Discovering the Joy of Sobriety with Jennie Juechter
Being “sober” hasn’t always been popular. In fact, our culture pretty much revolves around alcohol. From wild happy hours to weddings and birthday parties, we celebrate many of life’s greatest events with champagne, wine, beer, and cocktails (sometimes all in one night!).
But do you ever wonder what life would be like without alcohol? Do you use alcohol to overcome social anxiety or to suppress emotions? Maybe you don’t have to drink, but you often do and wish you didn’t. Well boo, sober curiosity might just be for you…
I have recently been exploring my own relationship with alcohol and spoke with sober curious coach Jennie Juechter, to talk about using longer periods of going alcohol free as a tool for self love, self discovery and developing intimacy for yourself.
What does it mean to be “sober curious”?
Being “sober curious” involves exploring your relationship with alcohol, with the intention of making more conscious choices about your consumption. You might start to look at the role of alcohol in your life, and consider its potential effects on your physical and mental health.
It does not necessarily mean complete abstinence from alcohol, but involves more of a focus on self-reflection, self-awareness, and making conscious decisions about when and why to consume alcohol.
Jennie’s story
Jennie started to realize that alcohol was not making her happy and did her first longer stint of sobriety (105 days!), even while she was working in the alcohol industry. She knew she would never feel good in her body if she didn't do this.
Jennie’s drinking was an extension of her eating disorder, and so to do any substantial healing from that, she needed to take alcohol out to get to the deeper, more long standing issues that had been around since she was 15. For Jennie, drinking alcohol was always an invitation to eat more. Through alcohol, she could quieten her judgmental voice around food. Subconsciously if she had some wine, then she knew she could get the dessert. She would feel this light ease and her inner dialogue saying, “you're not going to feel bad about this tomorrow, go ahead and have it, you'll be fine.”
But she knew she couldn’t continue to hate this part of her with an eating disorder, and started learning to love that part in a whole new way. She understood that she felt shame for feeling criticized as a kid and that this part was simply trying to protect her. So she stopped fighting against her and realized she was working on the same team.
A desire to not escape yourself
Jennie strongly believes that the subconscious is really ruling everything. There's therapy that is designed for parts work called Internal Family Systems, and Jennie has always looked at herself as parts and noticed she’s so different. There are different parts that might be a loud expression that she loves, and rebellious parts that she doesn’t like.
Integration is when we learn to love all these parts. But we can't integrate when we suppress, and we can't integrate when we numb. Jennie no longer wanted to live life feeling uneasy with the different types of energies that she has within her. And so a big part of the sober curious journey involves being okay with the difficult feelings and emotions that you have. And on the other side of that, you really get to feel the elation and deep connection with other people.
Perfectionism is not the goal
Just like with sugar and flour, it’s not about saying that if you ever have this again, you won’t be perfect. You can still plan your consumption and put boundaries in place, for example Jennie decided that she would not drink to try to create an emotion.
Eventually, Jennie did find it easier to not drink again. For her, it took away the decision fatigue and felt like a breath of fresh air. But it is still possible to moderate it and include it if you want to. Perfection is not the goal.
Challenges in a sober curious journey
Recognizing stress
Often people who start a journey to reduce their alcohol consumption may experience times when they see it creeping back up again. This is just your brain seeking out dopamine. That’s why it’s important to recognize what other circumstances you might have going on in your life. There might be some really stressful things happening and when you add in the changes of inner comforts, sometimes it can be too much and be a stress overload on the brain.
As much as it's going to be wonderfully beneficial to your mental, emotional, and physical health, it initially creates stress in the brain because the brain still wants alcohol. So firstly it’s working on your ability to increase your tolerance level for that type of stress and recognizing when it is a mental overload.
Reframing fun
A lot of people worry that if they give up alcohol and then go to a social event, it just won’t be as fun. At first it is going to feel a bit weird. You're probably going to feel awkward. You might not be as excited to get on the dance floor, and you might not be as gregarious in your conversation. But then the next one is not as weird, and the next one even less so, until eventually you’re just having the best f*cking time because you’re experiencing true human connection.
Marketers of alcohol have done a very amazing job at making us think that we should be drinking all the time. But the illusion is that they only show joy. They never show consequences like the fight at the end of the night, or the headache and brain fog the next day. They only show what you actually want, which is connection. Except it's usually fake connection…
When we take alcohol out of the equation, we can actually learn how to engage as adults from our heart space and be vulnerable without needing alcohol to feel safe to do it.
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