Addiction Relapse Prevention | Stay Sober This Holiday Season

Whether you're trying to navigate the holidays and stay sober for yourself, or you're trying to help support a loved one who's in recovery, the information in this video is going to be essential. You don't need me to tell you that holidays are particularly difficult when it comes to sobriety. There are a ton of factors in play and we get off of our regular schedules and routine, which can derail recovery if we're not careful. I did a recent video on relapse where I talked about keeping keeping the gate closed about not allowing yourself the vulnerability for these triggers to get through. And I'm going to link that video up at the end because that is a very important part of this whole relapse prevention thing. But today I want to talk about the triggers that are associated with the holidays. I've kind of got them sectioned off for you into three different categories, and I want to go through each of those categories and talk about the difficulties associated with them and some strategies and ways of getting around those roadblocks. Now, the first type of trigger and most obvious type of trigger associated with the holidays is that everybody gets on vacation mode. People drink more, they do more substances in general, they sort of view it as it's holiday, it's vacation and it's own. So even people who don't have substance problems, their substance use escalates during this time of year. And if you're trying to get through this sober, this can be quite difficult. Now, if you're newly sober, seeing everybody partied up can definitely trigger crazy cravings. It might even make you feel like you're missing out. You start thinking to yourself, why am.

I the odd man out? Well, why can't I have a drink and everybody else is having a drink. It's my holiday too.

Now, if you're not careful, you can easily convince yourself to open that gate up during the holidays. When it comes to being around other people, drinking and using when you're nearly sober, you want to approach this very carefully because not only can those triggers and cravings be active while you're at the event, even if you don't have a relapse at the event, those triggers and cravings, can I call them little monster mouths, can continue to talk to you in the back of your head for days and weeks following. So just because you got through the family event without having a relapse, it doesn't mean that you can let your guard down. Because if you start to entertain those thoughts, they just get bigger and bigger and bigger. Now, if you don't entertain those thoughts. They usually go away pretty quickly. But I want you to know you're not out of the woods just because you successfully got through the event itself. The other thing that can happen when you're around other people that are drinking and using and partying it up is that when you're not and you're sober can be kind of annoying. A lot of people tell me it's not going to bother me to be around them drinking and using. I don't even want to drink. I'm telling you, I'm done with it, Amber. And I say, okay, I believe you, but be prepared that you may not enjoy those kind of situations the same anymore. Because when you're sober and other people are not sober, it's fun for about 20 minutes, because if they get really not sober, they can get obnoxious and annoying, and maybe it won't trigger you to want to drink, but you might not enjoy it so much. So go into these events with an escape route in mind. One thing I recommend is having a wingman. Having someone who knows what's up and who's got your back. They can kind of run interference for you. A few months ago, a client was telling me a story about being at, like, a bar restaurant or something like that. And he was sober, but he had friends who kept trying to get him to order a beer and just kept trying to offer it. We had another friend that was at the restaurant who kind of knew the story and situation. And so he went up and he ordered a glass that looked like a drink but wasn't really a drink. And he kind of walked up to the guy and he goes, here's your drink, man. And he hands it to him and kind of gives him, like, the wink, wink, nod, nod. And then the client, my person, knew that whatever he was handing him wasn't. Didn't have alcohol in it. And it was a way of sort of getting you out of this awkward situation. So it's really nice to have someone to have your back like that. Now, that brings me to the second kind of trigger that you can encounter in the holidays, which is awkwardness, especially if you're newly sober. Part of the stress is. Is about how do I navigate these situations? Like, as in, do I say. Do I say I'm not drinking? Do I pretend to have a drink in my hand? But really I don't? Do I tell them the whole story? Do I tell them it's none of their dang business? How do you handle those awkward social situations? The best policy is to be as upfront and honest as you can possibly be about it. Now, I realize that not everybody needs to know all your business, and I'm not encouraging you to tell every single detail about everything that happened and why you got sober, but the more honest you can be, the better. Like, for example, if you can say something like, yeah, I quit drinking. I figured out that it was having bad effects on my health or messing up my sleep or causing me to be more anxious, and I feel so much better that I quit. That is a short little statement that you can say, which is very truthful, but gets the point across. It works a little bit better than lol. I'm the designated driver. Because when you say, I'm the designated driver, people say, oh, you can have just a couple men, it's no big deal. Or you can Uber. You know, they kind of want to get around your defense there. But if you're not comfortable saying that you've gotten sober, then at least make up an excuse why you can't drink. Like, maybe you can say, I'm taking a medicine and you can't drink on that medicine or something like that. That won't fix the problem forever. Like, if you run into this person regularly, you're going to need to address that at some point. But if it's a person you see once a year or something like that, then who cares? Tell them whatever you need to tell them, but get the point across that you're not drinking. Or you can go with the plan of just having something in your hand that looks like a drink. And people say, hey, do you want something? And you say, nah, man, I'm good. And you indicate the glass in your hand. No one is the wiser. The reason I say being more direct about it is the better option because if you deal with it directly up front, they'll quit coming at you and quit trying to, like, pressure you. If you give some kind of indirect answer or excuse or reason or temporary reason why you're not drinking, then you're going to find that that pressure keeps coming at you. The person's going to keep saying, well, what about this? Well, how about that? And then it just gets annoying. Now, another level of awkwardness happens when maybe it's a family event and people know that you went to rehab or you're in recovery or you're not drinking, but they're not really sure exactly how to handle it. Most people and families want to be supportive. They just don't know exactly how to be supportive. And so if you can just directly tell people what's helpful and what's not, you'll be helping yourself and helping them, and it'll be less awkward all the way around. Now a third relapse tripwire connected to the holidays is the stress itself. There's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of busyness and events to go to and presents to buy and especially that people to deal with thing. If you've got some people in your family or really sort of close in your circles that you have to deal with that you don't particularly love dealing with, you may have that thought of, man, I just want to kind of numb this out. I just want to sort of coast through this. I just want to get high or whatever and not have to deal with this. And hey, I get it. Not everyone at the family function is your favorite. I totally get it on this one. You don't have to be nearly as direct. You don't have to go tell them that they're not your favorite or that they get on your nerves or drive you crazy. But you, you can choose to avoid them. In fact, you can even choose if you want not to go to the event because now you have a get out of the event free card that no one is going to question. If you say, well, that's just not really good for me right now. And people know you're in early recovery, they're going to let you off the hook. So, hey, it's just another bonus to being sober. So if you need to play that card, go ahead and play that card. Now, most of the other stress we kind of put on ourselves, the stress about making everything perfect, buying all the right presents, wearing all the right clothes, showing up to all the functions. Most of that other kind of stress really comes from us, and which means we can be in control of the volume of the conversations in our head about all these pressures that we're putting on ourselves. If you'll go into the holidays knowing these things up front and being strategic about how you're going to deal with them or not deal with them, it's going to make your life a lot easier. If you're just sort of fumbling through the whole holidays, just trying to get by day to day, that might make it a little bit more difficult. Now, the other big piece of this equation, like I said at the beginning, is the whole, how do I keep that gate closed? So I'm going to link that video for you right up here so you can watch it next.