If you are feeling lonely, call up your sponsor, a friend, or attend a meeting. Celebrating the holiday season should be about enjoying the break. The better you feel physically and emotionally, the better you will be prepared to face stress.

If you need treatment for addiction to alcohol or other drugs, consider going to rehab over the holidays

It’s important to have open and honest communication to make this season enjoyable and safe. The holiday season revolves around unrelenting themes of gratitude, abundance, and celebration. Some families might consider the holidays an inappropriate time to help a loved one get into addiction treatment when, in fact, it could be an ideal opportunity. For many of the reasons mentioned earlier, substance abuse tends to ramp up over the holidays. Addiction treatment initiated during the holidays could be the best gift you give to your family, your friends and yourself. Getting through the holidays sober can be a challenge, particularly for people in early addiction recovery.

Find Addiction Treatment During The Holidays

Blinking or just shifting in your chair can remind you sober holidays that you are o.k. It can break the trance and get you unstuck from feeling like you’re trapped, you’re in danger, or you can’t take care of yourself. Decide what your comfort level is and how you’ll respond to those questions before you’re in that situation. It’s fine to simply say, “I’m not drinking tonight.” Who knows — maybe you’ll inspire someone or help them feel less alone. At some point between the birth of my youngest child and his second birthday, my wine drinking ramped up.

• During times of stress, it can be helpful to embrace them.
• Maintaining sobriety through the holidays may be challenging, but it is possible with effort, focus, and support.
• This could be a room, your car, the garage, or even a close friend’s house, where you can go to in order to regroup, recharge, and de-stress.

Designate a Safe Space

If you’re newly sober, though, the holidays can be even more trying — and often trigger relapses, pointed out Dr. Meghan Marcum, chief psychologist at A Better Life Recovery. “The holidays are meant to be a time of joy, but they can also be particularly stressful especially for those in recovery,” Marcum told The List in an interview. There are resources available to help you to achieve long-term sobriety and to live a productive life beyond the holidays, one step at a time. We treat for alcohol and substance misuse, as well as co-occurring mental health disorders such as depression.

• There are a million different ways to give back, pay it forward and be of service, and each opportunity guides you further away from resentment, self-pity and fear.
• Have a bedtime routine that allows you enough time to process what happened during the day.
• It is easy to let the holiday demands and activities disrupt our daily patterns and routines.

Holiday parties often include alcohol and can be tricky to navigate for people who are in any stage of the recovery process. Millions of Americans live with some form of drug or alcohol addiction, and many are in recovery. As we know all too well ’tis the season to overindulge with heavy meals and lots of sweets. Of course, it’s okay to https://ecosoberhouse.com/ partake a bit (we are only human), but try to set a limit and make every effort to eat nutritious meals and snacks each day.

When you take the opportunity to connect with others—to see, value and honor their experience—you exercise empathy. You exist outside of yourself, and you begin to notice all the blessings your life already contains. And it doesn’t get more human, or more recovery, than that. If you become a ball of wretched energy during the holidays, perhaps your own expectations have become your downfall. If you come prepared to protect your sobriety, you should be able to outmaneuver addiction and avoid any potential relapses.

• Prepare or request non-alcoholic beverages at gatherings to ensure that you have enjoyable alternatives to alcohol.
• Prepare for holiday gatherings by thinking through potential challenges and triggers.
• But these celebrations also often include drinking, making them sometimes difficult to enjoy for people in recovery.
• One of the strengths of the staff at American Addiction Centers’ (AAC) facilities is that they are empathetic to the needs of an individual struggling with drug and/or alcohol misuse.
• These events can be exciting and sometimes overwhelming.