A Sober Halloween, and Everything After

I tend to think of Halloween as officially kicking off the holiday season. (For my husband, it might actually start when Pumpkin Spice Lattes are released, but that doesn’t upend our daily routines.)

Halloween begins the season of being out of my routine. There are lots of events, time off work and school, things to be done, food to be made, presents to be wrapped, lists to check and double-check and check again. And it’s boom, boom, boom: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s.

Good, bad, or indifferent, the essential fact I have learned about myself in sobriety is that I am most comfortable in routine, and I am most comfortable when I know what to expect. The entirety of the holiday season upends routine. For me, this December marks three years of consecutive sobriety. Here are a few things I have learned:

You can just not go. Really.

When I was in the early days of sobriety, the idea that I could say no to an event absolutely blew my mind. I had no idea that I could legitimately just say, Not for me, thanks, and move on. I had never, in my entire life, operated on the framework that I could evaluate how I was feeling, base my decision on that, and that no was a full sentence.

A Halloween party, for instance, will likely be a heavy-drinking event. If I were newly sober, I would just not go.

In early sobriety, I had to ask myself this well-worn question: Is this moving me towards a drink, or away from a drink?

Part of sobriety for me is trusting that I know myself well enough to recognize when it will be a good idea and when it will be a bad idea. I had to determine whether this would draw against my sober reserve.

This is the nuance of navigating sobriety—the first thing I have to do is absolute: I do not take a drink, one day at a time. If I choose not to take a drink, one day at a time, the whole world cracks wide open, and I can move freely through it exactly as I want and get anything in the whole world that I want.

It seems like a paradox that, in order to be completely and absolutely free, I choose not to do one thing, and then I can do anything. But that is what I have found in my life. I trust the ebb and flow, and I make an honest assessment on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute basis.

The Yeti mugs and Jell-O shooters of suburbia

It’s still light out when we burst out the door to begin trick-or-treating. We leave the bowl of candy at the door, a hand-written sign that says, “Please take two,” taped to the storm door. My boys are excited. It’s 2023, and I am pregnant and coming up on one consecutive year sober.

The first house we go to has little toys on a table: plastic rings with spiders, skulls on keychains, things like that. Adorable.

At the next house, there’s a group of adults sitting around a firepit.

“Trick or treat,” my boys say, in their sing-song voices.

“Hang on, I have something for the parents,” he says, bringing a tray out of the fridge. This man is delighted. All the parents love this house.

“I’m pregnant,” I say, touching my stomach. My little Pokémon get candy in their buckets. He has full-sized candy bars.

“Next year,” he says, grinning.

We say thank you and move to the next house. My husband squeezes my hand.

A few other women have their Yeti mugs, their Stanleys, their little stemless wine glasses that they’re carrying while their kids walk to the doors.

“Thank God we have this to get through this,” they raise their mugs to me.

“I know, right,” I say back.

There’s no need to say anything else. These kinds of mommy-wine culture moments always made me uncomfortable. I always thought it was tacky, even when I was drinking.

But maybe it’s okay for them to have their Yetis, to have their stemless wine glasses. Maybe they won’t overdo it or wake with regret. Or maybe they will.

I’m not them, and they’re not me. And maybe they’ll never be me, either. Maybe they will have that half glass of wine—and then stop.

That was never me: the stopping-once-I’d-started part.

So I will wake with gratitude that I remember putting my sons to bed, that I remember the entirety of our trick-or-treating, that I didn’t lose them in the dark night, or get confused or dizzy or scared—not once; that I trusted in my core that I kept them safe, and that I know they are safe because I am sober and capable, and they can trust me fully.

The thing after the thing

Early in sobriety, I learned I have to be on the lookout for the thing after the thing.

I could make it through the event, through the first thing. But then I’d get home, slump onto the couch, and my mind would start wandering. I would think, goddamn, I worked hard—I’ve earned something. And the only thing I could think of as a treat back then was a drink. (Nearly three years in, I am still working on building my list of non-alcohol-related treats.)

The holidays are busy. The first year that I was really, really trying to get sober, I stopped drinking on December 12. This was 2021. I didn’t drink that year through Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s.

I was part of Laura McKowen’s The Luckiest Club at that time, and I remember lying down in my bed with my earbuds in, listening to the New Year’s Eve dance party and thinking, I made it.

But my foundation wasn’t very solid. The little raft upon which I had built my sobriety wasn’t built very well, and it was teetering as I moved through January. By mid-January, a boy I liked (to be clear, I was divorced, in my mid-30s, and had three children, but nevertheless) had said or done something that hurt my feelings, and I took a drink.

I had to learn to practice something I heard called constant vigilance.

When I first heard this phrase, I thought: that sounds completely exhausting. Constant. Vigilance.

But, having put myself through a few relapses, I can say that practicing constant vigilance—which really is an aggressive way of saying being actually honest with myself about feeling what I’m feeling—is so much easier than clawing my way back to sobriety, than reaching another Day One, than resetting my sobriety counter again and again.

I have to be gentle with myself, and I have to look out for the thing after the thing. And, as it turns out, practicing mindfulness—and, most of the time, being happy—isn’t as bad as I thought it might be.

This year, my husband and I will once again be chips and salsa, and our baby will be an avocado (last year, on her first Halloween, she was a pumpkin, of course).

Two of my boys will be eggs and bacon, and my other son will be a Ramen bowl. My stepdaughter is going as ketchup (her BFF is mustard), and we are working on convincing the rest of my stepsons to be food items, but they seem pretty set on being creatures from a game called 99 Nights in the Forest.

We will walk around our neighborhood, and we will say no thank you when offered Jell-O shooters. We will wave politely at the other parents, and at each house, we will shout at the kids, “Did you say thank you?”

When we get home, our boys will pour their haul out onto the floor, and we will look through their candy (although, as we always joke, no one is trying to give away drugs—drugs are expensive).

I’ll take my baby out of her avocado onesie, and I’ll turn on her white noise machine. I’ll rock her in my arms. I’ll kiss her forehead and put her in her pack-n-play. I’ll read the boys their bedtime story.

Then, I’ll rest my head on my husband’s chest, and I’ll steal some of their candy. And the next morning, I’ll wake up, and it will be November, and I’ll be filled with gratitude.

And then the whirlwind of the holidays will begin. But I’ll listen to my inner knowing, I’ll hear that little whisper, that itch that I’ve actually learned to listen to, and I’ll revisit my self-care list, and I’ll tend to myself when I need to—because putting my emotional sobriety first, caring for that one thing, which is easy on some days, harder on others, makes the whole rest of my life possible.

We’d love to know:

How do you stay sober on Halloween and throughout the holidays?
And if you’re dressing up this year, tell us about your costume!