How To Make It Through Your First Sober Weekend

Congratulations on making it to your first sober weekend – it’s a significant milestone in your recovery journey.

Giving up alcohol is tough, and if alcohol was a significant part of your weekends until now, you will likely be experiencing mixed feelings. This is natural – but you can get through it. We’re going to give you some practical tips on navigating your first weekend without alcohol – your first step on the journey to saying goodbye to alcohol addiction and alcoholism forever.

Setting expectations

Your first sober weekend may not be the most fun-packed weekend you’ve ever had – in fact, it might feel flat.

If you’ve been drinking most weekends or every weekend, your brain is accustomed to the massive hit of dopamine that drinking releases. Over time, your brain anticipates this, and when you decide to stop you are likely to feel frustrated, disappointed and bored. You might fill your schedule with activities to fill the weekend and find they aren’t enjoyable.
This is normal, and it will change. The most important thing is to stick to the commitment you have made to yourself and distract yourself through the early days. Take this one weekend at a time.

Preparation

Make plans and keep yourself busy this weekend. Early in addiction recovery, the temptation to accept a last-minute invitation to the pub or reach for a bottle out of boredom or cravings can be overwhelming. You don’t have much recovery time under your belt, and it can be easy to rationalise that you can forget about recovery now and start again next week. Don’t do this.

Keep busy your first weekend. Venues that don’t serve alcohol like parks, cinemas and cafes are a safe bet, as are activities that don’t involve alcohol like classes, workshops and sports.
Many people in recovery from alcoholism report that they replace alcohol with food, and while bingeing on large amounts of sugary food to help with alcohol cravings isn’t ideal, good food is a good distraction. Take the money you used to spend on drinking and go to your favourite restaurant with friends, or check out a new place you’ve been eyeing for a while.

Avoiding triggers

While more and more pubs and entertainment venues are serving a wider and better range of alcohol-free options, it’s a safer bet to save this for later in your recovery. Early cravings can be very intense.

Triggers are varied and personal. Pubs and clubs are obvious ones, but even rooms or areas of your house where you used to do a lot of drinking can be triggers early in recovery, as can certain mental states. Try to pick calming but distracting activities, away from places that trigger an urge to drink.

There are many coping mechanisms for dealing with triggers, but the ability to cope is like a muscle that needs to be trained. Early on, it’s best to avoid situations where cravings could be overwhelming. This doesn’t mean you will never be able to cope with them again – it just means that it’s something to work towards in the future.

External support

A solid support network is more important now than ever. Reaching out to sober friends who understand your struggle and commitment can be helpful – they will both keep you accountable and distract you, and give you someone to talk to if you need addiction help.

Signing up for group activities that don’t involve alcohol is a great way of making new connections and putting yourself in environments that aren’t oriented around alcohol. Sports and fitness groups are an obvious choice, but crafts, hobbies, games and creative workshops are a good way to fill a few hours, learn something new and keep yourself distracted.

Self-care

Poor self-care is often a precursor to relapse(4) – its importance cannot be overstated. Building healthy routines is vital for relapse prevention, and preventing depression from setting in. You might not be able to do this immediately – but now is a great time to lay the foundations of looking after your mental health.

Sleep, food and water, exercise and showering are the basics of self-care. Relaxation techniques, journaling and mindfulness can also be helpful. Mindfulness, in particular, is an accessible and widely used recovery tool that’s backed by science. It’s free, it can be practised in small windows of time, and it helps with many of the common symptoms people experience in recovery, such as anhedonia.

Small pleasures

Alcohol is a big pleasure – it dumps huge amounts of dopamine into the brain.

Dopamine isn’t just associated with reward – it’s also the neurotransmitter of anticipation. This is why in gambling addiction, we see dopamine activation before the reward, even if the rewards never come – and this is just as important in the progression of the addiction as chasing the high of the win.

Over time, your brain orients itself around the dopamine flood that comes with the anticipation of drinking and by drinking itself. This causes your brain to become desensitised to dopamine – the receptors downregulate. This is a frustrating symptom of long-term alcohol withdrawal, and it doesn’t go back to normal immediately – it takes a while.

This is why, early in recovery, simple pleasures can be hard to come by – they just aren’t big enough. So don’t beat yourself up if you find yourself feeling flat, bored and tetchy on your first sober weekend. You will find pleasure in small things again, and you have taken the first step towards healing your brain so you can experience them.

The future

Dopamine isn’t just associated with reward – it’s also the neurotransmitter of anticipation. This is why in gambling addiction, we see dopamine activation before the reward, even if the rewards never come – and this is just as important in the progression of the addiction as chasing the high of the win.