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According to the Hallmark Channel and every commercial on TV right now, this is the happiest time of the year. And some days, it does feel like that. I have a great life. I love my wife and kids. My job is awesome. I live somewhere that has a vibrant recovery community that helps me keep myself out of trouble—most of the time, anyway! So it is nice some days to have the holidays approaching.
But the longer I’ve been sober, the more I realize how tricky this six-week window is. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s, it has to be the most intense combination of outside factors that all conspire and can really wreck sobriety. I know that’s not exactly a novel idea—I remember people as far back as my very first meeting in November of 2008 saying to be careful during the 1-2-3 punch of Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s.
I’m not even talking about physical relapse, though this is a very difficult time for that. I certainly think about that every day. But I’m also thinking about how you can do 11 months of work on building up your spiritual forcefield and then watch as it gets eaten away by the season.
Think about how many potholes we’re dealing with in the world during this time period. There’s a bunch of obvious stuff. But then there’s a few things that just sneak up on you and cause all sorts of less obvious issues.
Let’s start with the obvious.
—Traveling is hard. No explanation is necessary.
—Structure disappears. As much as a 9-to-5 job and kids in school all day can be unrelenting for the other 46 weeks of the year, there’s a certain rhythm to it where you at least have some guardrails. The holidays? Not so much.
—Money. Anybody else spend too much and end up with your fists balled up as you look at your bills rolling in during December? Yeah, me too.
—Drinking. I don’t have a ton of parties and drinking in my life any more, even during the holidays. But there’s definitely more of it around this time of year. Usually it doesn’t bother me. But on the wrong day, it ain’t very fun to be around a bunch of booze.
—A dip in meetings. I do a pretty good job of staying active in recovery throughout the holidays, but there’s no question my meeting attendance dips a bit when I am traveling over the holidays. It’s inevitable. And when all those things I already listed are happening, and I get to 3 meetings in a week instead of 4 or 5, you can imagine how that works out for me.
Now let me talk about a couple of things that I find to be stealthy disruptors.
—Darkness. It freaking gets dark at like 4:30 pm right now. I know it is a very old man thing to bring up, but literal darkness isn’t great for the soul. And when you’re two hours out from dinner and the sun is already gone for the day, there’s no way it doesn’t play a tiny part in my mood.
—Cold. I actually prefer cold weather to hot weather. But 19 degrees Fahrenheit in the darkness of 4:45 pm isn’t exactly a mood booster, ya know?
—The calendar. There’s something about the end of the year and the beginning of a new one that can feel like one chapter closing and a new, fresh one starting. That can be exciting and a good opportunity for growth, which is probably why so many people make New Year’s resolutions. But there’s also something to the idea that about 23% of people bail on New Year’s resolutions in a week or less, which is what one recent study found. That has been the case for me. What I find is, the end of a year can end up being an ugly moment to sit down and think about how much you suck, how your diet sucks, you don’t work out enough, you didn’t tell your loved ones you love them enough, and on and on and on. If that sounds like inventory work a lot of people in recovery do on a regular basis, I agree! I don’t need an extra moment to take stock of my shortfalls!
—Sloth central. Speaking of a sucky diet… I find myself easily turning into a slug around the holidays. It sounds great to cut it loose a bit on the diet, stay up late and wake up late, watch a bunch of sports with no work obligations and so on… but I actually think it can be too easy to morph into a slob around the holidays. And the last thing I need is six weeks of me time. I end up feeling so excited about the idea of sitting on a couch all day and relaxing and watching football and the NBA…. but it never plays out that way. I usually wind up feeling like a turd, and my kids are sitting around going nuts and yelling at each other, and it is pretty miserable.
I’m not really sure this post has much of a point other than awareness. I think it’s worth saying out loud that the deck is stacked against recovery people this time of year, and I guess my suggestion would be to consider that and then act accordingly. For me that means loading up on meetings, even if most of them are on Zoom, and make phone calls, and then make more phone calls. If we’re all scuffling a little bit this time of year, why not do some service work by checking in on a fellow drunk?
Then maybe go be a slob on the couch for four hours, then make a few more phone calls. That seems like a good recipe, huh?
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
One night, a man goes to a party and has too much to drink. His friends plead with him to let them take him home. But he refuses, explaining that he lives only a mile away.
Five blocks from the party, the police pull him over and ask him to get out of the car to walk the line. Just as he’s about to give it a try, the police receive a call on their radio about a robbery taking place down the street. “Stay put,” one of the officers tells him. “We’ll be right back,” and off they run up the street toward the robbery.
Well, the guy waits and waits, but since the police don’t show up, he decides to drive home. When he gets there, he tells his wife he’s going to bed. “Tell anyone who might come looking for me,” he instructs her,” that I’ve been in bed with the flu all day.”
A few hours later, the police knock on the door and ask to see Mr. X. “I’m sorry,” says the wife. “He went to bed with the flu and has been there all day.” Without blinking, the police produce the guy’s driver’s license and ask to see his car. So she shows them the way to the garage, opens the door and… there’s the police car, lights still flashing.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2000, Manning P. from Richmond, Virginia)
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