Don’t Let Someone’s Drinking Ruin Your Holidays
Don’t let someone’s drinking ruin your holidays is easy to say, but doing it? That’s another matter. You’ve likely been hurt, frustrated, concerned, angered, and/or scared by a family member or friend’s drinking if you’re reading a post with a title like this.
So what can you do when holiday celebrations involve drinking?
The short answer, “Watch your expectations.”
You’ve likely tried talking, yelling, cajoling, negotiating, looking the other way, believing their promise(s) to stop or cut down, but so far, nothing’s worked. You fear this year will be no different but you’re going to try, nonetheless.
Expectations around a family member or friend’s drinking can ruin your holidays. So what can you do?
This can cause your holidays to be especially fraught with angst and worry about how to make “this” holiday a nice one (or at least better than the last one). To that end, you’re likely playing out scenarios and planning strategies to:
- keep him (or her) from drinking too much
- keep her sister from making nasty comments about his drinking
- keep his wife from nagging him about “having another beer,”
- and hope dinner is served before he passes out.
Likely all of this will have you on pins and needles, snapping at your children, “listening” or “watching” for signs that things are about to go badly; almost dizzy with angst trying to keep it all “happy.” And, if it goes like it usually does, all of your expectations — your dashed hopes and dreams for a holiday not ruined by drinking — will turn into resentments before the New Year.
So what can you do to keep drinking from sabotaging your holidays?
- Remember that when a person drinks too much, it causes them to engage in any number of drinking behaviors— the key concept here is “drinking behaviors.” Drinking behaviors occur when a person drinks more alcohol than their liver can metabolize (get rid of). While “waiting” to be metabolized, the ethyl alcohol chemicals in alcoholic beverages change the way brain cells talk to one another. These brain changes are what cause drinking behaviors. And these behaviors include passing out, starting a fight, continuing inane trains of conversations that only they can follow but the other is afraid to break for fear of them getting mad, being all lovey or being all nasty mean. You cannot control drinking behaviors because your loved one’s brain is no longer functioning properly. In other words, you cannot control your loved one’s behaviors when ethyl alcohol chemicals have changed the way their brain works. The only thing you can control is your brain; how you react.
- Try put yourself in a mental bubble. Not that you don’t enjoy your holiday, but try not to keep track of what everyone else is doing. When one or the other complains to you about what the other is or is not doing, smile and gently say, “I think that sounds like something you should talk to him or her about.” And then, WALK AWAY — easier said than done, I know, but you can always excuse yourself to go stir the gravy.
- Keep your expectations low — not ‘off’ but not Norma Rockwell, either. Try not to put stock in the hope that this will be the holiday you’ve always dreamed of because it can’t be when there is excessive drinking going on. The drinking behaviors that ensue set up a whole host of behaviors in everyone else as they try to grapple with what to do in their own way and with their own set of expectations, emotions and views of the situation. Controlling all of that is utterly impossible.
- Count to 10 or 100 or take a walk or head to the bathroom and lock the door when it feels as if you’ll explode — do anything to break the moment so you can collect your wits about you.
- Understand Secondhand Drinking and learn to count drinks to protect yourself from drinking behaviors.
- Enjoy the parts you can. When you aren’t so focused on trying to stop what is beyond your control, you can focus on a child or another guest or your own admiration of the meal or…. Basically, try to be ‘mindfully’ engaged in whatever it is that gives you pleasure and focus on that.
- If you have the time to talk with your loved one or close friend before the holidays, check out this post, “What to Say to Someone With a Drinking Problem.”
- And for more on all of this, I suggest you read my latest book (available in Kindle or Paperback), 10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop! What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much. The second half explains what a person can do if they have a loved one who drinks too much. The first half covers alcohol use disorders (what we commonly refer to as binge drinking, alcohol abuse and/or alcoholism). The second half explain what happens to family members and friends of someone who drinks too much and offers suggestions for how that person might reclaim their life.
AND PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY know…
…that you do not have to serve alcoholic beverages just because some of the guests like to drink. You can let people know there will be no alcohol served this year — with no further explanation. Whether the person who likes to drink comes or not, that’s their choice. Remember — it’s your holiday, too!
Lastly, I offer free phone, Skype and Zoom calls to answer further questions. Please email me at lisaf@BreakingTheCycles.com to schedule.
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Note: a post similar to this one, titled: “Don’t Let Worry About Drinking Sabotage Your Holiday Expectations,” was published on December 21, 21011.
Lisa Frederiksen
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