From the Dec 25 – Dec 31, 2002 issue

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Advice for New Nondrinkers

Some Tips for the Newly Sober on Getting Through Your First Dry New Year's Eve

by Kathleen Wilson

Trust your gut. That's the best advice I can impart to the newly sober as they venture gingerly into the vipers' pit that is New Year's Eve. If it feels too soon to be surrounded by drunken celebration, then it probably is. So you miss out on a night of revelry--big deal. You've already had your share, and if looking back to last year's hootenanny gives you the shudders, that's all the motivation you'll need to nail the door shut from the inside.

This next bit of advice comes in the form of a warning: Watch out for the resolutionaries, those folks whose New Year's resolution last year was to go on the wagon for 365 days. Now that they've done it, they're celebrating by getting hammered. (The irony of being right back where they started, only three hundred and sixty-four days later, is lost on the resolutionaries.) You are very different from them. They've made a bet with themselves, and you are in recovery. Keep reminding yourself about the difference.

My final bit of advice is to breathe in and out and take note of what surrounds you. With less than three months of wagon time under my belt, I celebrated New Year's Eve in public. I stood on the sidewalk outside a Belltown rock club and watched the fireworks, knowing that any other year I would have missed the fresh air and bright lights because I'd have been inside spilling champagne and exchanging sloppy kisses with friends and weirdoes. Strangely enough, standing outside was my way of feeling less removed from the crowd--I could be a part of the celebration, but I was surrounded by the kind of people who would rather watch the lights than mind their drinks. (They exist, I swear.)

I was in that pink-cloud phase I'd been warned about in treatment. I felt strong, and most of the grayness in my complexion had been replaced by a rosy glow: a redness reflecting health, rather than daily doses of death. I'd made it through midnight and a few minutes more without a drink, and I could feel myself smiling blithely at the triumph. I remember my gut telling me to go home while I still felt good, and hey--here's a novelty--why not go home before last call? As I was leaving, a shitfaced would-be prophet grabbed my arm and declared, "We're all going to have a really good year." I took it as a sign, and I looked forward to the new year, when all that had been broken would be fixed.

Not likely. 2001 was a shitty year for our entire nation, and personally it was the worst year of my entire life. I was sober, but aside from that, grossness rained down all around me. I fought urges daily. I threw up a lot, just like when I would drink, but now the eruptions were misdirected spews of fear and anger. I was incapable of entirely quashing the urge to ruin things by getting drunk, so instead of sucking in, I pushed out.

Here's what I learned from 2001: The new year is just what it says it is. It's not the better year or the fixed-up year, as the newly sober often believe. New Year's is just a flip of the calendar, a marking of the time since... whenever. I spent the next sober New Year's Eve at home until just past midnight, because my gut told me to wait until the year was good and dead before venturing out to my neighborhood bar. When I got there, the place looked like it had been hit with an ugly stick. Resolutionaries were toasting themselves and hollering with glee, while drunks with liver lips squished my cheeks as I struggled to find a seat. It was different for me, like it always will be. I was in recovery. I felt fresh, and the newness of the year actually made an impression on me for the first time--not the old impression that New Year's used to make on me, namely that it presented an opportunity for a do-over in which I could correct all the mistakes I made in the last 12 months. In 2002, I finally began a new year with no expectations.

For me, New Year's Eve is not and cannot be the celebration it once was. If you're newly sober, you may find you feel the same way. My advice: Don't fight it.