Butler SUCCEED to host third annual Sober New Year’s Party
For those who are on the long path to recovery from a drug, alcohol, or similar problem, the holiday season can offer plenty of chances to trigger a relapse. This is especially true for New Year’s Eve, where midnight parties with at least a sip of alcohol are to be expected.
Butler SUCCEED, a project of Slippery Rock University, is offering an alternative this New Year’s Eve with its third annual Sober New Year’s Eve Party.
As the name suggests, this party offers the chance to ring in the new year without a sip of alcohol in sight. The party kicks off at 9 p.m. at the Butler SUCCEED headquarters on Butler’s Main Street.
“We'll be here until the ball drops, and we have a big-screen TV so we'll watch the ball drop,” said Alice Del Vecchio, assistant professor at Slippery Rock University. “We have bingo, games, and all kinds of opportunities for prizes.”
Del Vecchio credits Kayla Rennie for the original idea which led to the Sober New Year’s Eve Party. At the time, Rennie was a member of AmeriCorps VISTA, a national anti-poverty program.
“She was in our office two years ago, and Kayla said, ‘There are a lot of people that New Year's Eve is a really tough time for them,’” Del Vecchio said. “There are triggers all over the place. We decided that we've got a space here and there are people that would like to go someplace for New Year's Eve, but they need to be places where they're not triggered.”
According to Del Vecchio, last year’s event drew people as young as four weeks old. One of the attendees at last year’s event held a special coin from Alcoholics Anonymous for 30 alcohol-free years.
Although Butler SUCCEED is hosting the event at its building, the organization putting the event together is actually Slippery Rock University’s Institute for Nonprofit Leadership, of which Del Vecchio is the director.
Corey Williford, one of the AmeriCorps volunteers from the INL's Substance Use Disorder team, outlined what the Sober New Year’s Eve Party will have to offer.
“What I've been working on with the plan is having food, karaoke, different types of games,” said Williford. “Of course, watching the ball drop ... just activities to make it a fun, enjoyable environment.”
One of the games at last year’s event was inspired by the game show, “Minute to Win It.”
“We had an eight-foot or 10-foot strip of toilet paper, and we put those on the table in lanes, and then we put a cup of water at the end,” Del Vecchio said. “They had to pull the toilet paper roll as fast as they could to see who could win without spilling the water.”
In just two years, the event became a success that almost outgrew the building that hosted it. At last year’s event, the crowd reached the maximum capacity of the Butler SUCCEED building.
“The first year we did it, we had six people registered on New Year's Eve morning, and we had 40 people that came,” Del Vecchio said. “Last year, we had 67 people who came. And so that was our max capacity.”
Del Vecchio encourages any interested visitors to preregister for the event to make sure they don’t get turned away at the door on New Year’s Eve.
