We are coming up on a great time of year for many people. The holidays bring about a time to gather with family and celebrate together. For some people, especially those in early recovery or struggling with sobriety, however. The holidays can be a major emotional challenge for many different reasons.

 

 The most difficult for most people in recovery is the first holiday season. Things like unrealistic expectations and financial strain can really do a number to your mental health. My biggest challenge for my first Christmas season was that I had to spend it away from all my family. While I was in sunny South Florida they would all be together in New Jersey and it really was difficult for me to accept, but I did, and I survived and you can too.

 

Let’s go over some ways to get through this potentially difficult time of year.

 

Have A Sober Plan

 

While I get just wanting to isolate all Christmas day if you are not around your family, or feel like you will be just fine around your whole family for the first time while being sober, you always want a gameplan. Make a plan to hit a meeting that day, there are many ‘alcathons’ during big holidays. Alcathons are meetings that run for 24 hours in the same location. That means no matter what time is over the holiday or something like New Year’s Eve you have a place to escape to and find support. This is very vital to have, find a location near you today.

 

Change Your Perspective

 

I felt so bad for myself on my first holiday season, here I was trying my best to stay sober and I couldn’t even see my family during the holiday that brings families together. I was surely on the pity-pot. It’s a terrible place to be. If you find yourself in that spot I implore you to go find your sponsor or a sober peer and be completely transparent with them.

 

I’ll never forget when I finally told my sponsor everything about how terrible I was feeling with the impending holiday season coming up. He sternly told me that number one, I had no business feeling bad or feeling like I was owed something. How many Christmas’s had I ruined by either being high or just being an untreated addict? That hit hard. What hit me even harder though was he told me that the sacrifices I was making this Christmas season was to ensure I have better ones the rest of my life. It made so much sense to me. This wasn’t forever, I wasn’t going to be away from my family for the holidays for the rest of my life.

 

Be Of Service

 

I promise you no matter how bad you feel with the holidays coming up, there are plenty of people out there who are going to have a worse one than you. Families without any money to get presents, kids, without any parents to gift them anything, there are so many bad circumstances out there. If you do a bit of research you should have no problem finding a charitable organization or church that runs events to help out the much less fortunate during the Christmas season. Doing things for other people just feels good and is a great way to practice gratitude.

 

If your holiday season is not going to be the way you pictured it, it’s okay, I promise you can still make it special. I’ll never forget my first sober Christmas, I was in sunny South Florida, which was really odd for me, and I went to a few meetings with my friends. We went to Dennys then went to a house and just hung out and had a good time. Nothing amazing happened that day, but you know what, we we sober and we were all laughing together. I think we all knew we were all going to be okay and that our holidays in the future would be what we always wanted them to be.

 

 

Daniel is a writer in recovery from South Florida. He works for Coalition Recovery and truly believes anyone can get sober provided they are ready to take action.