Meet Emma Rose. An artist from New York who moved to Denver where she built her sobriety, community, and tattoo artistry.
"A major thing was seeing a lot of my friends — close friends who feel like family — struggle. I wanted to support them, and the only way I knew how was: if you're going to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk. Specifically with my partner at the time, who struggled a lot — I just really wanted to push him forward, so I pushed myself to do it, too."
Art, fear, and drinking
"I do feel like I was creating more freely when I was drinking. I have a fear of failure, an inner critic — a lot of artists do — and instead of letting that fuel me, I'd use it as a reason to have a bottle of wine, because I wanted to paint and was scared to create something bad. Drinking loosened that voice. It kept me in the cycle, too, because as an artist it felt important that I was creating, and this was how I let myself do it."
Sobriety flipped the relationship entirely.
"Now I use the fear of failure and the inner critic to push me further instead. With tattooing, I have a responsibility to my client — I'm drawing every single day, and I can't let the fear take over, because I need to create. Without quitting alcohol, I'd have kept being someone who could only create while drinking, showing up to tattoo appointments hungover — which is terrible. You're working with someone one-on-one. You need to be fully present for that."
Five months in
"Five months in was when my partner, Shane, passed away from an overdose. That was definitely the hardest part, because it was so early on — I thought, this sucks, I'm just going to drink again. But because of the nature of how he passed, it fueled me to find a way to honor him through my own sobriety. That goes for a lot of my other friends, too — I've lost so many people to addiction."
She describes it as facing grief head-on for the first time, without the option of turning her brain off, and not just Shane's death, but losses she hadn't fully processed from the years she spent drinking.
"These people that I've lost, that I love so much — they would have wanted this for me, and they wanted it for themselves, and they couldn't do it, at the end of the day. So it was definitely a way of honoring them and myself."
Community as the pillar
"I met a lot of people who were also curious about it, or doing it themselves, or ten years sober. Having that community before this huge loss happened helped me, because anytime I felt like I just wanted to go out and drink and not remember anything, that community kept me accountable. I think the community aspect was huge."
Death and rebirth
Asked how sobriety has been a death-and-rebirth experience, Emma described looking back at old photos of a person who no longer feels like her.
"I'll see old pictures of me in college, or when I first moved here, drinking a lot — and it almost doesn't feel like me. I wasn't living in an authentic way to myself, but I didn't know that at the time. It was just, this is who I am, I like these things. When I removed myself, I realized what I actually liked and what was just alcohol and drugs. I thought I hated metal, because the people around me treated it like it was just screaming — and it's not. Getting to discover that was healing in itself."
"Differentiating between what was really me and what was the substances — it feels like you're letting go of a whole side of yourself. That's the death part: I'm physically here, but I don't recognize the person from three years ago. And then the rebirth is figuring out who I actually am at my core, instead of who I thought other people wanted me to be."
Her pick from the original 27 Club
"I have to say Amy Winehouse. Girl power."
Follow Emma Rose
- Her work: @erose.art on Instagram
Interview filmed and edited by Lex Chamizo. 2025.
Emma is wearing the Suboxone Box Logo T-Shirt.
TWNTYSVNCLUB exists to hold space for both grief and celebration. Remembering the lives lost to addiction and raising awareness with those who found a way out. Meet more artists in 27 Interviews, honor someone you love on our Remembrance Wall, or find free support on our Resources page. Proof that 27 can mark a beginning, not just an end.