
Don’t recruit
No programmes, no treatment centres, no churches, no MLMs, no coaching, no studies, no apps. This includes the soft version — saying once what worked for you is conversation; saying it three times is recruitment.
This is the failure mode that kills sober social spaces. Once people suspect they’re being worked, they stop coming, and they don’t say why.
Don’t come looking for a date
Sober dating is not what this is. People meet people and sometimes that goes where it goes, but if the reason you’re at an event is to find someone, you’re at the wrong event — and the person who came because it felt safe is now at the wrong one too.
Keep what you heard at the event
You can say you went. You can’t say who else was there, or repeat what somebody said about their own life.
For some people at these, the fact of attending is the sensitive part, not anything they said.
Ask before you photograph, every time
A recap is visible to everyone who attended it. Being in a photograph is a disclosure of where you were and who you were with, and for some people that’s a significant one.
Ask, and take no as an answer without a discussion about it. “Every time” means every time — consent last month isn’t consent tonight.
Keep the chair open
A table that won’t keep a chair for a first-timer isn’t a table.
If you’re hosting and you’d rather it stayed the same six people, that’s a legitimate thing to want. It just isn’t this, and you should run it somewhere else.
What happens when somebody breaks one
- A warning, first, for most things.
- It names the rule, says what was said or done, and says what happens if it repeats. Most situations end here and nothing else follows.
- Removal from an event.
- The host can do this for their own event, on the night or beforehand.
- Removal from SoberOut.
- The account closes. This is where it goes straight away, with no warning, for: threatening or harming someone, continuing contact after a member has asked you to stop, anything involving a minor, and using events to sell or recruit at scale.
Nothing here is about protecting SoberOut. It’s about whether the person who was nervous about walking in was right to be.
If something happens
Email support@soberout.social. A person reads it, not a system, and you never have to say why beyond what you want to say. The person reported is never told who reported them.
You’ll hear back within two days. Anything involving a threat, physical safety or a minor is looked at first, and somebody can be removed from an event or from SoberOut before the conversation is finished.
Who decides, and how to argue with it
One person decides. That isn’t a governance structure, it’s an accurate description of the size of this.
If you think a decision was wrong, reply to the email — decisions do get reversed, and you’ll get an answer within a week from the same person who made it. There’s no panel, and inventing one would be theatre.
The terms say what you agree to. How a table runs says what hosting involves.