Addiction and the Holidays

The holidays are stressful. There are the challenges of too much family, not enough family, not enough money, continual exposure to food and alcohol, and perhaps worst of all, the gap between our actual life and our fantasy life. As if gazing into the perfect happy scene within a snowglobe, we might fall into a trance of how our life should be.
We might feel torn apart by nostalgia and grief over the good times and good people of the past, and wracked with guilt and inadequacy for failing to create a more wonderful life for ourselves. We might feel scared about our dissatisfaction and hypnotized by the promise of fulfillment just beyond the hard glass.
Addictive and codependent behaviors thrive during this season of fantasy.

We use our drugs and habits to escape the pain, while imagining how we will miraculously make changes, always tomorrow, or next week, or next year. We frantically try to keep our idea of the all-good holiday alive through our codependent behaviors, imagining that we have the power to make sure that everyone else is happy and no one gets upset, while suppressing our own feelings of anger and disappointment.


We can watch our relationships with alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, prescription and non-prescription drugs, gambling, video games, television or Internet videos, social media, food, exercise, work, and shopping. We can ask ourselves: How much are we using? How much of our time does it consume? How much money are we spending on our habits? How long have we been using? Is it increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant?
We can watch our relationships with our loved ones. We can ask ourselves: How much of our energy is being devoted to worrying about or trying to control other people’s addictive behaviors? How much are we being controlled by fear of others’ reactions to our boundaries or limits?

How are our habits affecting our physical health? How are our behaviors affecting our relationships with others? How are our drugs, habits, or relationship patterns affecting our work life? What are the short- and long-term benefits and costs?
As we watch and explore our behaviors in an open and neutral manner, we set the stage for our growth toward increased health. We emerge into the New Year with information about ourselves that we need in order to develop a plan of action, if we so choose, toward change. And by being more honest with ourselves and more present in the life we currently are living, we have broken the paralyzing spell of fantasy: We have begun moving toward a better life.
By By Danielle B. Grossman, MFT