How to Stay Sober off the Booze Elevator this Holiday Season

Wouldn’t it be GREAT this holiday season if all of the people we like and love could just say

Stopped drinking? FANTASTIC! GO YOU! LET’S FORGET ABOUT SHARING A DRINK AND SIMPLY CELEBRATE LIFE!

Sadly when we stop drinking, many of the people we love just don’t get it. It can be hard to wrap around because really accepting that we can’t drink can seem so dramatic to others. They don’t want us to be THAT person who CAN’T drink any more than we want ourselves to be THAT person who CAN’T drink.

Our friends and family SHOULD say BRAVO! GOOD for you! They should be proud and happy that you’re not drinking. Just as they would be if you quit smoking!

But people are so absolutely married to alcohol. It’s ridiculous really. But they are. And when you say to them

“I’m not drinking anymore” you end up confronting them on so many levels. It becomes about them. And that’s wrong.

And most of us feel at some point like we’d be more interesting if we drank with everyone else. We wonder how we will go as deep into a conversation as we did when drinking, feel as comfortable as we did when drinking, and enjoy each other as much as we did when drinking, … without the drink.

The Art of Living Sober is a Skill that Takes Practice.

This is about you. You’ve decided that you need to stop drinking and that you’re willing to fight for it. It HAS to come FROM you FOR you.

If you haven’t read Belle’s booze elevator post please do Step Off The Booze Elevator

The thing about stepping off the booze elevator is that there seems to be a finite number of chances for some of us. I take the dangerousness of me drinking again very seriously. Even though I’m almost four years sober …. if I step back on that elevator I may not get off again. There is absolutely no guarantee that anyone gets off so I will not drink again no matter how harmless the people who love me think one glass of wine here and there should be for me.

It’s not harmless.

If I went through and told you the evolution of each of my relationships in sobriety this would become an insanely long post, so I’ll just say that in the early months it can be reaaalllllly hard to not drink with the people you love. It can be really hard to figure out how to relate to other people who are drinking without drinking yourself, but it does become normal, it does become easy, it does become simply who you are,

Think about this for a minute-

If someone suggested that you were more fun to hang out with jacked up on speed or calmed down with an opioid or sucking on a cigarette that would be absolutely laughable!

Stick to what you know you need. There is a person that your friends and family are going to be so grateful to know once they get accustomed to you not drinking with them. A person who’s self-confident and steady, who never creates drunken drama, and is able to quietly walk away from it in the event that they do. A person who can belly laugh from a place of genuine joy and who smiles from a clear generous and loving spirit.

That person is you…. off the booze elevator.

Don’t get back on.

I’m not drinking today because life is better in every way when I allow myself to just be … myself

Trust the process

Join me?

Come Talk to Us in BOOM Rethink the Drink if you need some extra support.

There are people who like to drink but can drink moderately… I can’t

There are people who get drunk more often than drink, but they are happy to live that way —- I can’t

Sober works for me.