What’s Your Sober Curious Calling?

…and is it keeping you from choosing sobriety?

What if the unique reason you're attracted to an alcohol-free lifestyle is also the exact thing keeping you from choosing sobriety?

It's more common than you think. Every day, I talk to powerful, ambitious, amazing women (like you!) who use alcohol to stay in their comfort zone.

These women have big work to do in this world. They have big hearts, big ambitions, and big emotions. In my nearly seven years working as a leading alcohol-free life coach, I’ve noticed three specific types of women who are inexplicably drawn to sober curiosity.

These women are not alcoholics or in need of recovery support. Rather, they are average, normative drinkers who consume alcohol socially or in moderate frequent quantities (think an evening glass of wine or cocktail).

While these women wouldn’t say there is anything exceptional or particularly problematic about their drinking, they all share a sense that alcohol has started to wear out its welcome in their lives.

This subtle intuition starts to tug at their hearts, causing them to consider what it might be like to explore a more moderate and mindful relationship with booze. They begin to contemplate how much better and easier life might be without the constant, repetitive cycle of drinking and hangovers. Most importantly, these women sense that there is something miraculous awaiting them on the other side of their relationship with alcohol.

And yet, these women also express a resistance to choosing sobriety. They let the practical side of their brain convince them that choosing to be sober might be too drastic or unnecessary. They rationalize that going alcohol-free will ruin their social lives or relationships. They worry that becoming sober will make them boring or leave them with no way to cope, celebrate, relax, or unwind.

Have you been there?

I know I have. Toggling between being curious about sobriety and terrified of sobriety was my constant mental push-and-pull the year I turned 30. Around that time, I’d begun to wake up to pursuing spiritual study and personal development and drinking didn’t feel like it fit in with my new life pursuits. So, I tried to compromise, committing to my mindfulness journey persistently during the week and allowing myself to drift into the mindlessness of boozy culture on the weekends.

It didn’t take too long for this form of “balance” to feel like an exhausting juggling act. Essentially, I was living a double life and trying to keep up both because society told me I was supposed to drink in order to fit in. Further, I was led to believe that people who didn’t have a problem with alcohol didn’t need to quit drinking…they should just figure out how to moderate and enjoy alcohol.

The fact of the matter is I did enjoy alcohol until my desire to explore my potential outweighed my desire to fit in. I wonder if you’re here because you, too, have started to lean into the curiosity that you have untapped potential that can’t quite be expressed with alcohol in the picture.

In my experience, sober curiosity isn’t random and it doesn’t have to mean you have a problem with alcohol. I believe you're feeling sober curious for a reason. I believe YOU have a sober curious calling, unique to you, that has been tugging at your heart, begging to be expressed.

After facilitating hundreds of hours of coaching calls with sober curious women, I’ve come to identify three unique sober curious callings. These personality types are typically drawn to sober curiosity as a means of stepping into this calling.

Ironically, these same individuals also use alcohol as a way to avoid exploring this calling. Why? We live in a world where - women especially - have been taught to conform, play small, and dim their light as a way to fit in. We also live in a world where there is one, seemingly harmless, tool that subconsciously contributes to our conformity, smallness, and dimming down: Alcohol.

Perhaps you have started to feel the gentle tug towards choosing to be sober. If so, I wonder if you resonate with one of the three archetypes I’ve identified:

• The Spiritual Seeker: Use alcohol as a socially acceptable way to abandon their authentic essence - the thing that makes you uniquely you. Then, they continue to drink to dull the discomfort of living out of authentic alignment.

• The Ambitious Achiever: Use alcohol as a socially acceptable way to abandon their talents and dreams - the unique thing you were put here to do. Then, they continue to drink in order to dull the discomfort of living out of alignment with their authentic purpose.

• The Authenticity Alchemist: Use alcohol to avoid looking at areas where their social and emotional growth have been stunted. When they drink, they abandon their authentic power and truth in order to behave in ways they perceive are most socially acceptable.

In my work supporting ambitious, intuitive, sensitive women on a sober curious path, I’ve honed in on specific characteristics that make up each of these Sober Curious Callings including elements of their upbringing, their personality traits, their subtle drinking habits, their biggest life challenges, and their personal purpose.

If what I’ve shared above resonates with you and you’d like to learn more about your Sober Curious Calling and how it might be keeping you from choosing sobriety, go to amandakuda.com/quiz to take my quick 5 minute quiz and learn which Sober Curious Calling you’re most aligned with (and what do do next).

PS: I also wrote a bestselling book on living an alcohol-free lifestyle called Unbottled Potential - you can check it out here.