A Sober Holiday: Staying Clean & Dry This Christmas Season

Experiencing the holiday season sober may seem like a daunting challenge, but rest assured, it's one that you can face successfully. Join me, a former fashion model and now a competitive athlete. I will provide pragmatic advice on tackling triggering situations that could potentially interfere with your path to sobriety.

These are my secret weapons to maintain sobriety: laying out a robust plan and having a non-alcoholic drink at your disposal, always. I also talk about "playing the tape", a mental exercise to visualize the possible outcomes before succumbing to temptation. I also open up about my personal experience of choosing sobriety during a particularly taxing holiday season, which led to healing old wounds and strengthening relationships. 

Finally, remember that choosing sobriety doesn't equate to missing out on holiday cheer; it's about celebrating the season in a healthier, more fulfilling way. So let's hold steadfast to our commitment to sobriety and make this holiday season worth remembering.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Whether you are sober, curious or actively recovering from addiction.

Speaker 1: 0:18

This episode is about how to stay sober through the holidays. My name is Lucy Beatrix and I'm an athlete and former fashion model who got sober five years ago, and it goes without saying that that simple action of abstaining from substances radically changed my life in big ways, in ways that I couldn't have ever envisioned when I made that first step to stop drinking alcohol. So a little bit more about me. I was an unhealthy fashion model living in New York City, doing all the big things, living this crazy life, and then one day I decided to stop drinking, and whether or not you fall into that category as someone who had a problem had to radically change or you're just deciding to take a break and see what can happen if you do give up alcohol or any kind of substance. This episode is about some of the tips and tricks that I've learned in how to stay sober through the holidays, and something that I learned that I thought was very interesting, that I heard in the rooms or in behind closed doors in recovery sober communities, is that this season that we're in right now, the period from Halloween to New Year's, is what a lot of sober, recovering. People call hurricane season. I thought that was a really interesting term, because they were saying that it's just a storm of triggering situations and environments and all kinds of grounds that could lead to wanting to use a substance to escape or to feel like it's less stressful. And so I want to talk about some of the things that I personally use as a way to stay sober and not feel like I have to resort to old ways in order to make it through. So the first thing on this list is to have a plan. So if you're going somewhere maybe a holiday party or hanging out with family, or you're going to be out of your normal routine of what you typically do when you're alone, or maybe when it's not the holidays, and you just know like this is what I do to stay sober when you're walking into these unknowns, have a plan, and for me that can typically mean having somebody to check in with either before, during or after a potentially triggering environment or potentially triggering event, and even just knowing that you have that check in waiting for you. That can keep you kind of in the sobriety mindset of like you know what this moment right now might feel. Weird, I'm seeing people pouring wine and I want to engage, but I know I have that phone call waiting for me in an hour and I want to make sure that I'm ready for that. Or you know that somebody else is going to be reaching out to you and you want to stay just present enough to know that you're not going to pick up because you have that waiting for you.

Speaker 1: 3:11

Another thing that comes with having a plan is having something physically in your hand, and this goes without saying. That it's probably the easiest thing that you can possibly do in these environments is that when everybody else is pouring a glass of something, you can have that glass in your hand and no one has to know what's in it. So for me that could be as simple as a seltzer water with a little bit of lime in it, or some kind of a mocktail, or even just grape juice. I just had Thanksgiving a few days ago with my boyfriend and his family, and what did I have? I had a fun little mocktail of mango puree and grape juice, and I even had some sparkling apple cider in there, and just having something like that to like tangibly hold kind of alleviates this pressure of thinking like someone's going to ask you do you want something to drink, are you sure? And so on. So those are some things that I personally use with, like my plan of how to go into these situations.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Another suggestion that I would make to anybody, and something that I do for myself, is something that we call playing the tape, and the first time I ever heard someone say this to me, I thought it was really fascinating, because basically, what you do is, before you would engage in using a substance, you basically walk yourself through every step of what that would look like until you get to the end of the tape of what this leads to. So maybe it means that somebody's handing you a glass of wine or some champagne or something and you think, well, what would happen if I took that first sip, or if I broke the seal and started drinking alcohol? And maybe in the beginning you could even see yourself enjoying it and feeling a wave of relief and feeling like, oh, this is exactly what I wanted to do. I want this to make me feel a little bit more relaxed and more like I'm part of the community, or feeling like I'm having fun at the party. And then what happens an hour later? What happens when you finish that first glass of champagne and the night is carrying on and you want another one, or you know that that one is going to lead to finishing the entire bottle and sometimes it's not even about that, leading to a crazy debauchery night of something that you're not proud of. But what does that do for the future of the next time somebody offers you a glass of wine or something when you're out, when the holidays are over, or a few days later on a random Tuesday night and you're like well, wait, I broke the seal. So now this is just something that becomes routine and a pattern yet again and then becomes part of that vicious cycle of thinking that you can have it all the time. So playing the tape can look different for different people, because maybe if somebody doesn't have the terrible rock bottom experiences to reflect on and know that it can lead to that, they might think well, it just leads to this redundant feeling like you have to use it, or feel like you can get into this routine of just drinking all the time without really thinking too hard about it and then waking up 10 years later and thinking why did I feel like I needed that substance part of my life when I could have just enjoyed the experiences above the influence. So playing the tape is definitely a really awesome thing to do if you're in the moment and somebody hands you something or you feel triggered by wanting to drink alcohol.

Speaker 1: 6:33

The next tip is to stay connected with fellow sober people, and this goes back to the first tip of having phone calls or checking in with friends, even if it just means texting. I've definitely had a bunch of friends over the years that we would just text each other throughout these kinds of weddings or holiday parties or events that were happening, just to say hey, I'm thinking of you. And just bouncing off the little stresses and the moment-to-moment connection with somebody else can alleviate the pressure of feeling like you want to pick up, because it just feels like you're part of a community of people that want to stay in it. And sometimes it's hard to find other people who are in that same journey with you of being sober, curious or being completely sober. But there are a lot of us out there. So I would say, just try to find people who don't drink and more often than not and I found this with myself when I moved to a completely different city last year I just reached out to people that I saw were sober, adjacent somehow, and slowly but surely just made friends that were in that community, and they met me with arms open because they were like I want to help however I can. So more often than not, people who are sober want to help other people who are also on this path. So staying connected.

Speaker 1: 7:54

Another thing is this idea of pausing before reacting. So say, you find yourself in an extremely stressful situation. You're at a dinner or some kind of a holiday thing with your family, people you don't normally see, you're feeling interrogated, there's questions you don't want to answer. You know, like stressful situations, kids screaming and just feeling like that need to want to escape, and I know that, like the holidays definitely bring up a lot of opportunities where you're just kind of like stuck in a situation and you want to get out of that situation. And sometimes the most tempting and accessible thing to do in that moment is to consume something that's going to make you feel a different way. And the way I look at that is thinking instead of trying to escape that moment, experiencing it and then thinking about what you can do to escape that feeling. That isn't by ingesting a substance, because ultimately, when we ingest something that is going to alter our mood, there's an equal and opposite reaction to that when you do, inevitably sober up, and that doesn't solve the feeling of tension inside of you that you're trying to escape. That's still waiting for you when you sober up.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So it's like maybe, if you're having an uncomfortable conversation or you're in an uncomfortable situation, whatever you can do to remove yourself, that isn't by altering yourself chemically. That is something that I would encourage people to do. So that would maybe even mean just having your therapy locked and loaded and having extra sessions and check-ins surrounding stressful situations to process and deal with why these things feel uncomfortable. Why does that family member saying that thing every year bother you and how can you do the work for yourself to make it so that you don't feel like you have to escape with some kind of a substance? So that pausing and then reflecting, that's something that I think is a very valuable tool, because it's saying I'm going to sit with it for a second, even if it's uncomfortable, much like when I'm training or trying to excel as an athlete. There's a lot of moments that you learn how to feel really uncomfortable and just go. This is really horrible right now, but I'm going to feel better on the other side if I just push through. So the last tip that I would have for anybody who's trying to stay sober through the holidays is to just ask for help and reach out.

Speaker 1: 10:16

And going back to this theme of connection, I think that the biggest thing that people can do is not feel like you have to solve or handle all of these problems alone, because so often you might think that it makes more sense to retreat inside of yourself and just deal and white-knuckle your way through stressful situations. But I find by offloading or diffusing those feelings out into the universe and relying on the people that you trust, or your loved ones or your significant other, that can help to alleviate some of that external pressure and ask for help for having how to solve and manage some of these feelings, because really, all of this, the stress around the holidays, can be a great opportunity to then deal with some of the things that might be stressing you out all the other days of the year and all the other seasons. And I know for me last year I spent my first Thanksgiving with my family. I hadn't seen them in six years. I hadn't spent any time with them.

Speaker 1: 11:19

But I went into that situation completely sober, expecting all kinds of outcomes, and when it ended up happening was pretty amazing.

Speaker 1: 11:27

I ended up having all of those past traumas and problems come to the surface, but in a very level, headed way, where I was then able to address and solve and fix some of the things I don't think I could have if I would have just chosen to numb out and remove myself from actually trying to fix what was going on.

Speaker 1: 11:51

And so what ended up happening ended up making it so that that one holiday of actually going and being with my family solved and healed a lot of relationships that had been kind of tumultuous for a very long time.

Speaker 1: 12:04

So really it's kind of amazing what can happen if we do decide to commit to giving ourselves this gift of sobriety through the holidays, through the most stressful time of year, through hurricane season, and so I encourage you to at least give it a shot and see what it does for you, because at the very worst this is what people say all the time you can always go back, you can always drink eventually, but what if you just don't today? Like what if right now you decide not to, because then maybe you'll see all of these amazing things unfold and want to keep it going. That's kind of my story, where it's the kind of thing where I saw so many amazing benefits come from this decision that it fuels me and makes me more inspired than ever to keep it going. So that's what I have for you guys today. I hope this was a handy, handy little set of resources that you can use for how to stay sober throughout the holidays, and I hope you are enjoying the holidays and until next time, just be fast Swing.