Cocaine at Weddings and Stag Dos: Getting Through the Big Day

Every summer I have the same conversation, sometimes three or four times in a week. Somebody who has been doing really well sits down and says, almost apologetically, that there is a wedding coming up. Or a stag. And they are not worried about the ceremony or the speeches. They are worried about half nine at night, when the band is on, when the lads start disappearing to the toilets two at a time, and when saying no stops being a private decision and becomes a public one.

If that is you, I want to say two things straight away. You are not being dramatic. Cocaine at weddings and stag dos is genuinely one of the hardest situations in recovery, harder than a normal night out and harder than Christmas — and there is a way through it that does not involve pretending to be sick or missing your friend's day.

This page is for the guest who is trying to stay off it, the groom or bride who knows their own use has got out of hand, and the best man who has quietly realised the weekend is going to be a problem.

Why cocaine at weddings is harder than an ordinary night out

People assume a wedding is just a big night out. It is not, and understanding why makes the difference between a plan that works and one that collapses at eleven o'clock.

It is far longer. A normal night out is four or five hours. A wedding starts at midday and finishes at three in the morning. Nobody's willpower runs for fifteen hours, and it is not supposed to. By the residents' bar you are tired, well on, and running on nothing but good intentions.

The drink is constant and free. Drink is the single biggest doorway back to cocaine for most of the people I work with. It is not a moral failure — alcohol simply softens the part of your brain that was holding the line. A great many relapses I hear about did not start with a decision about cocaine. They started with the fifth pint at a drinks reception where somebody kept handing them out.

Everyone has an exemption. The phrase I hear more than any other is it is a wedding. People who have not touched it in months will take it at a wedding and file it under a special occasion. The problem is that in Ireland and the UK the calendar is full of special occasions — weddings, stags, hens, christenings, funerals, the match, Paddy's weekend — and if every one of them is an exemption, then you do not really have a boundary at all. That is the same logic I unpick in is weekend cocaine use really a problem.

It is a captive room. You cannot slip away at midnight from a wedding the way you can from a pub. You are in a hotel, often miles from anywhere, often staying over, with the same people until breakfast. There is no exit and no distance.

And it is emotional. Weddings stir things. Old friends, old versions of yourself, who is not there any more, where you thought you would be by now. If your using was ever about managing feelings rather than chasing a buzz — and for most people it was — a wedding hands you a full day of feelings with a bar attached.

The stag do is its own animal

If the wedding is hard, the stag is harder, and I would rather be honest with you about that than have you walk into it unprepared.

A stag is two or three days, often abroad, with no rhythm to the day at all. There is no ceremony to anchor it, no family present, no partner, and often nobody who knows anything about your recovery. The whole event is built around excess and the group polices itself — the one who steps back is the one who gets the abuse. And on the second night, when everybody is wrecked and the only thing that will keep the party alive is cocaine, it stops being offered and starts being assumed.

Three things make a stag survivable. Decide about the whole trip before you book anything, not on the plane. Bring one ally — a single person who knows, so you are not the only one in the group holding a secret. And keep a genuine exit: your own room, your own return ticket, your own money. Being able to leave is often what makes it possible to stay.

It is also completely legitimate to do a day of it rather than all of it, or to skip a stag entirely and take the groom out yourself the following week. I have never once seen a friendship end over that. I have seen plenty damaged by what happened on the trip.

A plan for the day itself

Willpower is a terrible plan because it is at its weakest exactly when you need it most — late, tired and full of drink. Structure is a much better plan. Here is what I take people through.

• Decide before you go, and say it out loud to one person. Not a private intention — an actual sentence said to your partner, a friend or your therapist. Undecided is the state in which everybody uses.
• Know your own moment. For most people it is not the meal, it is a specific window: the gap between the meal and the band, the smoking area, or the residents' bar after the band finishes. Name yours in advance. Naming it is half the work, which is the whole idea behind knowing your triggers.
• Handle the drink deliberately. Whether that is not drinking at all, or drinking far less and far slower than the room, decide it beforehand. Nearly everyone who tells me the night got away from them is describing a drink decision, not a cocaine decision.
• Have a job. Drive. Mind the parents. Take the photos. Run the playlist. Being useful gives you both a reason to stay clear-headed and an answer nobody argues with.
• Pre-write the line you will use. One short sentence, no explanation, said lightly — then change the subject. How to say no when everyone around you is using goes through the wording, but the short version is: brief, warm, and no debate.
• Set an end time before it sets one for you. Deciding at four in the afternoon that you are going to bed after the band is a completely different act from trying to decide it at one in the morning.
• Line up the day after. Something in the diary for the Sunday — a walk, a dinner, someone expecting you. The plan for the following day is a large part of what protects the night before.

None of this is about white-knuckling your way through fifteen hours. It is about removing the moments where the decision gets made for you. The same architecture works for holidays and festivals, which I have written up in staying off cocaine on holiday, and for the Christmas run of parties in getting through Christmas and New Year.

If it is your own wedding

This is a harder page to write and probably a harder one to read, but I see it often enough that it needs saying.

Some people arrive at their own wedding knowing that cocaine is a bigger part of their life than anyone at the top table realises. There is money that had to be explained. There are lost weekends. Maybe the person you are marrying has already asked you about it once, and you told them it was under control.

I am not going to tell you to cancel anything or to make a confession three weeks out. What I will say is this: the wedding will not fix it. I have sat with people who genuinely believed the day itself would draw a line under it, and the honeymoon undid that belief inside a week. A marriage that starts with a secret this size starts already carrying weight, and the secrecy tends to cost more than the substance in the end — that is the whole argument of cocaine and shame.

The people I see do this well do a small, unglamorous thing: they get one honest conversation started before the day, usually with a professional first and then with their partner. Not a dramatic reveal — a beginning. If you are anywhere near this, cocaine and your relationship lays out what that honesty actually does to a couple, and it is not what most people fear.

The Sunday after

Two very different Sundays follow a wedding, and both deserve a word.

If you got through it, take it seriously. Do not let it pass as though nothing happened, because something did: you sat in the hardest room there is and you came out the other side. That is the evidence your brain needs. Tell the person who knew. Weddings come in clusters — the next one is probably six weeks away — and the memory of having done it once is the strongest thing you will carry into it.

If you used, read this next bit slowly. The dread you wake with is real and it is chemical as much as moral. Low mood, anxiety, a churning shame that is out of all proportion — that is a comedown doing what comedowns do, and it lifts. I have written about that specific Sunday feeling in cocaine hangxiety. What matters far more than the slip is the next forty-eight hours: eat, sleep, drink water, tell one person, and get straight back to whatever you were doing before. A wedding weekend does not undo months of work. Weeks of quietly deciding it was already ruined is what undoes them.

One last thing

If you are reading this because a wedding is coming up and you are frightened of it, that fear is not weakness. It is information. It means some part of you already knows this is not entirely under your control, and that part of you is usually right.

You can get through the day. You can also use the day as the reason to finally look at the bigger thing. If you are not sure which one you are dealing with, the am I addicted to cocaine page will tell you more than another Monday of promising yourself the next one will be different — or take the confidential three-minute self-assessment. Nothing is stored, and nobody sees the result but you.

Related reading

• How to Enjoy a Night Out Without Cocaine
• How to Say No to Cocaine When Everyone Around You Is Using
• How to Stay Off Cocaine on Holiday and at Festivals

Gary Clinton

Ireland's cocaine addiction specialist — CBT-qualified therapist, bestselling author of Never Give Up, and in long-term recovery himself. Private one-to-one help for professionals, online and worldwide.