Getting & Staying Sober During the Holidays

When You’re Done, You’re Done

I have a couple different sobriety dates on little tokens that I still keep on my keychains for our family car and my work car.

Neither of these are my actual sobriety date.

The first token is printed with 6/30/21. I vividly remember placing this order on Etsy on July 10th. Ten days, I thought. Double digits! I’ve done it. I’m finally going to stay sober this time. This is it. Sweet sobriety!

I relapsed on July 17th of that year because I didn’t like something my ex-husband had done. I just can’t take it any longer, I thought. And so, I drank.

I was in and out of sobriety until the date of my next Etsy order, which I believed would surely solidify my sobriety—the penny, which reads 12/12/21.

On 12/12/21, I not only liked that each date component added up to 3 and the total of all the numbers was 9 (or 3 sets of 3), but I had also just finished reading We Are the Luckiest, by Laura McKowen, and had joined Laura’s support group, The Luckiest Club (TLC).

This time, I went 40 days—40 days and 40 nights—from December 12, 2021, until Friday, January 21, 2022.

I felt so strong. I made it through Christmas, through New Year’s Eve, through New Year’s Day. I was doing it! I was staying sober. The days were ticking by.

And then, on Friday, January 21st, a boy I liked—and who I was certain liked me, given that we had spent a lot of time together and talked on the phone for hours most nights—blocked me without explanation. Without warning, my calls just stopped going through. And it hurt my feelings.

That January night, I had not yet felt, deep in my bones, that drinking was completely off the table. And so I drank.

The next day, it snowed—a rare event here in the South. I brought out my sled, put my sons in my snow boots, and placed beanies on their heads. I may have had a pounding headache and felt like I was going to die, but goddammit, I was going to be a good mom to my kids.

I came back to The Luckiest Club support group with my tail between my legs, but my momentum had been broken. I just couldn’t quite get back into it. The magic was gone.

A few more days of dabbling with drinking throughout that January, and a few more days in the year 2022 followed.

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My final sobriety date is 12/19/22. This month, right before Christmas, I’ll celebrate two full years of continuous sobriety (although there were many more years of working to get sober).

So many of my closest friends in recovery have sobriety dates in late November and early December. December, it seems, is a popular month for getting sober. Relapse was often a part of these women’s stories, although I don’t believe relapse is a requirement in recovery.

But before December 19, 2022, there were so many times when I said to myself, This time feels different.

People would say, “It’ll click. One day, it just clicks.” Fuck, I remember thinking. It hasn’t clicked for me. When, I wondered, will it click?

Then there were a few times I thought it had clicked (namely after I had worked all 12 Steps in the rooms and during those times I placed those Etsy orders). And still, I drank again.

Perhaps I wasn’t going to get it, I thought to myself. I’m going to die of alcoholism in this lifetime. Bummer city.

Another thing I heard a lot was, “You never have to feel this way again.” “You deserve a life that is happy, joyous, and free,” the woman who finally helped me get sober told me.

Me? I remember thinking. Me? This piece of shit who can’t quit drinking?

And then, it happened. It did click. I was able to pause when a craving struck and play the tape forward.

When you’re done, you’re done.

It doesn’t matter whether Christmas is on the horizon, or New Year’s, or New Year’s Day, or Dry January, or FebFast, or anything else.

When you’re done, you start working to build that toolbox that helps keep a drink at bay, one day at a time. I recognized it didn’t matter what day it was, or what was happening, or who had pissed me off or hurt my feelings, or what I wanted to celebrate—I wanted to live a life where I didn’t drink, one day at a time, no matter what.

And I see so many people around me finally feel that in their bones just before the holidays.

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I had gone to a few in-person 12-Step meetings in the winter of 2020. I had sworn to myself that I would have a sober 32nd year (a goal I set for myself in July 2020), but that hadn’t panned out.

My therapist, whom I had sought out specifically for addiction but had ended up talking mostly about codependency, my ex-husband, and the inept and unkind men I was pursuing after that marriage was over, had recommended I try some 12-Step meetings.

To prove to her that this surely wouldn’t work and surely wasn’t for me, I decided to go.

At these meetings, a woman agreed to be my sponsor. She gave me the copy of The Big Book that I still read from and that I am walking my first sponsee through today. My sponsor’s sober anniversary was sometime in December. She had something like 30 years. Her sober date may have even been December 19th, which is the sober anniversary that has actually stuck for me.

What about Christmas? And New Year’s? I remember thinking. Why would you bother getting sober in December?

“When it’s time, it’s time,” she said. “I remember watching all those people at the holiday parties turn into different people when they were drinking,” she said.

What I had thought was so glamorous was just people being sloppy, standing too close to me, talking and laughing in my face about something I never found funny.

As I’ve stayed in sobriety, I’ve met a few other dear friends, all of whom have their “sober anniversary” date right before, during, or after the holidays.

I was finally able to feel “one day at a time” in my bones—not just as a bullshit phrase that these morons in church basements say. I let go of my judgment and became, as The Big Book says, as willing to listen as the drowning.

When I first came to the rooms and heard “to drink is to die,” I thought, God, these people take this seriously. Is it really that bad?

As I’ve stuck around the rooms, I’ve realized that yes—yes, it is that serious.

“Stick around,” they say. “You’ll see people die.” And I have.

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During that mostly sober year of 2022, I had endured long enough the various moderation management and harm reduction Facebook groups and attempts.

“Why does this keep happening to me?” everyone on these harm reduction pages wanted to know. I followed all the instructions on my Reframe app. And yet, I got drunk again. How? People wanted to know: How did this happen to me, again?

It seemed, tragically, that people who truly had an alcohol use disorder were not going to be able to manage moderation. I can’t possibly belong to that class of people, I thought. Dear God.

Anything but this. Couldn’t it just be something like, I don’t know, cancer? Something easier? Anything in the whole world that would still allow me to have a drink on occasion.

Fuck. Please?! I asked the universe.

But there I was. And there I stayed, finding a life that is, indeed, happy, joyous, and free—on most days.

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There are different days, of course. Days that used to mean a big binge, and days when I used to desperately attempt to moderate (and sometimes got away with it). We’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, anniversaries, birthdays—and in our house, we have 8 kids’ birthdays, two different seasons, really.

The issue with exceptions is this: there is always, always, always a reason to make an exception.

There’s National Drink Wine Day (February 18), National Margarita Day (February 22), National Kahlua Day (February 27), National Cocktail Day (March 24), National Mojito Day (July 11), National Drink Beer Day (September 28), National Happy Hour Day (November 12), National Cider Day (November 18), National Screwdriver Day (December 18), National Sangria Day (December 20), National Champagne Day (December 31), National Hot Toddy Day (January 11), and National Hot Buttered Rum Day (January 17).

I’m not even making any of this shit up. The list goes on and on.

And these are obviously made-up holidays. As I mentioned—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, Tuesdays, days when my shoelace breaks, etc. There is always a reason to drink.

Because of this, I practice constant vigilance and stay on the lookout for that unguarded moment. All this means is I have to be keenly aware of where I’m becoming fatigued, where I’m becoming exhausted.

And when I become fatigued, I work to put miles of distance between me and the first drink. For this, I try to be gentle with myself (I wrote about “recovering in recovery” during the holidays here).

Because today, I don’t drink—one day at a time, no matter what.

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How about you?

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• How do you handle social situations or “special” days where the urge to drink might be stronger?

• Can you relate to the struggle of setting sobriety dates then breaking them?

• What tools or strategies have helped you stay sober, including during the holidays?

And if you found this article helpful, please tap the little heart. It lets others know there’s something useful here and will help us grow this community.

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Kristen Crocker

is a mother, stepmother, and advocate for normalizing the discussion of alcoholism among strong, smart women. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho in 2013, and now makes a living selling tree work. Kristen writes about sobriety and parenting in her newsletter:

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