Planning a holiday in advance ensures you travel to safe places with safe people and are supported around anything that might trigger a relapse or emotional disturbance. Triggers whilst on holiday might be airports and flying, new environments with unfamiliar smells, sights and sounds, language barriers, jet lag, and/or the unknown more generally. A sober holiday is a well thought through retreat that is curated to ensure the protection of your sobriety whilst you partake in all the wonderful things you enjoy during time away.

How to Stay Sober During the Holidays

• Choosing the right treatment center can be paramount in one’s chance at recovery.
• It’s unrealistic in all of these scenarios to say, “I can soldier through it.” That’s what Step One of the Twelve Steps teaches us, right?
• Keeping in touch with your support system throughout the holidays doesn’t just make for a merrier season.
• I woke up early and had energy and enthusiasm, but no place to put it.
• Early signs of a relapse or slip may be identified by family members, friends, or other loved ones, such as a spouse.
• It also gives you a way to occupy your hands, helping you side-step your alcohol cravings.

Download these 8 easy-to-make nonalcoholic drink recipes. Caring for yourself will give you the reserves to manage both holiday stress and drinking urges and help you to feel your best throughout the season. This had its benefits, I finally started writing that book I’d been talking about for years, but on the other hand I found myself isolated from my friends and my old haunts. Sundays suddenly became many https://ecosoberhouse.com/ hours longer than they had been previously. I woke up early and had energy and enthusiasm, but no place to put it. All of my friends were still sleeping off their hangovers by the time I’d had breakfast, read the paper and written an article.

Should I Tell People I’m in Recovery?

On top of that, you can’t attend your home group meeting, and you haven’t heard from your sponsor in two days. Here are seven tried-and-true tips and strategies that will prepare you for the holidays, help you avoid relapse and protect you from any uncomfortable situations. While some people experience an uptick in social engagements around the holidays, others may feel especially isolated. You may find yourself missing loved ones you have lost or who live far away.

An Upsurge in Sober Travel Offerings

Finding a licensed center with positive results is simple with the help of the internet. It can be overwhelming and even frightening when we look into long-term treatment, but it may be the difference between life and death. Stress-reduction techniques provide a simple, yet essential strategy for helping to prevent relapse in addiction recovery, especially during a busy or stressful holiday season.

• For many of the reasons mentioned earlier, substance abuse tends to ramp up over the holidays.
• The greatest gift you can give yourself or your loved ones is recovery.
• If you have had a slip, or a series of slips, over the holidays, the most important thing you can do is talk to someone about it.
• Please add your thoughts in the comments below or on one of our social media pages.
• This has led some to have rusty social skills and a quieter existence.
• Let this be an opportunity to grow and make better choices next time.

Sober Holidays Tip #17  Remember that being in recovery doesn’t mean instant heaven or a perfect life. Coming to grips with the idea that sobriety is not instant heaven is an important step in recovery. Most people with addiction expect their upside-down world sober holidays to immediately turn right side up. If you’ve been misusing alcohol or drugs for a while, your brain may need several months or even longer to set itself right. For some people in recovery, the holidays can be tough.

• If you’re struggling to get through the holidays while staying sober, you’re not alone.
• All these things can be part of a healthy bedtime routine.
• If the office New Year’s party is really all about drinking or other drug use, make a brief appearance or don’t attend.
• Although the holiday season is known as a particularly difficult time for people in recovery, other holidays can also be just as triggering.

On the other hand, identifying your triggers and strategies to manage them puts that power back in your hands. Ignoring triggers leaves you more susceptible to their influence in recovery, and allows them to maintain power over you. One of the ways you can keep yourself on the right track is by forging or leaning on meaningful connections you have with loved ones in your life.

So why put yourself in the position of having to “power through” an obstacle course of relapse triggers? Staying sober and safeguarding your recovery must always come first. Add these stressors to the steady flow of alcohol other substances present at many holiday events and individuals in recovery have the perfect storm for potential relapse. In early sobriety, it may be that we allow ourselves a half-hour at the beginning of the event to simply make an appearance, say our hello’s, and slip out quietly. If it feels safe to stay at the party into the night then by all means enjoy the evening, but if feeling triggered or tempted starts to enter the picture we need to have a plan to exit without excuse.

There are over 600 community gardens in NYC and it’s a way to beautify a community, improve your diet, get some exercise, connect to the environment and save money on grocery bills, all at the same time. As Spring approaches, now is the ideal time to get your hands dirty and breathe in the fresh air. A friend of mine’s been using his local garden for years now and has a wonderful new group of older lady friends who’ve been teaching him Spanish. Sarah Allen Benton, M.S., LMHC., LPC, is a licensed mental health counselor and author of Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic. Sober Holidays Tip #11 Be sure there is plenty of light in your life. Keep the lights bright at home, try to get out when the sun is shining, light a cheery fire in the fireplace.