The Holiday That Turns us Green

On drinking culture, addiction triggers, and why St. Patrick’s Day is not a harmless holiday for everyone

NBc's Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford were notorious for having drinks on their talk show.

Here's a scene you've probably already watched this week: Green cocktails or Guinness beer lined up in front of your favorite talk show host or news anchor. The host leans in, laughing. “It’s only once a year!” The audience applauds. Cut to commercial.

Or maybe it’s your airline’s social media post announcing complimentary drinks on March 17th. Or the email from your grocery store promoting a St. Patrick’s Day beer bundle. Or the banner outside a neighborhood bar that proclaims, “We Open at 7 AM.”

None of these things are directed at people in recovery. I want to say that plainly, because resentment isn’t useful and the people pouring green green stuff into alcoholic drinks on television are not thinking about us. Why would they be?

But here’s what I also want to say plainly: For the roughly 29 million Americans with an alcohol use disorder, and for the many more in recovery or quietly struggling, St. Patrick’s Day is not a harmless cultural ritual. It is a gauntlet. And most of us walk it alone, without anyone acknowledging that we’re walking it at all.

What a Trigger Actually Feels Like

The word “trigger” gets used so casually now that it has almost lost its meaning. In the context of addiction, it is not a vague, harmless emotion. It makes your brain think, “Why not just one? Or two? Or 20?”. This is what you used to do. And it's available.

Triggers are not about weakness. They are about wiring. Years of associating alcohol with celebration, relief, belonging, or numbing create neural pathways that don’t simply disappear when you get sober. They lie quiet — and then something activates them.

The smell of a bar. A certain song. A holiday.

St. Patrick’s Day is what I’d call a “full-spectrum trigger” — it hits visual cues (green bottles everywhere), social cues (everyone around you is drinking), cultural permission (it’s expected, it’s fun, it’s just one day), and memory (this is what I used to do on this day). For someone in early recovery, or in a fragile stretch of recovery, or even in longer-term recovery, like me, that combination is genuinely dangerous.

And the world around us does not pause to notice.

The Permission Slip Culture

I’ve been sober long enough to observe a pattern in how American culture treats alcohol. Most days, there’s a low-grade hum of drinking normalization — wine with dinner, beer at the game, a cocktail to unwind. That hum is manageable for most people in recovery. It’s just background noise, but certain days turn up the volume to a roar. St. Patrick’s Day is one. New Year’s Eve. Cinco de Mayo. The Super Bowl. Bachelorette parties. Office holiday parties.

What makes these days different isn’t just that alcohol is present. It’s that not drinking becomes conspicuous. People notice. They ask. They offer. They joke. “You’re not drinking?” said with genuine puzzlement, as though sobriety on a drinking holiday is the strange choice.

I have navigated this with various degrees of grace over the years. Some days I have to work very hard to handle it at all. Some days I handle it seamlessly. In fact, I love Happy Hours with good friends and my Normie family. They can drink whatever, however much they want, and I’m content to sit back and enjoy my Diet Roy Rogers.

But what I’ve never had — what none of us have — is the culture pausing to say: we know this is hard for some of you, and we see you.

So I’m Saying It

If you are in recovery and this week feels heavy, that is not a character flaw. That is a rational response to an environment that is not built with you in mind.

If you are newly sober and wondering how you’re supposed to get through a day when your coworkers are doing Irish car bombs at lunch, the answer is: one hour at a time. One choice at a time. You don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. You don’t have to perform wellness. You just have to stay sober today. That’s the whole job.

If you are not in recovery but you love someone who is — please consider what this week costs them. Not to guilt you out of your own celebration, but because awareness is a form of care. A text that says “thinking of you this St. Paddy's week, let me know if you want to talk” to someone you know is in recovery costs nothing and means everything.

And if you are not in recovery but you’ve been wondering lately whether your relationship with alcohol is exactly what you want it to be — the fact that you’re reading this, on this blog, at this particular time, might be worth sitting with for a while.

Today’s Dish

What I’m serving myself today, and every day the culture turns up the volume:

• Honesty about what I’m feeling, without shame.

• A plan for the hard hours — where I’ll be, who I’ll talk to, who I'll be with, what I’ll hold in my hand instead of green beer.

• Compassion for the version of me who once thought St. Patrick’s Day was just drinking fun.

• And Mocktails are really fun, too.

You are not alone in this. Even when it feels like you are.