The holidays used to be something I dreaded. It went like a countdown, I always felt, to how much I would allow myself to get away with before things spiralled out of control. My idea was that, in the spirit of Christmas, there’s always a lot that eventually stretches me a little, with the season being nothing but one mass overindulgence; it was too much stress, and God knows how people pressured me. The worst of all were excess emotions and extra addictions.
“Drink more around the holidays, everyone does it,” I would tell myself. But the truth was that my drinking was hardly a routine. It was treated as glitter and glitz like take a sip every time.
There were so many reasons why I chose to avoid holidays back then: suddenly all of the suffering and hardship I deemed too painful to look at like the loneliness, old wounds, financial matters, and family strains. It was like wearing the filth of life together. So, I would numb myself. But that numbness came with a high price.
My First Holiday Season in Recovery
That first holiday season in recovery was beyond rough. All of my old vices were stripped away, one after the other. Lights appeared brighter. Music grew louder. Emotions got more powerful. I didn’t know how to be of service to myself with nothing on board to cushion me.
I started with organizing my mornings. I started making the mornings easy-going. Quiet mornings. No craziness and no hurriedness. Just grounding—take a minute for each breathing in and breathing out, meditation, meeting, and an honest self-appraisal. It set a nice rhythm to follow for the day.
I hung out with people who supported my recovery, not those who supposedly “did not get what the big deal was.” It felt difficult to internalize that these people from my past should have remained there. But being sober meant showing up to places where I was respected for my healing, instead of places that endangered it.
Perhaps attending smaller gatherings—where my vulnerability isn’t on display or under pressure—has helped. Choosing more intimate settings and holding my own space has been important. While I’m learning not to give too much of myself away, being more protective of my time and schedule has become a real safeguard.
Forget Making a Big Deal
You must forget making a big deal about gathering on holidays: I stopped pretending and let them be plain simple because they are meant to be-beautiful, not beautiful; messy but not according to ideals; emotional and not cold; or even nice, messy, and difficult.
I, too, learned to grieve the time lost, the relationships shattered, the blurred memories, and the numbness of substance use. Yet rather than using to numb the grief, I made a deal with it and endured it. And in this anguish, there is a kind of healing.
What stuns me annually now is how genuine joy feels in sobriety. It’s not the sheer excitement produced by chemicals, not a grin I must force onto a face I hate, but the quiet sense of knowing that I am here, I am here fully, I am here honestly, with no escape route.
So, I show up now. For myself. For those who love me. For the piece of me from long ago who could never conceive of recovery.
The holidays no longer fire up my addiction: Thanksgiving Day cannot be robbed of its beauty; it fills me with so much thanks in seeing how far I’ve come and how much further to go.
And maybe that’s also the best part of the most beautiful: I am finally awake for a time that I once breezed drunkenly through.
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