How to Get Through a Family Wedding When Your a Recovering Alcoholic
FIRST PERSON
How I Survived Wedding Season in My Kickoff Year of Sobriety
There'south more to weddings than an open bar. It just took giving upward alcohol for me to realize it.
Weddings are for partying.
I learned this much at my kickoff wedding reception. I was half dozen, and a flower girl in my cousin's conjugal party. It was 1996, and I heard songs like "Macarena" and Hootie & the Blowfish'southward "Only Wanna Exist With You" for the commencement time. I danced for hours in my pink floor-length clothes, emerging sweaty and exuberant at the cease of the night.
"I dearest weddings!" I screamed at my parents as they put me to bed.
Weddings are also an escape from reality, a few fairy-tale hours. As an anxious child, I loved to escape. I lost myself in stories and make believe, creating and retreating into universes that felt safer than my own.
This urge to escape had evolved into a complicated human relationship with alcohol. I was a frequent drinker, wrecked past hangovers and anxiety in the days post-obit a night out. So when I turned 28, in September 2017, I quit drinking with the help of a therapist. I worried about things like dating without booze and sharing my decision to become sober with friends and family. Soon enough the benefits outweighed the fears. I was sleeping ameliorate, experiencing less anxiety, and relishing hangover-free weekends. All the same, I had 7 weddings scheduled in the next 12 months, all without a plus-i.
For me, weddings had ever provided a free pass to over beverage. Open bars and Champagne toasts meant that even "normal" drinkers imbibed more than usual. I couldn't imagine what a sober hymeneals would expect like, or how it could possibly be fun.
My first sober wedding — a few weeks later, in November — was a blackness-tie affair in New York City. As I entered the hotel alone, I felt similar a baby deer learning how to walk. I was genuinely looking forwards to celebrating the bride and groom, merely my sobriety felt like a shameful secret. At cocktail hour, I filled my easily with nutrient; heaping plates of cheese and passed appetizers, anything to give me an excuse to apologetically shake my caput when a server appeared at my elbow with a tray of Champagne glasses.
When the doors to dinner opened, I went straight to the bar purely out of addiction. I had noticed that most of the drinks at cocktail hour were existence served in tumblers, while a noticeably meaning woman was sipping on a club soda out of a taller glass. "Guild soda in a tumbler glass with lime, please." The thought of anyone asking me why I wasn't drinking was unfathomable. Faking I was drinking was better than risking someone asking me why I wasn't.
A few months afterward, in January 2018, I flew to wedding No. two. Information technology was a destination wedding in Puerto Rico, where two college friends would exchange vows on the beach. This time, I decided to try a new approach to sober weddings: existence the very all-time guest in attendance. I listened carefully to the vows, took my seat at the advisable fourth dimension for dinner, and laughed at the right moments during speeches. I danced with the bride, ate nuptials block and spontaneously jumped in the pool with other guests at the end of the night. As I drifted to sleep with damp hair and a full stomach, I felt proud of myself. I had been a fun wedding ceremony guest, fifty-fifty without booze, and surely that had to count for something.
The next morn, the bride confessed that she drank also many glasses of Champagne and her memory of the cease of the night was a blur. She didn't think much from the trip the light fantastic flooring, the cake, or the belatedly-night swim. I was disappointed. I had been so focused on being a "practiced" wedding guest, but did it matter if the bride didn't remember it? And was the betoken of weddings actually to please the bride and groom? I was unconvinced.Wedding No. 3 was another black-tie celebration in New York City. I was six months sober, wore a silver apparel, and caffeinated beforehand to assist me stay awake through the after-political party. I watched the ceremony and felt genuinely happy for 1 of my closest friends. I besides felt very single. After the ceremony ended, I ran into a friend of the groom with whom I had gone on an uneventful first date months earlier. We'll call him Jake. I exchanged polite pleasantries with Jake before continuing into the cocktail hour.
The thought of anyone asking me why I wasn't drinking was unfathomable. Faking I was drinking was better than risking someone request me why I wasn't.
An hour later, after spending some very intimate time on the dance floor with the bride's younger cousin, Jake was at my table asking me to dance. In an alternate universe, I might take marched over to the bar with Jake after that first dance and engaged in an unspoken competition with his kickoff dance partner to temporarily abate my feelings of loneliness. Just equally we danced, I felt uncomfortably aware of the reality of the state of affairs. Fleeting attention from Jake wasn't going to fill the larger romantic void in my life. I excused myself after the song ended and took refuge in the bathroom, my new safe haven at weddings. I looked at myself in the mirror, and knew I was deluding myself into thinking that validation from Jake would have whatever long-term touch.
Much like booze before it, it would only be a temporary fix. Luckily, when I got back from the bath Jake had already moved on and was dorsum on the dance floor with his original partner. I ate block with my friends and subsequently fell asleep feeling relieved that I had successfully avoided waking up with an emotional or physical hangover the post-obit morn.
The months betwixt June and September are unremarkably referred to as wedding flavor, and my summer calendar matched the description. Weddings four through 7 were packed into three months, in what ultimately became a sober-wedding boot camp. I put my new tools to the test: caffeinating earlier the ceremony and hiding out in the bathroom when I needed a few minutes to regroup or text a friend for support.
I also adult a new survival mechanism: Stick to the schedule. Unlike other parties, weddings provide a structured course of events that can be tremendously comforting when y'all feel out of identify. There is a predetermined time for watching the ceremony, eating dinner, dancing, having your cake and going home. As I relaxed into this flow, I started to observe a few new things around me. It seemed like everyone was in their ain world, experiencing their ain versions of the dark. I listened to a bridesmaid worry about the way her dress looked in photographs, while a sick guest downed cold medicine to go through the nighttime.
Information technology turned out I was non contractually obligated to accept the almost fun, or be the last one on the trip the light fantastic flooring.
These observations removed some of my self-imposed pressure level. At wedding No. 4 in upstate New York, I wanted to leave early, then I slipped out quietly and didn't beat out myself upwards for it. It turned out I was non contractually obligated to have the about fun, or be the last one on the dance flooring. And when I stopped focusing on how I looked to everyone else, I was also able to be somewhat thoughtful and enlightened of other peoples' needs. At wedding No. v, in Oregon, I spent time with a meaning friend who was sitting lone while most of her table danced. When a skilful friend and groomsman had too much to drink at wedding No. 6, I helped him get back to his hotel room in a thunderstorm. This was a real role reversal; previously, I was the ane who needed aid getting home.
The 7th wedding ceremony I attended fell on my one-year sober anniversary. At a cliff-side ceremony in Maine, the clouds rolled in. Past the time the sun came out again, my friends were married. As I watched them exchange their first osculation as husband and wife, I realized that I truly didn't desire to escape. For years, I had been approaching weddings equally just another night out, a chance to drink and trip the light fantastic with my own inner demons. Only it took giving up alcohol to realize what may have been obvious to others all along: weddings are a window into a relationship. With or without alcohol, a nuptials can provide a glimpse at the kind of relationship you deserve, or remind you of why you committed to your partner in the get-go place. It'south a privilege to witness them, and it's even amend to remember them the next twenty-four hour period.
Sarah Levy is a freelance author based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently working on a book of essays about life without alcohol.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/fashion/weddings/how-i-survived-wedding-season-in-my-first-year-of-sobriety.html
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