If You’ve Never Taken A Vacation Without Booze Here’s Why You Should Try It...

It’s May, people are getting vaccinated, the sun is out, and traveling is on everyone’s mind. For many of us, taking a vacation has many layers. It’s a time to take a break from work, do something special with our kids, blow off steam, and reconnect with family or friends. But sometimes it feels like a desperate need to cram as much fun/rest as we possibly can into the very short and valuable time we are allotted.

In the past, drinking was the key component of vacation. The goal was to bring on the “highs” or to “amp” up the experience with some booze. My vacation days were usually spent doing something like having mimosas at breakfast, drinks on the beach, beers after the hike, wine with dinner, and a nightcap at whatever dive bar was near. To some, this might sound problematic. To me, it was “what I did” when it came to vacationing. Looking back now, having that many drinks in one day didn’t really amp up my experience at all. In fact, the mimosas made me feel tired, the drinks on the beach got me drunk, I wobbled my way through the hike, and I couldn’t really remember much after that. The next “vacation” day was spent lying in bed with the shades pulled wondering if there was a dagger sticking out of my head but being too hungover to get up and check.

The older I got and the more my responsibilities grew I would spend vacations trying to cram in as many drinks as possible while “living it up” before I had to return to my role as boring adult. Getting completely hammered seemed like the only logical way to spend my time in order to counteract the times that were usually spent worrying, fretting, and doing mundane adult things. I had long forgotten how to play, what hobbies I liked, and had no clue how to have fun without a little boost from alcohol. My entire adult life had been spent pairing things with drinking-drinking on the beach, drinking in the mountains, going to the winery, the brewery, the beer fest, the tasting, and whatever else (basically everything now) had “drinks” in the description.

When the vacation ended and I arrived back home I always felt like I had been hit by a bus rather than feeling refreshed and ready to start my life back again. That was not the goal that I set out to achieve.

When I first stopped drinking, I couldn’t fathom the idea of ever going on vacation without alcohol. What would we even do?!?! Now, approaching 4 years AF, I have learned that drinking isn’t the only vacation activity. I can eat a delicious breakfast served by someone else without having to do any dishes. I can hang out on the beach and since I don’t have to pee as much or sit next to my beer I can play with my kids, build sandcastles, and take a nap. I can go on a refreshing hike and notice the wildlife that we don’t have back home. I can eat dinner in new and interesting places and order dessert because I’m not too bloated. I can dance at the dive bar or choose to go home early because I feel fulfilled and tired. The kind of tired that you can only experience when you’ve engaged all of your senses and your body in new ways. I can wake up refreshed and have coffee and fruit in bed, or go on an early walk alone, or sit on the patio and breathe in new and fresh air without feeling even the slightest headache. And those are just the simple things.

I’m not saying that you should go AF or get sober before your next vacation. It’s just that most of us drink on vacation because we think it’s going to amp up our experience or enhance the great time we’re having. Science proves that the opposite actually happens. The chemicals in alcohol dull your senses, lead to memory loss, lower your inhibitions, and impair your judgment. If I said something like “here, take this magical vacation pill. It’s going to make you dehydrated, prohibit your memory, dull your experience, and give you the shakes” you would wholeheartedly deny right?

Many of us take adulthood way to serious. We pile on stressors, put ourselves in terrible work situations, and have chosen the “responsible” path instead of the “fun” path. We’ve forgotten how to play, how to be creative, how to live in the moment (or live at all really) and so we use booze to get us there-that place where we can let go of it all for a bit. We’ve conditioned our bodies and our minds that drinking will be the quickest and easiest path to relaxation. And quite honestly, drinking does give us that first hit of dopamine that our brains crave so much. But every subsequent drink after, we begin the numbing process. We numb out the feelings of stress and worry AND the feelings of joy and satisfaction from small things like sunsets and beach walks. This further reinforces our idea that we need a drink to have a good time. The process is exhausting. Sigh.

So much of why we drink has to do with the way that we think. The ads, the memes, and the constant talk about alcohol have altered the way we think about living. No matter how often I try to combat this notion in my posts, my book, and my classes, it’s really hard to combat that image that has been seared into our minds. When we think of fun, we think of drinking despite how unfun it is for so many of us. Most of us don’t post selfies of our hangovers even though many of us have returned home from vacation vowing to never drink again.

So, maybe this year, with everything we’ve been through, we can see what happens if you spend your very sacred vacation time taking care of your body, mind, and soul. Fill your time doing the things that you really set out to do instead of drinking your way through it. Maybe discover what happens when you rest and have fun without being chemically altered. Spoiler alert, it’s not what you think.