Family Vacation
 

OK, so I am on day 80-something, it's generally not a big deal to be alcohol-free anymore (although don't ask me about my moods, they still suck). But I am on a vacation this week with my brother (who admits he is an alcoholic, and still drinks) and his family, my mother (who is wheelchair-bound, very ill, and requires 24/7 assistance) and father, my husband and daughter, and my mother's crazy sister.

The house we have rented is on the beach, with a nice pool, and every day we go grab lunch at the nearby beach bar, and everyone else kicks back with frozen margaritas, etc.

It's driving me INSANE. I can't leave. I can't not participate in family activities. And everything about this whole week makes me want to numb it all with about a dozen drinks by the pool (which is what everyone else except my mother is doing).

Oh yeah, I had a moment somewhat like that less than a month ago. Family vacation thing with the in-laws, we rent a house every summer, one in which I usually drank way too much in previous years. A couple of days those bottles of rum, whiskey, bourbon, and gin were seemingly calling to me.

Try to get away for a bit. Take a walk on the beach, go into town "for supplies", bury your nose in a good book, play Scrabble with your mom, whatever. And just ride out the urges, they come and go like the tide. You'll make it.

Good luck though! I know what it's like.

I find reading my old posts helped when I began to think a drink was an option again.

The fact is aDaisy those margaritas - so harmless and benign for everyone else - would start everything back up for drinkers like us.

You've worked hard for 80plus days - don't let the dialogue in her head confuse you.

Do you really have to sit by the pool?

what wrong with going for a walk...or reading...or even organising some other family activity for everyone that's not sitting by the pool, drinking?

D

aDaisy,

First off ; Congrats on your 80 something days !!

I work evenings/nights at an oceanfront resort , and some weeks it seems like half the folks here don't do much except drink. Sad, really.

What always improves my outlook is to go see the families down on the beach. There's something magical about toddlers , seemingly ecstatic, around the surf. Probably for the first time. Seems like that's where the folks are REALLY having a great time !?!
....all doing it sober.

Hang in there, ......family dynamics can be a little stressful through a sober lense
......especially in early sobriety.