First Sober Thanksgiving

Hey, Cadre. Just wanted to chime in on Thanksgiving and remind some folks in early sobriety about some of the things that come up when you go home for the first time. Maybe you just got out of treatment. Maybe you just haven't been participating in family events for a while, but going home for the first time is kind of scary. Everyone's looking at you. People are hiding the alcohol. Lots of. Lots of assumptions about what you're thinking, what they're thinking. And I think there's some really good advice here for people who haven't done this yet.

So the first thing I would say was, go home and see your family. I mean, unless they absolutely won't let you. Don't be afraid to do it. Show up, walk in, say hello, do the normal kinds of stuff. And I think the most important part is, don't overthink it. Help out, do the dishes, take out the garbage, play with the kids. Do all the normal stuff. And if somebody in the family wants to talk about, you know, the recovery, say, you know what? I'm fine. I'm okay today. Can we do that another time? I'd like to enjoy the day as it is and what it's meant for.

I think the more normal you treat it, the more normal they will treat it. And I think it's also important not to expect family members to understand how to treat you. They don't really know what to do, so they're going to make mistakes. You know, grandma and grandpa might run around hiding the alcohol under the bed or make a scene, or maybe your sister or your brother says something offensive at the dinner table, you know, about, hey, don't. Don't get the beer too close to Chris or something like that.

I mean, God forbid it's so stupid to think about somebody really doing that, but these kinds of things happen, and I think you have to go in there with two missions. One is to be normal and grateful and thankful for your family. It's not group therapy. It's not a treatment event. It's thanksgiving. It's not about your disease. It's not about you. You might have the opposite, where everyone's hugging you and praising you and being like, oh, my God, you're amazing because you quit drinking. That's cool.

Take it, absorb it, suck it up. Live with it. It's fine. Don't, you know, that might be a little uncomfortable, but you'll live through that. I think a lot of people get caught up in what they think other people think. So if there is somebody in the family or, you know, somebody related to the family and you're concerned about how they're treating you or looking at you or talking to you, pull them aside, maybe down the hallway and say, hey, man, look, I just want you to know I'm okay. But I really, really caution about telling everybody sort of the status or the quality of your sobriety because you don't really even know what that is yet.

And it's really not a thing. It's not like you can say, you know, I'm riding at an 89 right now, or a b. It's really not. It's not a thing. If you have amends to make and you may, you know, you did some damage that is way down the road with your sponsor, I would not get into that. If this is your first time back home facing the family, I would stay out of that and say, you know what? We're going to get there with the sponsor. I've even had. I've heard of people coming up and say, hey, man, where's my amends?

Because they know. They know what the lingo is. Super inappropriate thing to say. But the response would be, you know, I'm working on that. I'll let you know. So the more you can sort of be in the moment for what the moment is and not be the newly sober person in the moment. Like, you're not the entertainment for Thanksgiving. And I imagine that some families are going to behave in different ways. Some are going to be very disrespectful. Some are going to be amazing. Some are going to be overly careful with you, and you're going to be like, made of glass, and they're going to watch out for you and, you know, the next day they're going to be like, do you need to go to a meeting?

And, you know, my advice on that front is plan your meetings before you even go home and tell your parents or tell people, I'm going to be at dinner and I'm going to go to a meeting the next morning, and I'm going to go to a meeting on this evening, and otherwise I'm going to be around because you don't have to go to meetings every 20 minutes. You can stay and play with the kids, but. And show up for the event, but go to the meetings that you can. I mean, I think some of the greatest meetings I've ever been to have been around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving.

Some of the local AA meetings do somewhat of a little bit different format, probably obviously, around gratitude, but, you know, you don't have to be the most gracious, gratitude filled person every moment. You can still be uncomfortable newly sober and trying to do the best you can and trying to stay out of, you know, resentment or fear or uncomfortableness. And also, I would say, prep the people in your family as best you can and let them know, hey, mom, dad, whoever. Don't. Don't let anybody freak out about hiding all the booze.

And please don't bring up certain things at dinner. Let me just have an experience with the family. I'll do my program while I'm there. It's really, really helpful to. To have that sort of experience, because we're sensitive. We're kind of shedding a layer of skin in early recovery, and we're just sort of looking for someone to step on our toe and we might go off. So we're just as sensitive and inappropriate sometimes as they are, and it's a h*** of an opportunity to have some real uncomfortable stuff going on.

And I think these are pieces of advice that can help you avoid that. Same with Christmas. Kind of do the same thing. Anytime you're sort of back in an uncomfortable place with your family, try to be there for that purpose and not for a different kind of purpose. If your family wants to sit down and talk about your recovery another time, we'll sit down, we'll talk about it. Enjoy your holidays, and I hope you stay sober and have a fantastic time, and everybody gets to see you sober. And that's. That's a.

That's a giant win. I mean, most of those people are just really, really happy that you're okay, and that's really what's going on. So happy thanksgiving, everyone.