It gets easier – 10 random reflections on a second sober Christmas

Hi lovelies – well another Christmas has come and gone, for me my second sober one (not counting pregnancies), and I wanted to share some of the good stuff I’ve noticed this year about doing the festive season 100% sober, second time around the sun – so you know what you have to look forward to next year!

1. Less stress – sooooo much less stress. This has been the biggest eye opener for me this year. My kids are 5 and 2, the little one goes to nursery and the big one is in year 1 at school. So in the run up to Christmas I am obviously required to do All The Things all the sodding time which usually has me tearing my hair out. But this year my calm was bizarrely impenetrable. Everything either got done, or it didn’t and it was no biggie. Either way I remained unruffled. Weird, but totally awesome!

2. Not giving a shit about the onslaught of booze marketing. God last year was hard, mainly for this reason – drink and drinkers just seemed to be everywhere and it all looked so sparkly and tempting, prompting a deluge of ‘why meeeeeeee’ self pity spiral thoughts. It didn’t this year. At all. I enjoyed many lovely, sparkly things this Christmas but booze has just lost its glamour and glitter for me now. A glass of wine or even champagne looks no more appealing to me now than a dirty ashtray. So do your worst M&S because after two years of sobriety even your best efforts have lost their power over me. I wonder if I’ll be saying the same about desserts next year (doubtful)?

3. Not having to go to social events I didn’t want to in order to prove to myself and everyone else that I can still go out and have fun sober. Last year I went to EVERYTHING in my quest for the perfect sober Christmas and, although everything I did was actually lots of fun, it was also a bit bloody exhausting to be honest. I said no to things this year and it felt really good. It felt like proper grown up self care. I had my share of Christmas dos, lovely food, great company and sparkly tops to wear, but it was all totally on my terms and when I needed to stay at home and make soup instead that’s exactly what I did.

4. Guilt free indulgence in food. I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around body positivity and freeing myself from the binge/restrict diet cycle I’ve been on my entire adult life. It’s still very much a work in progress but I’m definitely getting somewhere because this is literally the first festive season I can remember that I’ve not felt like utter shit about myself on 27th December because of what I’ve eaten over Christmas without being able to blame my rounded tum on a pregnancy. This year my new year’s resolution is not to restrict my diet in any way that makes me miserable, it is to give up on diets and diet culture and to eat in a way that nourishes my body and my soul. The end. And that might make me lose weight and it might not, but it’s more important to me right now to lose the self hatred about my natural size and shape that I’ve carried for far too long. And I never, ever, in a billion years would have got to this point if I’d not stopped drinking.

5. My sober friends. I had the loveliest day down in London seeing some of the Love Sober community. I count my sober sisters among my dearest friends now and I am so very grateful for them. And as always, meeting new sober people was an absolute joy. It really is quite something to meet someone for the first time and say ‘how are you’ and for them to actually tell you and vice versa. Really special.

6. General contentment at being really present with my family and friends at home. I’ve had a lot of random, unplanned, Christmas movie like moments this Christmas where I’ve been with my loved ones or doing something I love like singing with my amazing choir, and I just felt so grateful to be where I am, sober and present, able to be there and enjoy the moment and the people I’m sharing it with.

7. The contents of my glass just not being an issue at all. Last Christmas I spent an absolute fortune on AF drinks, some of which are still sitting in the garage today. This year more often than not I was just as happy with a cup of tea or coffee (caffeine addiction still going strong). I had a few glasses of Freixnet 0.0% on Christmas Day (the pink one, v nice, not too sweet), one glass of AF red wine with my Boxing Day dinner and one Seedlip Grove and Clementine tonic (very Christmassy). And that was it. Turns out I can moderate after all, just not drinks with alcohol in them!

8. Getting lots of rest. I don’t stop much in day to day life. Since I stopped drinking my energy levels have ramped up and I’ve got so much stuff I want to do now, it’s like there’s not enough hours in the day, but I have been neglecting my sleep and I was getting to the point of risking burn out. So I’ve just relished this aspect of the festive period so far, I’ve really slowed down and I’m embracing the lazy family days, where there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

9. Not panicking about New Year’s Eve. I have no firm plans. And I don’t give a shit about that. I might go out, I might see friends, I might stay up to see the new year in. Or I might not. Whatever. I honestly don’t care and that’s a first for me, I always felt under so much inner pressure to do something to mark the end of one year and the start of the next. My last year drinking this involved drinking a bottle of champagne and eating my own body weight in Chinese food on my own (after my depressed husband went to bed at 10pm), because the only way I could have gone out to see friends would have been if I’d driven, which clearly couldn’t happen on NYE now could it? Last year I did drive, I did see friends and I had a very lovely time, but I still very much felt that pressure to be Doing Something. And it’s just gone now and good riddance to it.

10. Genuinely looking forward to January. I would always feel so ready for the festive season to be over in days gone by. I would feel bloated, toxic and totally disgusted with myself. But that didn’t mean I looked forward to January. I would usually do some sort of detox which I would approach with a feeling of absolute doom and dread. And it would just reinforce my unhealthy mental relationship with food and alcohol, as I would run back into the embrace of wine and sugar with joyous abandon sooner or later, at the absolute latest on my birthday which is mid Feb. Even last year I did something similar with food, cutting out sugar completely for the whole of January. This year I have no feelings of trepidation about January at all. I am looking forward to getting back to my mostly plant based, nourishing diet and the exercise I love (I’ve had a cold for two weeks and I’m desperate for a run) and I’m not planning to deprive myself of any single thing at all. As I don’t see not drinking as a deprivation now – dry January isn’t a punishment, it’s a fucking privilege. Especially when you’ve just done your second dry December, and so it is the easiest and most natural thing in the world.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I know staying sober will not have been that easy for all of you. But it will be for your Christmases to come, I promise. When I first stopped drinking it was hard. God it was so hard, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Then it got easier. By last Christmas it was okay. And now it really does feel like the most glorious freedom, and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.