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7 tips to survive a family holiday sober
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Hip Sobriety

7 tips to survive a family holiday sober

+ every article on surviving the holidays sober ever

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Holly Whitaker
Nov 23, 2022
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7 tips to survive a family holiday sober
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I originally wrote this post, FKA 6 Tips to Survive Thanksgiving* (*Sober)1, in 2014, on a MegaBus traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles (8 years ago from today, exactly) The bus broke down for a few hours, long enough for us to order pizza on the side of the highway, and I made it into LA around midnight. I stayed up until three a.m. writing because I wanted every sober person waking up that morning to have this very important listicle. The sleep deprivation and the general stress I was under at the time trying to get Hip Sobriety off the ground ended up giving me my first ocular migraine—I spent that third sober Thanksgiving day searching for an ophthalmologist and positive I was losing my eyesight. But the article published on time and a hundred or so people read it.

8 years ago today, somewhere between LA and San Francisco

Since then, I’ve updated this article it a few times, and it sits on a few different websites in different iterations. I thought I’d publish it here, updated…

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