My family and I have felt so much change in these past two years of the pandemic.  Distance learning, quarantines, COVID isolations, and missed holidays. We have had our fair share of loss. We’ve also had a lot of learning and growth. My youngest, who was only four months old in the infamous month of March 2020, has learned to crawl, walk, run, and eventually speak under his big brother’s and sister’s guidance. We, a young family of five, have done a lot together in these years. 

But we haven’t traveled.

This year, we were at risk for not having a Spring Break, again; we had two weeks of distance learning in January, my kids’ teachers went on strike for three weeks in March.   So when it became clear that we were, in fact, going to have the week off, we planned a cross-country road trip. We decided to drive our minivan from Minneapolis all the way to Austin, TX. We needed a break. We needed to get out of the house. We needed sunshine and warmth. 

This was our first family road trip, and this was my very first sober trip.

I gave up alcohol as the pandemic was unfolding on top of all of us. I was facilitating distance learning for a kindergartner, managing sporadic online classes for a four-year-old, and keeping a four-month-old alive as my business was stumbling along in a global catastrophe while I was still on maternity leave. The stress and pressure of every passing day was exacerbated by my drinking. I stayed up late, later than usual, so that I could drink more and more. I need another, I’d tell my husband, because I didn’t want tomorrow to come any sooner. I couldn’t do it all again the following day.

And yet I would have to do it all again the next day, but I’d be shaking, sick, and exhausted from a hangover and sleep deprivation. Finally, I quit drinking as I became noticeably dependent. I’ve always known I’m an abstainer in other areas of my life. I didn’t know I’d have to abstain from alcohol. Alas, I can’t moderate with that, either. 

Today, I’m nearly seven months into my longest stretch of sobriety, save for my pregnancies. In many ways, I’m an infant in this. 

There’s a first for everything and traveling sober for the first time was surprising.

Because I’m fairly new to this sober life, I can remember traveling as a drinking person pretty well. Here are a few things I noticed on my recent sober road trip:

1. Alcohol doesn’t dictate my plans anymore.

When I was drinking, I remember very well that the alcohol at the end of the day – or ideally at any point in the day – was the end goal, the achievement, the whole point of the day. I’d be certain to have beer and or liquor available to me in the hotel, so that if I couldn’t get enough throughout the day with whatever activity I was doing, I’d know I had something waiting for me in the evening. I remember I wouldn’t relax until I knew it was there. And once I knew it was there, I’d fixate on when I’d get to drink it.

I continue to be surprised by how much I thought about alcohol when I wasn’t actively drinking it.

2. I no longer worry about whether alcohol is available through the day.

I have young kids. Many of the side trips and activities we did were outdoors, in the mornings. Granted, when I was drinking, I could find excuses for drinking in the mornings – It is vacation, right? Rules don’t apply, etc. But I am so thankful that I didn’t worry about where to go for lunch, or whether the bar was open at a certain hour. None of these details mattered to me this time, so I was much more willing and able to engage in whatever it was the kids wanted to do.