Growing up in North Carolina, the spring beach destination for most high school kids was Myrtle Beach, SC. We would pack as many kids as we could fit in to some dingy high-rise hotel room on the strip of Myrtle Beach and just go balls-to-the-wall partying for a week straight. Myrtle beach is where I danced in a cage for the first time, went to the strip club for the first time, snuck out of a hotel for the first time (sorry mom), got in the car with a complete stranger for the first time, did a two-story beer bong for the first time- I think you get the gist… Those Myrtle Beach trips are what solidified in my brain that I had to rage on vacation.

In college, my friends and I went to Jamaica for spring break our junior year. I wish I could share lots of memories from that trip, but I think I was pretty much blackout-drunk for the entire time we were there. I do remember a booze cruise, grinding on a Taye Diggs look-a-like named Todd, going to an off-resort dance club (very sketchy choice), a rapper named Temar and his friends loving us, and taking lots of “Bob Marley” red/yellow/green layered shots that the bartender lit on fire before we drank them. I also remember violently vomiting the entire flight home in the tiny airplane bathroom and having cankles the size of softballs for about a week after we returned home. Good times…

I have been to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic twice. Once for our honeymoon and once for a close friend’s wedding. Both times were beautiful, and we had great experiences. I don’t remember anything terrible or outrageous happening on either of these trips. I also don’t remember anything spectacular happening on either of these trips. We spent our entire trip (both times) in the pool, as close to the swim-up bar as we could get, from sun up until sun down.

In December 2019, my brother and sister-in-law got married in Ireland. This was a bucket list trip for Korey and I and we spent a year planning. We had four legs to our trip and went to three different cities. The first night we were there, we said “fuck the time change/jet lag,” stayed out until 4:00 am, and kicked our entire two-week trip off with a horrendous hangover. Part of our trip we stayed in an Airbnb above a pub in Kilkenny and proceeded to do the same thing – party and stay up with the locals, drinking and singing until the wee hours of the morning. The next morning, we had to blow off our plans for the day because I was on the verge of a panic attack walking down the street and had to go back to the room to rest. The last leg of our trip was the actual wedding, and it was a literal fairy tale. Beautiful and perfect and intimate and filled with so much love. I got so hammered that I had to be helped down the stairs at the end of the night. The next day I was so hungover that I stayed in bed all day long, Googling “closest emergency rooms” and “how to know if you’re having a heart attack.” By this time, Korey was sick of having his trip ruined by my hangovers and decided to go out with everyone else to enjoy himself rather than staying stuck in the room with me. I had the audacity to call him and demand he leave the pub to come back to the Airbnb because I thought I might be having a heart attack. LOL.

In addition to the international trips, I have been on countless trips all over the US. I got kicked out of a hotel in Nashville on a bachelorette trip. We extended a trip in Austin, TX, resulting in me taking unexpected time off work, my parents keeping our son for an additional 3 days, and us DRIVING HOME from Austin to Raleigh. I have the most insane stories from a trip to LA that I am not even going to type the details of here (you’re welcome friends…). We also tried to extend a trip in Boston to repeat the Austin fiasco but were forced to stick to our original schedule thanks to Delta airlines and lack of a car to drive home. I even have an entire trip to Denver that I hardly remember because I decided to go out and get hammered and pull an all-nighter the night before I left due to my uncontainable excitement for the trip. Countless trips to NC beaches, NC mountains, Savannah, Charleston, Washington DC – all the same song and dance.

You probably get the point. I LOVE traveling and I always associated traveling with drinking. Korey and I were huge craft beer drinkers and even owned our own craft beer/wine bar and retail shop for five years. We loved going to different places, “researching” the best breweries in the area, and then using that as an excuse to get smashed while we were there. When I first started to dip my toe in the sobriety pond, I would have to plan stints of sobriety around traveling. I couldn’t even fathom going on a trip and not drinking. What was the point? I literally couldn’t think of anything fun to do in other cities that didn’t revolve around alcohol. The thought made me so uncomfortable and was so far out of my comfort zone that I couldn’t even entertain the idea of traveling sober. I literally never even thought about it.

MY GOD did I have this wrong.

During my first year of sobriety, I had plenty of little weekend getaways. Beaches, mountains, Michigan and Ohio trips to see family, Dollywood, etc. These were all good warm-up trips and every time I went away for the weekend and didn’t drink, I felt my sobriety muscle getting stronger and stronger. I started to realize how cool it was to get away for the weekend, have a good time and relax, and to actually come home feeling refreshed. These were all pretty low-key trips, surrounded by family, where I felt comfortable and protected. It was still hard at first, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The more time I spent sober, the more people knew and accepted it, and the less time I had to spend explaining it or defending it to other people. That helped too.

A little over a year sober, we had a big trip to Hawai’i planned. I won’t lie, when I committed to my year sober, I thought about the fact that the year would be up prior to our Hawai’i trip and that made me feel comfortable, like I didn’t have to think about doing that big trip alcohol free. I had always intended on going my year sober and “healing my relationship with alcohol” so that I could go on my Hawai’i trip and enjoy drinking in a responsible manner without ruining it with hangovers. I don’t know exactly when I decided to not drink on this trip. In fact, I don’t think there was ever a solid decision point. I just think the closer I got to my one year mark, the more I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to drink again, including in Hawai’i. The thought of going on a big trip without involving alcohol in our plans didn’t feel scary to me like it had before.

I found myself doing my research before traveling like I always did, but instead of researching bars, breweries, and vineyards, I was researching hiking spots, restaurants, and cultural experiences. I had so much damn fun planning that trip. I didn’t have to think about avoiding planning something for early in the morning to account for our pre-destined hangovers. I didn’t have to think about finding a restaurant/bar close to the Airbnb so that we didn’t have to worry about driving. In fact, we drove all over that damn island to take in as much as we possibly could.

After the first couple of days in Hawai’i, I had this epiphany – I realized that although I had been to a fair amount of places, I had never really vacationed anywhere the way it was meant to be enjoyed. We lived every single day of our Hawai’ian vacation to the fullest. Every day included something organized/planned, something active, some down time, delicious food, and doing something we would have never done had there been alcohol involved. I went on many hikes that pushed my body in ways it hadn’t been pushed before. We saw views that I will never forget. We went on a helicopter ride. We went on a sunset catamaran dolphin-watching cruise. We went ziplining. We even went on morning hikes to literally watch the sun rise over a mountain. I took all the pictures. I truly lived in the moment and appreciated every second for what it was.

It was the most incredible trip I have ever been on and I know with 100% certainty that was because I wasn’t drinking. I wouldn’t have had even 10% of the experiences that I got to enjoy had I been drinking. This trip honestly solidified my decision to not drink again. It’s ironic that I went into my alcohol-free journey with this trip in the back of my mind, planning to be done in time to drink on the trip, when in reality, it ended up being this exact trip that cemented my decision to be done completely. It opened my eyes to what life could be like without alcohol and I still use this trip as a metaphor for my life in general. Life is so much more beautiful, active, lively, and exciting without the fog and haze of alcohol.

Since that Hawai’i trip, I have also been to both, Singapore and Argentina. Each of these were work trips, but I had plenty of time to enjoy the experience and the culture. Drinking never crossed my mind on either trip and both trips were jam-packed with as many experiences as I could fit into my schedule. No doubt had I been drinking I would have gone for room service and a bottle of wine, using jet lag as an excuse to be lazy and stay in. Last weekend, we went to Detroit and this weekend we are in Atlanta. Both trips were strategically planned to fit in as many fun experiences as we possibly can, sans booze. No doubt this Atlanta trip with my two young boys would have been filled with us in breweries and them on tablets for over half the trip had we done this two years ago. Instead, we’ll be spending our time at a slime museum, the Coca Cola experience, a Braves game, the aquarium, and the Lego museum. I think that comparison speaks for itself. People think being sober is boring – which of those trip versions do you think my kids would call boring?

My point in writing this is not to judge anyone who drinks on vacations. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and is the captain of their own ship. Had I not been a blackout vacationer, maybe I would feel differently 😉. My point here is to let you know that if you are someone who wants to explore a life without alcohol but can’t fathom taking a trip without it, it can be done. Not only can it be done, but it will change your fucking life and you will never want to take another boozy vacay for the rest of your life!

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