The idea comes up innocuously enough. Your partner suggests a long weekend somewhere warm. Your friend wants to plan the annual girls’ trip. Someone books a family reunion at a lake house.
And your first thought—before excitement, before logistics, before anything else—is: How am I going to do this without drinking?
Because vacation and alcohol have been inseparable for as long as you can remember. The airport bar before the flight. Wine with lunch because why not, you’re on vacation. Cocktails by the pool. That bottle you open on the deck as the sun sets. The nightcap that helps you sleep in an unfamiliar bed.
Vacation was when you got to drink without guilt, without limits, without that voice asking if maybe this is too much. Vacation was permission.
And now you’re sober—or trying to be—and someone wants you to go on vacation, and the whole thing feels impossible before it’s even begun.
The Peculiar Panic of Anticipation
Here’s what happens in the weeks leading up to your first sober vacation: your brain starts running simulations.
You imagine yourself at the resort while everyone else orders margaritas. You picture the long evening hours with nothing to do, nowhere to hide. You see yourself explaining—again—why you’re not drinking, fielding questions you don’t know how to answer, managing other people’s discomfort with your choice.
The anticipatory anxiety can be worse than the actual event. Your mind is trying to protect you by preparing for every possible threat. But what it’s actually doing is making you dread something that might have been fine, or at least manageable.
This is worth naming: the fear of the first sober vacation is often worse than the vacation itself.
But that doesn’t make the fear less real.
What Vacation Actually Was
Before we talk about how to handle your first sober vacation, it’s worth asking: what were you actually doing when you drank on vacation?
The easy answer is “relaxing” or “having fun.” But if you’re honest—and this work requires honesty—drinking on vacation often served a different purpose.
It filled time. Vacation creates vast stretches of unstructured time, which sounds appealing until you’re in it. Without the scaffolding of work and routine, many people don’t know what to do with themselves. Drinking fills the gaps. It gives you something to look forward to, something to do with your hands, a way to mark the passage of time between activities.
It muted discomfort. Vacations, despite their promise, can be deeply uncomfortable. You’re out of your element. If you’re traveling with family or friends, you’re in close quarters with people whose habits irritate you. Old dynamics resurface. Conflicts that were manageable at home become unbearable when there’s no escape. Alcohol smoothed those edges.
It gave you permission to check out. Maybe the thing you needed most from vacation wasn’t adventure or connection—it was oblivion. A few days where you didn’t have to be responsible, available, on. Drinking was the fastest route to that numbness.
It was the reward. You work hard. You handle so much. Vacation was the time you finally got to indulge without judgment. The drinking wasn’t incidental to the vacation—it was the point.
When you remove alcohol from vacation, you’re not just removing a beverage. You’re removing a coping mechanism, a social lubricant, a time-filler, and a reward system all at once.
No wonder it feels terrifying.
The First Sober Vacation Is a Reckoning
You will learn things about yourself on your first sober vacation that you didn’t particularly want to know.
You might discover that you don’t actually enjoy the beach as much as you thought you did—that what you enjoyed was drinking on the beach. You might realize that the friend group you vacation with every year has very little to talk about when alcohol isn’t involved. You might find that being alone with your thoughts for three uninterrupted days is excruciating.
You might also discover that you’ve been using vacation drinking to avoid your partner. That the “romantic getaway” was actually an opportunity to get drunk enough to tolerate each other. That the family reunion was only bearable with a constant buzz.
These realizations are not fun. But they’re valuable.
Because once you see what’s actually happening—once you’re not medicating your way through the experience—you can decide what to do about it. You can change the vacation. You can change the relationships. You can stop pretending that everything is fine when it isn’t.
But first, you have to get through it.
Before You Go: The Practical Preparation
Some of the anxiety about sober vacation can be mitigated with planning. Not all of it—some discomfort is unavoidable—but some.
Choose your first sober vacation carefully. This is not the time for the all-inclusive resort where alcohol is everywhere and there’s nothing to do but sit by the pool. This is not the time for the bachelorette party in Vegas or the wine-tasting weekend in Napa.
Your first sober vacation should be activity-based. Hiking. Exploring a new city. A yoga retreat. Something where the focus is not on sitting around drinking but on actually doing things.
If you don’t have control over the destination—if it’s a family obligation or a pre-planned trip—then you need to build in activities for yourself. Things that get you out of the house, away from the group, moving.
Have an exit strategy. This sounds dramatic, but it’s essential. Know that you can leave early if you need to. Know that you can go to your room, go for a walk, take a long bath, escape. You are not trapped. You can always remove yourself from a situation that’s making you want to drink.
Bring your own beverages. This is practical advice that matters more than it should. If you’re going to be around people who are drinking, you need something to drink that feels good. Not sad. Not punitive. Something you actually enjoy.
Good coffee. Fancy sparkling water. Kombucha. A complicated mocktail recipe. Whatever it is, bring it. Don’t rely on what’s available. Don’t settle for tap water while everyone else has cocktails. That’s a recipe for resentment.
Tell someone who understands. If you’re traveling with people who know you’re not drinking, great. If you’re not—if you’re newly sober and haven’t told anyone yet—then at minimum, have someone you can text. Someone who gets it. Someone who won’t tell you to “just have one” or ask if you’re “really an alcoholic.”
You need a lifeline.
The First Day: Harder Than You Expected
The first day of your first sober vacation will likely be awkward.
Everyone else slides into vacation mode. They order drinks with lunch. They’re loose and laughing by mid-afternoon. And you’re… there. Present. Sober. Hyper-aware of everything.
You notice how loud people get after two drinks. You notice how repetitive conversations become. You notice that the jokes aren’t actually that funny, but everyone’s laughing anyway.
You feel separate. Outside of it. Like you’re watching the vacation happen instead of participating in it.
This is normal. It’s also temporary.
The first day is the hardest because you’re still holding all the fear you brought with you. You’re braced for disaster. You’re watching yourself from the outside, evaluating your performance, making sure you’re doing “sober vacation” correctly.
Give yourself permission to be uncomfortable. To be quiet. To go to bed early. You don’t have to perform enthusiasm you don’t feel.
The Unexpected Gift of Presence
Somewhere around day two or three, something shifts.
You wake up without a hangover. This is not a small thing.
Everyone else is moving slowly, groggy, reaching for coffee and aspirin. You’re clear. Energized. You actually want to do the hike or the excursion or the early morning walk on the beach.
You start to notice things you never noticed before. The light at sunrise. The texture of conversations when you’re fully present for them. The way your body feels after a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed.
You realize that you’re actually here. Not numbed, not checked out, not counting the hours until the next drink. Here.
This doesn’t mean the vacation suddenly becomes perfect. You might still be bored. You might still be irritated by your travel companions. You might still wish you were home.
But there’s a quality of experience that’s different. You’re not escaping your vacation—you’re actually having it.
What to Do With All the Time
The hardest part of sober vacation, for many people, is the evenings.
During the day, there are activities. Things to see, places to go. But evening—especially that stretch between dinner and bed—can feel endless.
This is when you used to drink. When the bottle of wine came out, or the cocktails started, and the evening blurred into something manageable.
Without alcohol, the evening is long and sharp and real.
You have to fill it differently.
This might mean going to bed at 9 p.m. with a book. It might mean watching a movie. Taking a bath. Calling a friend. Writing. Walking. Playing cards. Having sex. Talking, actually talking, about things that matter.
Or it might mean sitting with the discomfort of having nothing to do and being okay with that.
Our culture has pathologized boredom to the point where we’ll do almost anything to avoid it. But boredom isn’t an emergency. It’s just a feeling. And feelings pass.
If you can sit with boredom for twenty minutes without needing to fix it, you’re building capacity. You’re proving to yourself that you can tolerate discomfort without reaching for a substance to make it stop.
This is the real work.
When Other People Are Drinking
You will be around people who are drinking on your first sober vacation. Unless you’re on a silent retreat, this is unavoidable.
A few things to know:
People will care less about your sobriety than you think they will. You’re worried everyone’s watching you, judging you, wondering why you’re not drinking. In reality, most people are too focused on themselves to pay much attention. Order a soda, hold your mocktail, say you’re not drinking tonight—and then change the subject. Most of the time, that’s the end of it.
Some people will be weird about it. They’ll ask intrusive questions. They’ll tell you you’re no fun. They’ll try to convince you to have “just one.” These people are uncomfortable with your choice because it highlights something about their own drinking. This is not your problem to manage.
You can leave. If the energy around drinking becomes too much—if people are sloppy drunk and you’re miserable—you can excuse yourself. You don’t owe anyone your presence.
Early sobriety is not the time to test yourself. If being around drinking feels dangerous—if you’re craving, if you’re romanticizing it, if you’re one bad moment away from saying fuck it—remove yourself. Don’t be a hero. Don’t prove anything. Just get out.
The Surprising Difficulty of Rest
One of the strangest things about sober vacation is discovering that you don’t actually know how to rest.
You know how to collapse. You know how to numb out. You know how to drink until you’re too tired to think.
But rest—real rest, the kind that restores you—requires a nervous system that can downregulate without chemical assistance. And if you’ve been using alcohol to manage your nervous system for years, you might have no idea how to access that state.
This is where nervous system tools become essential, even on vacation. Especially on vacation.
Breath work. Slow, intentional breathing that signals safety to your body. Not as a performance, not as something you’re supposed to do—but as an actual tool for shifting your state.
Movement. Not exercise. Movement. Dancing. Stretching. Shaking. Walking slowly. Anything that helps your body discharge the activation that’s been building.
Water. Swimming, if you’re near water. Floating. The sensory input of water is calming in a way that’s hard to replicate.
Touch. A massage if you can get one. Your partner’s hand. Your own hand on your own body. Physical touch that’s safe and non-sexual can help your nervous system settle.
These aren’t luxury add-ons. They’re necessities for a sober person learning how to regulate without alcohol.
What You’ll Remember
Here’s the thing about drunk vacations: you don’t remember them.
You remember fragments. You remember the feeling of being drunk. But the details—the conversations, the scenery, the moments that made the trip worth taking—those are hazy at best.
Sober vacations, you remember.
You remember waking up for sunrise. You remember the meal that was actually delicious, not just consumed. You remember the conversation with your kid that happened because you were present enough to notice they needed to talk. You remember feeling proud of yourself for doing something hard.
None of this erases the difficulty. Your first sober vacation will likely be uncomfortable, awkward, and harder than you want it to be.
But it will also be yours. Fully, completely yours.
And when you come home—clearheaded, rested, without the guilt and shame and foggy regret—you’ll know something new about yourself.
You’ll know that you can do hard things. That you can be uncomfortable without self-destructing. That vacation doesn’t require alcohol to be worthwhile.
This is freedom. Not the sanitized, Instagram version where everything is effortless and joyful. The real version, where freedom looks like showing up for your life even when it’s hard.
Especially when it’s hard.
After: The Reset You Didn’t Know You Needed
When you return from your first sober vacation, something has shifted.
You’ve proven to yourself that you can do it. That you can travel, relax, be around people, handle unstructured time—all without drinking.
The second sober vacation will be easier. And the third easier still. Not because the circumstances change, but because you’re building evidence that you’re capable.
Vacation stops being a threat and starts being what it was supposed to be all along: a break from your regular life. A chance to rest. An opportunity to remember who you are when you’re not just moving through obligations.
Your first sober vacation won’t be perfect. It might not even be good.
But it will be real. And that’s worth more than you know.