In just a few days (if not today!) the madness of the holidays will begin to settle in for most people. And, while I’ve talked about being prepared before, now is the time to actually utilise your strategy. What’s that? You haven’t built a strategy yet? Oh boy.

The only way you’re going to get through this period of stress is by having a good strategy upfront to avoid relapsing or hitting rock bottom. As we all know, stress is a major contributory factor in addiction/relapse so we need to be very careful to avoid it where possible.

However, that’s often easier said than done! Here are our top 3 tips this holiday season to avoid stress or triggers:

• Holiday Recovery Tip 1 – Have a plan of escape. No seriously! Think of ways that you can find to get out of situations when you absolutely need to.
• Holiday Recovery Tip 2 – Find ways to relieve stress – quickly! One tip I’ve used before is nipping off to the bathroom and doing a quick meditation on the old white porcelain can. Crude but effective.
• Holiday Recovery Tip 3 – Practice. Make sure you practice saying “no” when it counts. If you’ve practiced saying no in a ton of different ways it won’t be as much of a struggle to say no.

The holidays can be incredibly stressful but if you keep in mind those 3 easy tips then you should be good to tackle just about anything. It won’t be easy and you’re going to be challenged but recovery is about building resilience and over time it does get better.

It is so important to have a great strategy going into the holidays so that you don’t relapse or end up in situations you don’t want to be in. Research indicates a dramatic spike in the holiday season – so we definitely recommend you do something about it now to be prepared.

What has been effective or what kinds of struggles have you faced during the holiday seasons?

Before I quit cold turkey and had a very specific plan to follow, I was just like you. I’d tried a couple of times to “reduce” the amount I was drinking. I had attempted to go more than a few days without a cheeky drink. But do you know what happened?

Each time I tried this it never stuck. I remember one time specifically that I had made a promise not to drink for the month of January. It wasn’t a New Years resolution or anything but lots of people do this for the first month of the year. Can you guess how long it lasted?

3 days. Well technically I didn’t actually drink at the 3 day mark but that’s the mark when I tried to justify in my mind that this was stupid. Sound familiar? Have you ever broken a promise like this to yourself? If you have, you’re not alone.

We dive into this in Lecture 3 of our Stop Drinking Alcohol course where we talk about not having to hit rock bottom. It’s a common myth that people fall for and I hope you don’t think it has to get worse before it can get better.  If you’re still struggling with alcohol abuse and dependence now is the time to fix it.

Our course is broken down into 10 easy sections you can follow that walk through the exact steps you need to take. This isn’t some hypnosis bullshit or law of attraction type stuff. This is a hard-hitting, sobriety focused program taught by a real professional.

>> Click here to Stop Drinking Alcohol

It doesn’t matter if you drink 10 drinks a day (like I used to) or just 1-2 (like a lot of people). You can get sober from home and I promise you the results are incredible. I want you to feel like alcohol doesn’t have to run your mind or health. We’ve been exactly where you are – we know it can be done.

To your sobriety,

Nick