3 ways to support sober employees during holiday party season

December 14, 2023 12:00 PM

People standing in an office with wine glasses in their hands

Before toasting a successful year with a cocktail or champagne at the office holiday party, make sure you're considering employees who are choosing to abstain from alcohol.

Around 9% of employees are struggling with a substance use disorder, and the holidays can be an especially fraught time for those with addictions or those in active recovery. Yet the festive season is often framed as a time of excess, and the pressure to drink to relax or cope with stressors is ingrained in how society approaches alcohol use in the workplace and beyond.

"Often, even people with relatively normal relationships with alcohol start to utilize it as a stopgap to deal with uncomfortable topics, to say, 'I need a drink to manage,'" says Ashley Loeb Blassingame, co-founder of virtual addiction treatment platform, Lionrock Recovery. "Holidays are very much based around drinking culture, and it can bring up a lot of feelings for people."

Blassingame has been sober for nearly two decades, and has learned tools and techniques that help her navigate social situations where alcohol is the center of the event, and manage other people's expectations about her choices.

"I'm a person in long-term recovery — I got sober when I was 19, and I had this experience of people being like, 'Why aren't you drinking?'" she says. "I really found that what they wanted was for me to be holding a glass of something so that it felt like we were doing something together — whatever was in that glass was kind of irrelevant."

Blassingame shared a few techniques for navigating the holidays in recovery or as a sober-curious person, and how employers can offer support with the right programs and tools.

Have a plan

Whether an employee is experimenting with sobriety or is struggling to cope with holiday stress, Blassingame says having a plan is critical to navigating the holiday season while keeping self-care top of mind. Deciding ahead of time how much you plan to drink, what time you'll leave and how you'll get home can provide a framework and a sense of control around uncomfortable situations.

"You make a decision: I'm going to have one glass of wine, or I'm going to have two glasses of red wine. You decide how long you'll stay, and you create a plan around the kind of support you need going into that situation," she says. "A lot of the time what happens is that people don't have a plan or the support, they're not thinking through and they end up drinking too much at the party or doing something that they didn't plan to do. So the planning piece beforehand is critical for people who are trying to make different decisions."

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Of course, moderation may not be possible — Blessingame says she abstains entirely in long-term recovery. Each person's needs will be unique.

Ask your employer for support

Employers can play an important role in destigmatizing sobriety, especially at holiday parties or events where alcohol is often the main event. Instead, employers should offer a variety of non-alcoholic options, along with activities like games, or an end-of-year awards show.

"How can you make the bar a place where people can go up and easily get a non-alcoholic drink — it should be really easy. Then you have the other activities and you allow people who are drinking non-alcoholic drinks to blend in," she says. "People in recovery can sometimes be wary of gatherings because they don't know what to expect. Make it so that drinking is just one of the things that's happening here."

Build recovery skills

While removing alcohol from social events is one way to avoid drinking, it's important for people to do the inner work through therapy or a recovery program to get to the root of why they drink, Blassingame says. Her platform, Lionrock, offers individual and group support for people interested in seeking addiction treatment and care.

"A lot of people don't have the tools and haven't done the inner work in order to be able to manage inner conflict or even outer conflict that's being provoked, and so instead of dealing with that or having good boundaries, they drink to numb themselves," she says. "I really would like to see corporations who are making the decisions around what kind of care is available to people struggling, or people wanting to do something about their mental health, become more educated about what types of resources are valuable and available."