Coping with Sobriety during a Covid Christmas
Coping with sobriety during a Covid Christmas is like being on a huge ship in a stormy ocean. Suddenly you find yourself pitching and rolling with a glass of water in your hand. While everyone else is downing beer, wine and whiskey. What is going on?
Ditching the drink during the holidays makes it harder to find firm footing on unstable decks. It feels crazy trying to navigate around all the drinkers who keep asking why we are not drinking. We reinvent ourselves as the artful dodgers, steering our routes between turbulent swells and calm waters.
I imagine a Covid Christmas tapestry, comprising millions of tiny tableaus imprinted and created by our sober tribe. Vignettes of sobriety based on the millions of different solutions we have had to come up with. This blog focuses on wisdom learned during a torrid year.
“I regard alcohol as a sleeping snake with whom I cohabit carefully and respectfully,” affirms Lily *. “I would prefer to avoid waking the snake by having even a sip, as I think the snake would overpower me very quickly. And I don’t want to go there.”
What Would Happen if You Had Just One Glass?
Lily says it is all about playing the movie forward during stressful festivities. Imagine what would happen if you accepted that one glass of Chardonnay? She recommends always having delicious alcohol free (AF) drinks at hand when socialising — just to keep distracted and be part of a drinking crowd.
For Lisa, sobriety helped her to cope with the sudden deaths of three of her beloved horses last year. What made it worse is that these were the first horses she has lost in 22 years!
“One was only 12, I’d bred him, and it was heart breaking. I was glad I didn’t drink — it would have been disrespectful to all of them.”
These ladies found World Without Wine by chance and have stopped drinking. Lily has been sober for 16 months now, Lisa for 2 years, 4 months. Some drinkers who try to get on the wagon seem to experience a merry-go-round of day ones. How on earth did these ‘almost alcoholics’ cope with a Covid Christmas when stress levels were even higher?
Lisa is straightforward about this. “Let go of the shit and move on!” she advises. But be gentle with yourself as change is hard and it takes time. “Celebrate the small wins, and don’t expect anyone to understand. You have to want to change!”
Binge Drinking on the Rise During a Covid 2020
Google ‘online alcohol recovery’ and World Without Wine pops up. Search for ‘affordable recovery coaching’ and Janet Gourand pops up. Research during Covid 19 lockdowns worldwide revealed that more people drank more alcohol to cope. Unemployment, losing jobs, social isolation and general depression fed the need to binge drink.
The stress of the Coronavirus pandemic increased the level of drinking by binge drinkers. Binge drinkers drink copious amounts of alcohol during a short period of time. These types of drinkers often had parents with alcohol problems, other addictions like smoking or drugs, or allow negative emotions to drag them down. They start drinking to alleviate stress, not realising that alcohol increases stress and anxiety.
Carol (58) was a binge drinker during the crappy Covid year. “In strict lockdown in SA in March I drank all the time during those initial 6 weeks (knocked off a bottle of Rose a night),” she admits. She decided to “be a good role model for my kids and give up for good and for my own health”.
Carol coped with various Covid Christmas stressors sober: “My dad dying, watching his funeral on TV, a break in with intruder at Air B & B, money worries as my job income halved. All of them made me more determined to not drink — ironically.” She admits tha one glass of wine was always 3, then 4 glasses of wine, and then finish the entire bottle!
“I was a social fun drinker until my late 40s, when we moved to Cape Town. There was wine on tap drinking at home, where I consumed 4 to 7 bottles of wine a week in my early 50s. I tried to moderate drinking at weekends only but then I would drink more. So enough was enough. I needed to prove to my teenage kids you can fun without alcohol!”
Losing Loved Ones and Staying Sober
Cara also lost a parent during a tough Covid year. Coping during Christmases past meant gulping down liters of wine and champagne. But this Christmas, Cara chose to cope with her specific family dramas sober.
“December holidays are always difficult for me with the step kids. We have different value systems and I’m not a great herd animal. I do find it emotionally challenging. Previous years always resulted in me saying things I regretted deeply the following day. I would have my wine and then, of course, I would let loose. I’m deeply ashamed of my past behaviour.”
This year she remained sober which hardly made it easier, but she could then handle it much better. “I could stand my ground, but in a rational, unemotional way. I could get up and walk away from ridiculous, drunken conversations.”
An alcohol-free lockdown makes more sense than an alcoholic one. A few of us saw the light and are now reaping the many benefits associated with an alcohol-free life. Lisa said that her Covid Christmas went much better than she hoped!
“I did have some ‘it’s Christmas you should be drinking’ cravings which surprised me — maybe because I had more time with less on? Our central heating boiler packed up just before Xmas day but I coped OK with that, it would have been a drama if I had been drinking!”
Reality is about our Reactions
Lisa found World Without Wine when she saw the advert for the first ever WWW London workshop on Clare Pooley’s blog. Ever since then, she has learned to love what is.
“I can’t change reality, it’s happened, all I can do is choose how to react to it. Being happy or grateful or sad and angry won’t change what’s happened.” She is right, paving her life with pleasant intentions, coping far better.
Emily has battled to cope during the past 12 months, she says. Approaching her 3 years sober milestone, she spent her Covid Christmas break caring for her ill mother.
“My mom fell and broke her humerus and I had to take control and deal with her. My dad had already got stuck into the booze, as had everyone else, so I spent the day in hospital ER rooms with her.”
It was easier for her as it was her third sober Christmas. “Yes, I handled any ‘drama’ rationally and reasonably without alcohol heightening my drama queen antics. I took it all in my stride, got a little bored at times, but quickly found things to do. I cannot tell you how relieved I am that I still wasn’t drinking during lockdown. It would have gone by in a complete alcoholic blur!” she acknowledges.
Emily adds that Covid was a good year for her. No going out, staying in, no outside pressures. She says that the alcohol ban was a complete non-issue for her. She hated coming out of lockdown and having to go back into social gatherings again, being up against ‘not drinking’.
Three years ago, she was scrolling madly on social media to find AA options, moderation ideas, “seeing if I did indeed have a drinking problem.”
Now her sage advice is to “take one day at a time.” It’s tough and you do feel the pressure and the loneliness, but it doesn’t last for long. Believe in yourself and the why you are doing this? “Don’t let other’s insecurities and trash talk get into your head. It’s about them and not you. You make THEM uncomfortable — be safe in that knowledge.”
Taking Care of the New You
Emily is so right. Taking the time to look for a recovery counsellor online is worth your while: it is all about changing your relationship with alcohol and finding your own tribe — along with compassionate support and inspiration for alcohol-free living.
Lily found WWW when she was searching online for support as “I was realising my drinking habit was in charge of me instead of vice versa and I sensed there would soon serious consequences.”
She was lucky. And so was Cara who experienced a positive 2020 where being sober was her special bonus. “The lockdown forced me to take a closer look at my life and the things I value. I did some amazing work around mindfulness and my subconscious identity. And, of course, that involved getting sober. The freedom from cognitive dissonance is absolutely astounding. I found myself in 2020.”
She did battle a bit through her Covid Christmas, though — especially since she works in the wine industry and just loves the ritual of a good wine. “I was tempted at times to taste the wines but, then again, that seemed a bit pointless. I must admit the continuous drinking and long get-togethers around wine with everyone getting drunk, is getting laborious.”
She found that there is nowhere to escape to as a non-drinker. So best to remember that this time year is about the friendships, the happiness and the moment. “I also played anthropologist and could revel in the fact that I could spot the deteriorating nature of my fellow humans and be completely, 100% in control!”
Now all these lovely ladies have plenty of advice for other drinkers who want to stop.
Tips for Sobriety in 2021
1. Commit to attend a WWW workshop within the first month of giving up — and enjoy ongoing Whatsapp group support, plus a Zoom café every week
2. Encourage your partner to give up the booze with you
3. Be ready to shift something around drinking. Be that cutting back or just giving up completely
4. Read as much Quit Lit as you can — The Sober Diaries by Clare Pooley is a good start. And then This Naked Mind by Annie Grace about how the mind works
5. Connection — it’s important to be part of a group. It gives one a sense of belonging, accountability and knowledge is shared
6. Write down your fears of success, and your fears of failure
7. Recognise your witching hour — when those cravings come calling — and find something productive to do: music, exercise, being in nature or simply meditating
8. Should you go out — stock pile the AF drinks. I take beer, Kombucha, AF wines, bitters — you name it.
9. Do the inner work. Alcohol is addictive, but we reached for it and kept going back, because of some emotional reason
10. Start a new hobby or job and look forward with hope.
Many of us enjoyed a sober Covid Christmas and I have been lucky to visualise some vignettes of sobriety based on my chats to some new sober friends. We gained during a torrid year.
Make sure you get off that ship navigating the stormy seas. You could capsize. Find instead a stable rowing boat, rowing yourself to the other side using sheer will and muscle power. You got this.
*Names have been changed.
Conclusion
It is time to join the annual World Without Wine “January Challenge”. We ask participants to donate to Earthchild in exchange for a daily tips, tools and motivation to get them through an alcohol-free month. It costs Earthchild R250 to provide a child with a whole year of yoga tuition.
WWW’s January Challenge 2020 raised R46,000!
Janet Gourand says that the January Challenge is a great way to test your dependence on alcohol and give your body a bit of a break. But if you really want to experience the benefits of alcohol-free living and change your drinking habits for good then it’s just not long enough.
