Support during the holidays
How do you support someone in recovery during the holidays? It’s a good question and something that we wanted to talk about in this blog.
First, for people in recovery, we understand that the primary responsibility for our recovery is ours to manage. We are the ones who learn ways to ensure we stay within the path we have set for ourselves with however we choose to be in recovery. Many, who go to either inpatient or outpatient treatment, have learned skills to maintain our recovery. We learn how to manage thoughts that come up that can cause us to think about drinking our using drugs. We learn how to use a variety of support systems in our communities to ensure we have support from our friends who are also in recovery. We learn about the importance of paying attention to our physical health in the areas of nutrition and exercise. Vitally important for many of us is the importance of also paying attention to, and managing, any mental health disorders we may have. There are a plethora of ways we learn to manage our recovery.
There are some who may never go to any type of treatment, yet, still learn effective ways to manage and enhance their lives in recovery. Some may use their religious affiliations to ensure they have a positive life in recovery. Others may use family support to motivate them to stay in recovery. Yet, others may simply go back to using healthy living skills they had prior to having issues with a substance use disorders. The key here, before we talk about how you can support a person in recovery, is to understand they we know we are the primary ones responsible for our recovery.
With that said, there are things you can do to support us. Being it is the holidays this topic comes up due to there being an increase in activities in peoples personal and professional lives where alcohol may be present. Also, because in our state it is legal and has become more socially accepted, an increase in where marijuana use could be present is there during the holidays. For the purpose of this writing we will use alcohol in the rest of the writing. You can simply read it as marijuana if that could be applicable in your scenario.
It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for alcohol to be offered in a given scenario to a person in recovery. You will likely be in a room with people in recovery more than you might know. In a professional setting you have co-workers who are in recovery and you don’t even know it. It might even be the case you have family members in recovery and you don’t know. It’s just not uncommon to have this be the case. At a holiday party where there is alcohol present it is highly likely someone in recovery will be in the room.
We learn that we don’t have to completely stay away from places or scenes where alcohol is present. We learn skills to turn down offers for alcohol. A simple “no thanks” suffices for some as a response while others might have a certain line they use to turn down the offer. If you are the one offering alcohol to someone and you hear a simple “no thanks”, or some other verbiage to turn it down, you can be supportive by, being supportive of their declining the drink, don’t pressure them after they say no.
If you are the one planning a company or family party keep in mind that not everyone drinks, and plan to have non-alcoholic beverages. Train anyone who will be offering drinks to also have readily available non-alcoholic beverages. This should be part of the planning process.
For you personally, never pressure a person to drink alcohol. It’s not the right thing to do in any scenario as it is, but, for sure not good to do if the person you are pressuring to drink is in recovery. You, with your behavior, could jeopardize their recovery. Yes, their recovery is their responsibility, but, you pressuring them to drink could have a direct effect on that process.
We learn to enjoy life just like everyone else and love to participate in holiday functions. We will be present at the company party or family function and want to a part of life just like everyone else. We don’t expect people around us to not drink if they choose to do so. We learn that just because we have chosen to stop drinking that doesn’t mean that everyone else should. We only ask that you respect our decision as we will respect yours and we can all have a great time during the holidays!