The holiday season can bring connection, celebration, and meaningful time with family and friends. But for someone recovering from opioid addiction or another substance use disorder, November and the weeks that follow can also bring additional stress, disrupted routines, difficult family relationships, financial pressure, loneliness, and exposure to situations associated with past substance use.
These challenges don’t mean the holidays have to derail recovery. With preparation, support, and continued engagement in treatment, the holiday season can become an opportunity to strengthen the habits and relationships that support a healthier future.
At True North Recovery and Wellness Center, we encourage individuals in recovery to approach the holidays with a plan. Whether you receive Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), counseling, outpatient treatment, or another form of recovery support, staying connected to the people and services that help you can make a meaningful difference.
Why Can the Holidays Be Difficult During Recovery?
Holiday stress is real. SAMHSA notes that the season can bring challenges related to finances, family interactions, grief, loneliness, travel, and changes in everyday routines. For people in recovery, social events and emotional stress can also create situations that trigger cravings or substance use. SAMHSA
Triggers are highly individual. For one person, it may be attending a party where alcohol or drugs are present. For someone else, returning to a familiar place or seeing certain people may bring back memories associated with past substance use.
Other potential holiday challenges include:
- Changes to regular schedules and routines
- Family conflict or strained relationships
- Financial pressure and holiday spending
- Grief over someone who is no longer present
- Feeling isolated or alone
- Increased alcohol use at social gatherings
- Travel that interrupts counseling or support meetings
- Expectations to make the holidays “perfect”
- More unstructured free time
- Stress, anxiety, or difficult memories
- Being around people, places, or situations associated with past opioid use
Recognizing your own triggers isn’t a sign that recovery is failing. It gives you information you can use to prepare.
Make a Holiday Recovery Plan Before You Need It
Don’t wait until you’re in a difficult situation to decide how you’ll respond.
Think ahead about Thanksgiving dinners, holiday parties, travel, family gatherings, work celebrations, and other situations you expect to encounter. SAMHSA specifically recommends developing a plan for stressful or lonely moments and maintaining activities that support recovery when normal routines are disrupted. SAMHSA
Your plan might include identifying someone you can call, arranging your own transportation to an event, deciding how long you will stay, attending a counseling or support meeting beforehand, or choosing not to attend an event that could put your recovery at unnecessary risk.
Give yourself permission to protect your recovery.
You don’t have to attend every gathering, resolve every family disagreement, or explain your treatment to everyone who asks.
Keep Your Treatment Routine Consistent
The holidays can disrupt schedules, but treatment should remain a priority.
If you are receiving Medication Assisted Treatment for opioid use disorder, continue taking medication as directed and keep scheduled clinic and counseling appointments. If travel or holiday schedules could interfere with treatment, discuss those circumstances with your treatment team ahead of time rather than making changes on your own.
True North provides MAT using medications including methadone, buprenorphine (Suboxone®/Subutex®), and naltrexone (Vivitrol®) as part of individualized opioid use disorder treatment.
These medications are established treatments for opioid use disorder. Evidence reviewed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that medications for opioid use disorder can reduce opioid use and related symptoms and improve treatment retention. NIDA
The holiday season is not a good time to decide that you’re doing well enough to stop treatment without consulting your healthcare provider.
Consistency can be one of your strongest tools during an unpredictable season.
Know Your Triggers - and Your Response
A trigger doesn’t automatically lead to substance use.
There is an important space between experiencing a trigger and deciding what to do next. Recovery skills help you use that space differently.
If you recognize a craving or difficult emotional response, you might:
- Call a counselor, supportive friend, family member, or recovery contact
- Leave a high-risk environment
- Take a walk or get some physical activity
- Attend a recovery meeting
- Practice breathing or relaxation techniques
- Journal about what you’re experiencing
- Remind yourself why recovery matters to you
- Focus on getting through the next hour rather than the entire holiday season
SAMHSA recommends maintaining regular schedules where possible, connecting with supportive people, taking care of physical health, and developing strategies for stressful moments. SAMHSA
The goal isn’t to eliminate every uncomfortable feeling. It’s to develop healthier ways of responding when those feelings arise.
Stay Connected Instead of Isolating
Isolation can make difficult emotions and cravings harder to manage.
Recovery is highly personal, but it doesn’t have to happen alone. SAMHSA identifies supportive relationships and community as important dimensions of recovery and recognizes that recovery can involve clinical treatment, medications, peer support, family support, self-care, and other pathways. SAMHSA
During the holidays, make an intentional effort to stay connected with people who support your recovery.
That might mean attending group counseling, keeping individual counseling appointments, participating in recovery meetings, spending time with supportive family members, or simply checking in regularly with someone you trust.
You can also create new holiday traditions centered on the life you’re building rather than the one you’re leaving behind.
Don’t Let One Difficult Moment Define Your Recovery
Recovery isn’t about having a perfect holiday season.
You may experience cravings. A family gathering may be more difficult than expected. You may feel sad, angry, anxious, or lonely.
Those experiences don’t erase the progress you’ve made.
Recovery involves learning how to navigate real life—including difficult days and unexpected challenges. SAMHSA describes recovery as an individualized process involving continued growth in health and wellness, with resilience playing an important role when setbacks occur. SAMHSA
If you’re struggling, reach out early rather than waiting for the situation to become a crisis.
Counseling Can Help You Prepare for Holiday Challenges
Counseling isn’t only for responding to a crisis. It can help you prepare before one occurs.
Individual or group counseling can provide an opportunity to identify likely holiday triggers and develop practical strategies for handling them.
You might work with your counselor on questions such as:
Which holiday situations make me uncomfortable?
Who can I contact when cravings become stronger?
How will I respond if someone offers me drugs or alcohol?
Which family relationships create stress?
What boundaries do I need to establish?
What healthy activities can replace old holiday habits?
How will I maintain my treatment schedule?
A specific plan can turn a vague concern – “I’m worried about Thanksgiving” – into manageable decisions about what you’ll do if a challenging situation occurs.
Remember the Basics
During a busy season, basic routines can be surprisingly important.
Try to maintain regular sleep, eat consistently, stay physically active when possible, keep appointments, and make time for activities that help you manage stress. SAMHSA recommends maintaining regular schedules, caring for physical health, connecting with supportive people, and recognizing when additional help is needed. SAMHSA
Recovery is built through many ordinary decisions.
Sometimes staying strong means doing the simple things consistently.
Supporting Someone in Recovery During the Holidays
Family members and friends can also help make the holidays safer and more supportive.
You don’t need to become someone’s counselor or supervise their recovery. Instead, consider asking what would be helpful.
Respect their decision not to attend certain events. Avoid pressuring someone to drink or asking intrusive questions about their treatment. If you’re hosting a gathering, make appealing non-alcoholic beverages available and don’t make abstaining from alcohol a topic of conversation.
Most importantly, offer encouragement without judgment.
A simple “I’m glad you’re here, and I’m proud of the progress you’re making” may mean more than you realize.
You Don't Have to Wait Until January to Ask for Help
The end of the year often brings promises of starting over in January.
But if opioid use or another substance use problem is affecting your life, there is no benefit in waiting for a new calendar year before exploring treatment.
You don’t need the perfect time.
You don’t need to have everything figured out.
And you don’t need to reach a particular “rock bottom” before asking for help.
Treatment can begin with a conversation.
Supporting a Loved One in Recovery
National Recovery Month is also for families and friends.
If someone you care about is struggling with substance use disorder or working toward recovery, your support can matter tremendously.
You don’t need to have all the answers. Listening without judgment, encouraging professional treatment, learning about substance use disorder, recognizing progress, and maintaining healthy boundaries can all be meaningful forms of support.
Recovery can affect an entire family, and family members may benefit from education and support of their own.
Make Recovery a Priority This Holiday Season
The holidays can be challenging, but they can also remind us what recovery makes possible: connection, renewed relationships, greater stability, meaningful experiences, and hope for the future.
Plan ahead. Stay connected. Continue treatment. Know your triggers. Ask for help when you need it.
Most importantly, remember that protecting your recovery is more important than meeting someone else’s expectations about what the holidays should look like.
At True North Recovery and Wellness Center, we’re here to help you find your direction and continue moving toward a healthier future – during the holidays and throughout the year.
Recovery doesn’t take a holiday. Neither does hope.