Tips For A Sober and Joyous Holiday Season – I’m Not A Social Drinker

This is for that pest who hangs around holidays like a dark cloud…

6) The only people who will persist with offers of drinks are people who have a problem. Often, it is the problem that you and I know a bit about. Try this four-stage fall-back when someone persists:

• “No thanks”
• “No thanks, I don’t want one.”
• “Look, I have told you twice already I do not want a drink.”
• “I can’t understand why you are so interested in whether or not I am drinking-you don’t have a problem with the booze, do you?”

Trust me, that will be the last you hear of them. Whatever you do, do not explain. That only makes them worse. You may have already discovered that social drinkers cannot understand our explanations of alcoholism. That is because those explanations are not true for them. Their bodies do not react the same way to the infusion of alcohol that ours do. Whatever we say about drinking can never make any sense to social drinkers, because their bodies just don’t work that way. For the same reason, when they are talking about what they call “drinking”, They’re talking about one or two glasses of booze. They’re not talking about the three-week blackout that many of us describe as “a little drink.”

“No, I’m starting to feel it.” That’s what a social drinker tells the bartender when they ask if they want another. Did you ever tell a bartender, “No, I’m starting to feel it?” I thought not…