Be grateful that you are safe and sober and look at this upcoming season as time to build your life so the rest of the holidays in the future are everything you want them to be. Your future self will thank you.
The holiday season is just around the corner and for most people it is their favorite time of year. If you are in early recovery from drugs and alcohol however it can be a mixed bag of emotions. A common theme for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year is letting loose and enjoying an adult beverage or three. Of course, this is not an option for those in recovery.
Where I come from we call this time of year ‘tornado season’ in recovery, because you never know when disaster can hit for one of your peers in sobriety. I’ve navigated a handful of holiday seasons myself; I have been sober for nearly five years. The good news is it gets a lot easier. I go to my hometown every Christmas for a whole week and it’s the highlight of my year. It wasn’t always that way however.
There are some things I really had to focus on my first holiday season whenI was only about eight months sober and life was just starting to get decent.
The number one thing I had to do (and I still look out for) is getting on the pity pot. If there is one thing my sick mind loves to do, it loves when I feel bad for myself. I have wasted so much time sitting and feeling sorry for myself when I had no business doing so. Why was I on the pity pot so much? I was far away from home and wasn’t able to go home my first Christmas. I was working hard and saw others I knew going home and I was extremely jealous.
Pity does a lot of bad things to me. It excuses poor behavior and really puts me in an irrational, vulnerable place. My best advice, and this is my advice for most things, is to find someone to talk to. Find someone that you have met on your journey who you trust and are close to and pour your heart out.
To this day, I am at my worst when I sit in my you know what and let terrible thoughts ruminate in my head. By far, the easiest solution to that is when you simply let someone know how you feel. A major factor to staying sober is the principles of the 12-steps and part of the 12 steps is being transparent with others.
I cannot come close to counting the amount of times just talking to someone and letting them put things in perspective saved me big time. It would take a weight off my shoulders. Some of my favorite moments in recovery are when I am in a terrible mental space and I just let someone know how I feel completely and I walk away from the conversation feeling so much better. This holiday season, if you are feeling a certain way, the first thing you need to do is let someone know; it can take you a long way.
So, what was my perspective my first holiday season? I focused on the fact that I am building a brand new life and was so blessed to even have the opportunity to do so. I knew that if I sat and focused on my blessings rather than what was missing in my life at the time that next Christmas would be a fantastic one.
I also thought of all the holidays I ruined because I was an out-of-control, active addict. So many holiday seasons my family had to worry about me and any potentially terrible things I was going to do rather than just being around each other and enjoying the company.
I survived my first holiday season sober obviously, and you know what? The following Christmas was amazing. I will never forget Christmas morning, sitting on my couch with my family exchanging gifts, I was so happy, I cried (not something that has happened many times in my life).
As recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, we aren’t very good at looking at the big picture. Especially early on. We are all about now and wanting results to our good actions right away. If you are currently dreading the upcoming holiday season because you aren’t where you want to be, shift your perspective.
Be grateful that you are safe and sober and look at this upcoming season as time to build your life so the rest of the holidays in the future are everything you want them to be. Your future self will thank you.
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