A Lifestyle Change Turned My Gray Vacations into a Technicolor Dream

Vacations started off exciting but always took a turn

From the time I was a little girl, I dreamed of traveling. We did a lot of camping when I was a kid, which was fun, but I always wanted more.

I would dream of going to New York and Paris when I was in high school but really only made it down to Mexico a few times. I took French in hopes of walking into a patisserie ordering in French and strolling along the Champs-Élysées with my croissant and espresso.

It wasn’t until I got married that I really started to travel to different countries. Our honeymoon to Jamaica was in the works for a year and such an amazing place to look forward to and dream about.

But, after all that lovely planning and excitement of getting there, the end of the trip started to bring a sort of darkness. It started off great and somewhat sober, but the darkness came from the alcohol, clouding my fun when I thought it was making the trip better.

My memories are hazy from the trip.

After a few days of drinking all day at the all-inclusive, the hangovers ensued and the laziness followed. What could have been an amazing 7-day trip turned into a fun two days followed by a dreary end.

I just got back from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico for a 40th birthday celebration. A sober friend of mine was talking about his summer vacation and one thing he said really stuck with me.

He said, ‘All of my best memories from vacations are from when I was sober.” I agreed. Even though I had great trips while I was drinking, they always ended up cloudy with the chance of an argument.

Every sober vacation is bright without the clouds and fog. There are no arguments, no depression, no crying, and no irritation. Not to say everything is always perfect but it is a hell of a lot better to travel sober.

Let’s take a walk down my cloudy memory lane of vacations past. These are beautiful places and no, I wasn’t always drunk during these trips but it didn’t take me much to do something out of character.

Cancun, Mexico

My girls were preteens and I had been on and off the wagon many times. “Mom is just going to have a few drinks because we are on vacation.” How sad that I would preempt a trip with those words.

That’s a red flag right there that I shouldn’t be drinking. The trip started off with smiles, sunshine, white sand, and swimming in the crystal clear waters. The Corona’s started flowing which brought on some margaritas.

Too much sun and alcohol make for a cloudy night. We ate the most amazing tacos one night and I don’t remember a thing about it. All I know is that we talked about how good those tacos were for months and I couldn’t tell you what kind I had.

Then, I convinced my family to do a catamaran cruise that I very well knew was a “booze cruise”. My girls had to sit on a boat with a bunch of adults drinking their faces off. What a waste of money and their precious time, really.

Vancouver, Canada to Canmore and Banff

The trip of a lifetime. I wasn’t drinking much around this time in my life but still would indulge on vacation. But, when I would indulge, I had no off switch and was always in search of more calming and obliterating liquid.

Our time at the Capilano Suspension Bridge was about to be clouded by later activities. Drinks bring out my mischievous behavior of sneaking drinks on the sly, or what I thought was sly.

Later in the week when we were in our townhome in Canmore, we bought alcohol for the room which led to some bickering about broken glass and faulty plans when instead we should have been playing board games together as a family.

Italy — The time I took my girls out of the country alone

I was sober at the time. I had been sober for a little bit, not sure how long, but it was a known thing in our household that I shouldn’t be drinking.

My husband had some anxiety and heart issues right before we were set to leave on the trip, causing him to ultimately not make it with us. I had a hard decision to make but he helped me decide that I should still go with the girls.

I am glad that I did but I am not proud to have emptied the mini fridge that was stocked with alcohol. That was something I wasn’t prepared for but thankfully I kept my drinking to when they were asleep at night.

The awful part was that my older daughter found a mini bottle in the trash that I didn’t properly get rid of and I lied to her about it. The trip was a 10/10 but it would have been a 100/10 without my private relapse that I never spoke about to anyone.

Tulum, Mexico

My last drinking vacation. I went out with a bang. We were with 6 of our friends and it was more fun on vacation if you were partying with alcohol, or so I thought. At this point, my girls were used to me not drinking, then drinking, and then quitting again.

Honestly, I am sure they were over the arguing or talking about it and silently hoping that I would be able to finally control my alcohol consumption. My husband was, too. He was sick of being the police or filling in as my father so he just went with it, hoping for the best.

The first night, I had too much tequila and got sick in the shower the next morning. They heard that.

Later on in the week, after drinking for 5 days straight which never went well with my body chemistry, I got into an argument with my husband over a purse. It was $40 and he thought that it was too expensive and I let my anger loose over a damn purse.

I took off walking down the road in Tulum to grab that purse and threw a few margaritas back by myself at the next-door bar. Mind you, my friends were all hanging out together, which I missed, so I could get the dumb bag that I still have never used.

Those are just a few that I thought of. There are more. I am sure I would find trips scrolling through my photos that would trigger more gray memories.

There were also a few vacations sprinkled in where I didn’t drink at all. Hawaii was in technicolor with minimal arguments. Sometimes little tiffs are unavoidable because you are hangry and stuck in the car for hours.

All of my recent vacations in the years that I have been sober this time around have been the most amazing memories to date. I don’t think we have argued at all.

The only dreary part of any vacation is simply due to the lighting from the weather and it is still more colorful than any of my clouded drinking memories.

Just look at the difference. This is what my vacations all look like now in my eyes as a sober woman. Life is bright, life is beautiful, and life is fun without a chance of gray.

My life and travels are in technicolor. The gray days and memories have faded but still serve as a reminder of how far I have come.

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