This week on Sober Stories, we had the opportunity to interview Jyoti Chand of the popular @mamajotes Instagram account. (S01/E004) Jyoti is an author, stand-up comedian, and influencer whose mission is to make you smile and love yourself, using humor to connect with her audience and talk about tough topics and stigmas. She also created The Sober Desi, a community for sober-curious and alcohol-free South Asian women.

In our conversation with Jyoti, we talked about everything from motherhood in sobriety to the importance of representation for people of color in the sober community, a largely white space.

For our full conversation, head to the Sober Stories Podcast (Apple, Spotify) or view the episode on our Youtube Channel. 

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Jyoti, on the pervasiveness of alcohol

‘Cause I was internalizing [others’] sobriety so hard that I was offended that they thought taking wine to the park was not okay. Like how could that not be okay, I do it all the time! I take wine kayaking, whatever. I think it took me a while to realize that I was inviting alcohol into every aspect of my life, including parenthood. And it was everywhere and I couldn’t see it, even though it wasn’t to the extent of getting wasted at the park, how come I couldn’t just have a play date without champagne or without a
mimosa?

Jyoti, on “druncles”

Why are there drunk adults in the bouncer?? Get the drunk adults out of that bouncer! You know, when you become sober, you look back at your childhood a little bit, because you’re sober in childhood and I remember watching my uncles get wasted at weddings and being all weird on the dance floor. And you’re always like weirded out by the drunk uncle. Right? Everyone was weirded out by the drunk uncle. And we’re going to call them the “druncle.”

Jyoti, on intuition

What’s so crazy is my intuition and my inner gut was telling me, I was led. I was supposed to be sober. I got a new Kindle recently, and I had an old Kindle a long time ago in 2015, so when I downloaded my Kindle, all these books downloaded on there and they were all sobriety books. I don’t even remember diving into sobriety in 2015, but I had, and it’s like my mind had been telling me to go there so many times.

My intuition was crying to the point where when I finally did it and I was finally able to hold it, I just, I never felt more confident in anything than saying that I will never drink alcohol again in my life.

Connect with Jyoti

On Instagram: @mamajotes, @thesoberdesi
On TikTok: @mamajotes
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Mamajotes
Online: https://www.mamajotes.com/

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