backpacker

Today is my sixth day sober and it is new years eve. I would much rather like to stay home but i dont want to ruin the celebration for my wife. We are going to dinner and a show. After that is where my problem is. We are going to a bar with her dad to ring in the new year and im not one to just sit around a bar without drinking. I think boredom will set in and the temptation is going to be very strong. any ideas, advice, or suggestions would be very helpful. I know i should just stay away but like i said i dont want to ruin my wifes celebration and i want to make sure she doesnt stay and drive home after drinking.

splendra

I would like to suggest that you keep your sugar intake low because sugar contributes to alcohol craving.

backpacker

thanx

Anna

I wouldn't do that, if I were you.

I couldn't be around people drinking alcohol, when I was newly sober.

I wish you well with your New Year's celebration.

CarolD

Welcome to SR!

Gee, that's a tough position to put yourself in.

When I was newly sober....I timed my cravings.
They were usually 5 to 7 minutes in duration.

I took action when I craved.
A walk..Brushed my theeth...Ate a Lifesaver...Drank cold water

But I was not in a bar

Sooo....I dunno

Blessings to you and your family

caitlin666

backpacker,
i know you dont want to let your wife down, could you just to dinner and the show, drop your wife off at the bar and pick her up again (or order a taxi )

your sobriety is the MOST important thing here, and im sure you wife wouldnt want you to endanger that.:ghug3

gravity

Hi backpacker,

Well, you are going to dinner & a show with your wife. Your wife & her dad can go to the bar without you, offer to pick her up after. You would rather stay home anyway, your wife will have a good time, and she will have a ride home.

It sounds like you know that you will have a tough time going to a bar. I wouldn't go, too risky. If you feel you must, I wouldn't go for very long (eg. delay when you arrive, leave shortly after 12). Maybe explain to your wife how you feel.

Just some random thoughts.

Good luck!

Debaucher

If you do go... I would go with a plan. What are you going to do instead of drinking? If your plan is to go and "not drink" then you plan is set up to be torture. Plan to have fun sober but be prepared. What are you going to do when asked if you want a beer (or favorite libation). What are you going to do besided watch everyone else drink? Cards? Games? Trivia? Pool? Listen to music? Dance? Conversation?

Another suggestion I have heard on occasion is to take another sober person with you. Perhaps that isn't an option.

I would have an exit strategy and have discussed it with my wife. For me just knowing I am not trapped and that I have the choice to leave helps. Like you might say that if you say to her I'm going to the "little boys room" it really means I'm going outside for 20 minutes because I need a time out! etc... or that if you say "<fill in the blank>" it means you really need to go.

I would really trust myself to go or not go. If I wasn't sure I wouldn't drink I wouldn't go. If there was the slightest doubt I wouldn't go.

Tazman53

I would suggest a serious talk with your wife, some how I have a feeling you will be suprised at here willingness to adjust her evenings plans to help you out.

One question to also ponder is this?

Which would ruin your wifes celebration more, changing her plans to help you avoid temptation or you getting snot slinging drunk?

If your wife is not one of us then it will not matter to her whether she brings in the New Year with or without a drink.

My wife is not one of us, she could care less if she had a drink or not, she has a blast without booze and I have learned I can too! Actually I have a lot better time now sober celebrating then I did when I was drinking, kind of neat remembering an entire evening, not worrying about get arrested and waking up in my bed with my wife and no hangover or still drunk!

mike_mass

Like others said, it would be best not to go. If you do go, I would just nurse ginger ale that looks like a mixed drink.

Nohangovers4me

Personally I wouldn't go. My sobriety means more than one night of drinking. I am sure your wife is aware of your drinking so maybe you could sit her down and explain to her that a bar is not the place you need to be right now.
I know all of my friends are having parties tonight. I live in walking distance to a popular bar and pizza pub that will have a huge party tonight and I decided to stay home. I don't want to wake up tomorrow mad at myself.

Does her dad have someone else he could hang out with?

Kellye C

My first instinct upon reading your post was addressed very well by Taz. I don't know your story or your wife's but unless your wife is an A and would be upset at losing an opportunity to drink I think I would sit her down and explain the reasons why tonight's planned activities are risky for you at this point in your recovery. Which would she rather have, you drunk having blown six days sober or a night in a bar? Would she be ok with going to the bar alone with just her dad and if so, could you live with that? If you are totally honest with her she may surprise you in how supportive she would be. A lot of times we try to justify risky behavior as trying to spare others feelings. I know for me in early sobriety especially, I had to be my own TOP PRIORITY. Selfish as it sounds it was true. My family had already seen way more of the drunk me than they ever wanted to and fully supported my efforts to get sober. Do you think your wife would feel the same? You could offer to make it up to her by maybe taking her and her dad to brunch New Year's Day or pick a date in the near future when you take her out to the restaurant of her choice or a play or whatever she loves. I'm grasping at straws here since I don't know you or your wife but I really hate the idea of anyone with short term sobriety being in a bar any night but much less on a night that is renowned for getting blitzed.

You've got a few hours left. Please consider having that heart to heart with your wife and best of luck. If you do decide to go with her have a safety plan in place. Tell her that if you get tempted you will leave NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Ask for her support in this. Explain what you are trying to accomplish and the ultimate benefits to you and your loved ones of getting and staying sober. If she wants to stay that's up to her but make it understood that if you can't hack it you're out of there.

I hope we will hear a good report from you about how you made it through your first New Year's sober. Sobriety has so many rewards if you just can stay the course.

Big hugs,
Kellye

NoMoBeer

If you don't want to drink, don't go. Your wife should understand. Would she rather have a sober husband, or a drunken New Year's Eve?

I still, after 3+ years of sobriety, will skip an event if I think I will be uncomortable.

If you truly want sobriety, and are 'willing to go to any lengths' to get it -- it must be the NUMBER ONE priority in your life.

For me, without sobriety I have nothing, so it always comes first.

Just my 2 cents.

NMB

1963comet

Even with the best intentions of not picking up a drink is hard in the beginning. My first year I had to stay away from people that drank because I did not trust myself.

But if you need to go just remember what you wrote here.

Miss Pink

Slippery places can make people slip.

Put your health before her "fun".

RufusACanal

This is amatuer night, stay home it's more fun!

St_Kurt

This is very true. For years my best friends have been the biggest bunch of drunkards on the planet when we go out. I rarely have more than one. (And if I couldn't stop at one, I'd be having none. ) Usually I don't drink at all though.

How did/do I do it?

I had something to do.

I discovered early on that there is nothing like a bunch of drunks for having their picture taken. Why people love to get hammered and go "Take a pitch'er of me! Take it! C'mmon!" I have no idea, but since college I am practically a bar scene photojournalist for both my friends and strangers too. (They see my camera and just have to get in on the action I guess...)

I actually lug my large professional camera into bars etc. without worry* now because I get good practice in "drunken sports photography" (taking in focus photos of fast moving people in very low light) and am entertained the entire evening.

There was actually a period where I stopped bringing my camera with me (and a few times with my camera after) that I drank more than I'd intended. It freaked me out and I found this place. I also stopped going at all for a good long time before trying it again.

I'm not saying "bring a camera" necessarily, because not everything works for everybody. This is just an example of how this one outlet has kept me focused on something besides alcohol in bars for over a decade. No pun intended.

~SK




*This isn't true. It back fired once. I was in this great bar in the middle of nowhere. Awesome barflys. Great faces and postures and stuff. I was photographing across the bar (like between the shelves of bottles) with a very long zoom lens using an upside down pint glass like a tripod. One guy saw me and started mugging for the camera. He was pretty drunk and seemed to be enjoying himself so even though I don't like photos where the subject is looking at the camera, I kept shooting. Later, even drunker, he wanted to see his pictures. I obliged, found him on my memory card (I use a dSLR when I'm doing this) and started flipping through on the screen for him to see. He thought I'd taken a movie of him and tried to throw both me and my camera across the room because "He wanted to see the pictures!"

We were both kicked out. {sigh}

mikel60

You may already have left, but dropping your wife at the bar and geting her later was the best suggestion I heard. When I was newly sober, however, there was an occasion where I felt I had to go to the bar. When I got there, I had the bartender, who happened to be my cousin, put my twenty-four hour chip on the top of the Jameson's bottle. Right on the cap. Jameson's was killer for me at the time. If I wanted a shot, he had to take the chip off the top first, and then show it to me. I didn't drink that night. Bad idea to go to the bar, though.
Mike

Flood

Hah i remember saying that!!! glad i dont have to say that anymore....as for me in your situation i would stay home..

Tommyh

6 days sober.....I would have my butt in a bunch of meetings around sober people..