City break with heavier drinker

[boringbertha1]

During the pandemic I made a lot of plans to spend more time with friends. This particular friend and I had a night away a few months ago and 5 days in March for a milestone birthday for her.

We generally get along great but I noticed on our last trip how much she drinks. I've pretty much stopped over the past couple of years as the hangovers just aren't worth it. She made a remark about how she 'hates people that don't drink' and there was a little bit of tension.

I will have a drink but for example, when we went out for dinner I had water with my meal and then a cocktail as a dessert and she had two double vodkas with her meal and then a cocktail with dessert and we were in the restaurant under an hour (then she halved the bill). We went out to the theatre and she got a bottle of wine for during the show. I had nipped to Tesco to get water and crisps etc for the hotel room and she said she didn't want anything and would just get something from the bar. She got another double vodka from the hotel bar.

This holiday is non refundable and I am looking forward to it but I'm already having concerns about her drinking and her attitude to me not drinking. She's suggested we book the airport lounge as you get 4 drinks included. I don't travel well so can see myself having a soft and her having 7 drinks. It's her birthday trip and I don't want to 'ruin' it by being boring but I can't think of anything worse than getting completely hammered all week out of awkwardness.

@Waxonwaxoff0

She's rude to say she "hates" people who don't drink and you do sound incompatible.

I disagree with people saying she's an alcoholic. When I go on a weekend away I drink a lot, let my hair down and enjoy myself. I can drink 8 or 9 cocktails in one night over a few hours. I'm not an alcoholic, I don't drink at all in the week. Those pre mixed cans are only about 5% strength and they're tiny, they're hardly a lot!

But that doesn’t sound at all problematic — you’re on a night out and partying. It’s the contexts of this woman’s drinking — that she can’t sit through a short, daytime train journey without drinking, that she can’t sit through a play without smuggling in a bottle of wine to drink in her seat, after she’d had two double vodkas and a cocktail in the hour before the play, that her rationale for booking an airport lounge is for the four ‘free’ drinks.

I'm clearly a different crowd . Years ago, a group of us mumsnetters took the train from London to Manchester to meet the other part of our mumsnet group. Drinking on the train was the best bit.

I'm therefore best to meet WaxOn, for our 9 cocktails.

5 nights out drinking in London is going to get mega expensive, and my head hurts just thinking about keeping up with this woman. Pace yourself, drink lots of water, and don't subsidise her habit - all perfectly reasonable.

I would be upfront ahead of time about this and say you're not planning to drink, or not much.

Better to clear the air with it so you all know where you stand. I've come across loads of functioning alcoholics like this and you're right, they do tend to feel cheated when other people around them don't drink or drink very moderately. They're basically always looking for someone to validate their habits and they can't really operate in "dry" mode.

If you think you can make the friendship work outside of these parameters it will be worth the honesty. If you think she's going to resent you for not being like her then you're probably better off cutting your losses anyway.

Like PP I also think your friend is an alcoholic. Planning alcohol into every activity and being defensive about it (her comment about hating non drinkers). She probably wants to be around drinkers as they enable her drinking - drinking heavily alone in these scenarios makes it more obvious that it's not just social drinking, and that the person potentially feels they need the drink. I am not saying this in judgement as I believe alcohol is an illness and she is probably suffering. But I don't think the answer is to enable her drinking. And I would worry that a 5 day holiday could become a binge and possibly could get a bit distressing.

@Oblomov22

I'm clearly a different crowd . Years ago, a group of us mumsnetters took the train from London to Manchester to meet the other part of our mumsnet group. Drinking on the train was the best bit.

But that was a big, fun social occasion, on the way to another big, fun social occasion — I think that’s an entirely different thing to the patter of drinking the OP describes, as is @Waxonwaxoff0’s night out.

@Oblomov22

I'm clearly a different crowd . Years ago, a group of us mumsnetters took the train from London to Manchester to meet the other part of our mumsnet group. Drinking on the train was the best bit.

It's a totally different thing. You're basically talking about a party on a train. A better comparison here is if only one of you had been drinking and getting angry that the others weren't.

I'm not sure what would bother me more, her expecting you to subsidise her drinking by splitting bills 50-50, her "hating" people who don't drink, or the fact she drinks vodka with meals. She's either extremely uncivilised or very Russian.

I think it's quite sad how everyone labelling your friend as an alcoholic is basically saying to ditch her.

As a friend maybe you should actually speak to her. I have major issues with alcohol and when I quit I KNEW I was awful, I hated myself every day. If my mates had just ditched me I don't know where I would be now. Alcohol addiction is common. Stop the judgment.

@VapeVamp12

I think it's quite sad how everyone labelling your friend as an alcoholic is basically saying to ditch her.

As a friend maybe you should actually speak to her. I have major issues with alcohol and when I quit I KNEW I was awful, I hated myself every day. If my mates had just ditched me I don't know where I would be now. Alcohol addiction is common. Stop the judgment.

I'm a recovering alcoholic that's why I recognise the behaviour. I'm not judging her, I know the anxiety and compulsions that are behind behaviour like this and have a lot of sympathy. I am advising the OP not to just join in because she feels pressured, that actually would not help either person. It isn't the amount of alcohol which makes me think the friend may be an alcoholic. It's the way in which they seem to approach drinking.

I have a friend like this we don't really go out at night together anymore as she just says drink drink so i get absolutely wasted. I'll meet her in the daytime . I wouldn't go on a city break either with her as it would just be bar hopping and staying in bed all day with hangovers I like sight seeing. I stopped wanting to get "smashed" when I was 25 we are now nearly 30 and she's still the same . I wonder if people ever grow out of it ?

@VapeVamp12

I think it's quite sad how everyone labelling your friend as an alcoholic is basically saying to ditch her.

As a friend maybe you should actually speak to her. I have major issues with alcohol and when I quit I KNEW I was awful, I hated myself every day. If my mates had just ditched me I don't know where I would be now. Alcohol addiction is common. Stop the judgment.

I'm certainly not saying to ditch her, but the OP has called her friend a 'heavier drinker', and her OP is primarily worried about keeping up with her on holiday, being nagged into drinking by the friend thinking she's 'being boring', and, not unimportantly, halving restaurant bills which are massively inflated by her friend's drinking being entirely disproportionate to hers.

I think it may be helpful for the OP to reframe this as not her problem, but her friend's, so she can relieve herself of thinking she should be drinking along with her friend, while considering whether there is a way she can help her.

I just wanted to second @InisnaBro and @SausageSoupSaturday - many people still have this very outdated idea of an alcoholic being some sort of loud, chaotic person who can't go a day without a drink, or someone who wakes up with the shakes.

Alcoholism, disordered drinking, or a difficult relationship with alcohol (however you want to phrase it) are more about why one drinks and how the urge/need/desire to drink dictates other aspects of one's life.

OP's friend is prioritising alcohol in every situation (and most of them would be pefectly tolerable social situations without the drink) and is attacking her friend for being "boring" for not wanting to drink as much.

In my PP, I suggested that longer term, the OP might want to mention to her friend that she would prefer to do less boozy activities with her. She may even go so far as to raise her concerns over her friend's alcohol consumption, but this may well be very sensitive or even confrontational for the friend.

@Oblomov22

I'm therefore best to meet WaxOn, for our 9 cocktails.

I'm down

PS. I say that speaking as someone who stopped drinking and the number of times that a dear family member has said :

"but we all have a bit too much sometimes, darling" or
"but I love a glass of red in the evening" or
"but look at me, I had too much and fell over that at so-and-so's bbq back in 2019"

IT'S NOT THE BLOODY SAME!

Exactly @holrosea it's not about one individual incident- I too have drunk on a train with a friend- it's the shoe horning of alcohol into situations where you don't associate it, that are the clue here.
But I guess the immediate issue is how it impacts on the trip. I'm not sure if you let us know if you were sharing a room OP ? If not then easy enough to go out for the day if friend prefers not to.

Produce a positive lateral flow and don't go!

I'm totally up for nine cocktails with @Waxonwaxoff0 and @Oblomov22, (and the Mumsnet party on the train sounds awesome) -- the difference is that I'm not smuggling them into a theatre to drink during the show, or planning travel arrangements around drinking opportunities.

But if anyone ever plans a Mn train party again, message me. I'm there.