If you had told me this time last year that I would be about to have my first Christmas without alcohol, I wouldn’t have believed you.
In truth, I probably wouldn’t have remembered. I spent most of December 2019 drunk. On Christmas Day I drank to black out and passed out at 10pm.
It took me another seven months to realise that I am an alcoholic, and to seek help. It has been the most difficult thing I have ever done, as well as the best.
I no longer crave or obsess over alcohol. I no longer prioritise it above my friends, family and my own safety. I am no longer suicidal.
In fact, most days I am positively cheerful about being an alcoholic, but Christmas is not most days. The 25 December is a day of unmanaged expectations and collective release, and as I have learned quickly, it’s a very different proposition.
I had never realised before just how inextricably bound up Christmas is with booze. It is everywhere. It’s in every shop, wrapped up with truffles and presented as a thoughtful gift. It shouts at you from Prosseco-ho-ho cards.
It’s (free) at every Christmas party, it’s on every Christmas dinner table and though I turned down most of this year’s invites, I still can’t get away from it – alcohol literally spills onto the street as revellers stumble along pavements, cans in hands.
I understand the desire to drink heavily at Christmas. Alcohol is integral to celebration. There’s rarely a birthday, christening or pay day that passes without a chilled bottle of something – and what is Christmas if not a chance to let down your hair and have a knees up?
Alcohol is the social grease that makes office parties with 50 people you barely know palatable, or lunch with dull Aunty Jean manageable. Secretly, I have always been terrified of these social occasions, scared by the dynamics I couldn’t work out, and so alcohol was my way into a good time.
This Christmas I worry I’ll have to find other ways to have, and be, fun. That I’ll have to be extra chatty, extra witty, extra everything to make a dry day not…dry. Maybe it explains why I’ve gone way overboard on presents.
If I’ve learnt anything from getting sober it’s that we drink for other people as much as we drink for ourselves, keeping each other company as the good times roll.
If I’ve learnt anything from getting sober it’s that we drink for other people as much as we drink for ourselves, keeping each other company as the good times roll. Getting drunk together is bonding and freeing, and a bit of joy and unity is never more needed than at Christmas when family comes together.
If you don’t drink, you run the risk of being a party-pooper, a stick-in-the-mud. At best you are pregnant, or maybe you’ve got the flu and even then, surely you can have one?
In fact it’s as socially awkward to give up alcohol as it is to be an alcoholic in the first place. Go figure.
I can be around people as they drink but I don’t relish being around people when they are drunk. I’ll never say a word, though – firstly, because my sobriety is strong enough and secondly, because the problem is mine, not yours.
I won’t ever ask you to not drink around me, although small acts of kindness go a long way. Recently at dinner, my friends subtly asked for one less wine glass, sparing me having to say no when the wine was poured. I almost cried out of gratitude.
I have no desire to return to the dark places alcohol took me so my Christmas wish is just this: please don’t leave me out. I’m still your friend, your colleague, your sister, your daughter, and if my sobriety this Christmas scares you, know that it scares me more.
This year there will be no respite from family tensions or board game boredom. If year-long resentments arise I will have to sit through them sober without alcohol to do its magic trick of speeding up time.
A boozy Christmas is a chance to forget the stresses and strains of the year and let go as work winds down.
That’s why I used to drink too, except that instead of Christmas it was Tuesday, and rather than trying to relax I was trying to escape the shame, fear and despair of my increasingly chaotic life. Because alcohol was my way out, too.
Still, for all my fears, I know I won’t drink this Christmas. Giving up alcohol is the first kind thing I have done for myself – perhaps the only thing I have ever done for myself – after years of abusing and self-hatred.
I’ll wear my cracker hat and a smile and be as jolly as I can, and when it comes to raising a toast I’ll join in for that, too.
The only difference is that I’ll be drinking juice to your gin and wishing for a very merry Christmas, and a sober new year.
MORE: How to ditch alcohol and keep your friends
MORE: How to become a ‘mindful drinker’ during Christmas party season
MORE: I’m 32 and an alcoholic, and accepting that has made me happier than I’ve ever been
source https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/25/this-is-my-first-christmas-as-a-recovering-alcoholic-please-dont-leave-me-out-11953741/
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