Purpose
Drinks
Drinks
Sightseeing
Do some research on local heritage and historical sights that you can visit. While everyone is still in bed with their hangovers you can be on a bus to somewhere interesting and even magical, meeting new people and learning something new about the place you’re visiting. Plus you will be able to afford it as you won’t be spending money on alcohol.
Read
Exercise
Sunrise/Sunset
Postcards
Things to Remember
Feel Proud
?️ Be out and proud about the choice you have made to eliminate this poisonous crap from your body. Tell anyone who will listen how wonderful it is to be sober and to be finally working towards achieving a goal you have always dreamed about. Your confident stance will often stop people from trying to encourage you to drink.
Get Value For Money
?️ You paid a lot of money to go on this holiday so it would be a real shame to spend it sitting in bars getting drunk and then missing the best part of the day in bed with a hangover.
Avoid The Early Pressure
?️If you are with people who drink try meeting them a little later after they have already started drinking. Once most people are a few drinks in they won’t be that interested in what you’re drinking.
Lie
It’s okay to lie. If you don’t feel comfortable telling people you want to stop drinking and have to explain yourself, you don’t have to. No one has the right to pressure you into drinking, even if it’s gently, but if you don’t think you’re strong enough to resist it’s okay to tell others any story you like that will preserve your sobriety.
You Are In Control
You are in control of what goes into your body. Prepare for your holiday by thinking about what you want to say when you are faced with the option to drink. If you practice some stock sentences before you go they will pop into your mind more easily. “No thanks” is often all that is required when said confidently.
Think Ahead
Play it forward. Take a few minutes to play both alternative holidays forward in your mind. First, think about what your drinking holiday will be like and how will it feel to come back home. Next, play forward your sober holiday and imagine how it will feel and how you will be when you come home.
Don’t Be Fooled
Remember ‘marketing magic’. Never forget that a lot of the ideas and images you have about the ‘perfect holiday’ come from pretty aggressive alcohol marketing. These adverts show healthy, happy, glowing people with great relationships and a healthy attitude to alcohol. Make sure you check in with yourself about how much of what you are looking forward to is what you really want or what you have been trained to want by clever marketing. Don’t feel like you’re a failure because you fell for it all because everybody does. Staying sober in the long term will help you see the truth of what a genuinely wonderful holiday is really about.
Are you struggling to get off the drinking hamster wheel of drinking death? I know it can feel like a real struggle, going round and round the same loop of sober days and drinking failures. To help you jump off that endless wheel I have created a free printable for you called Give Up For Good : The Only 10 Things You Need To Know.