Saying no to alcohol

[erinaceus]

Does anyone have a script for turning down an alcoholic drink?

I find the back-and-forth of no-thank-you-yes-I'm-sure-yes-I'm-really-sure to be wearing.

I am none of: teetotal, cutting down a bit, a recovering alcoholic, pregnant, or trying to be pregnant. I felt moved to post this question after the other evening when a barman tried to "upsell" the soft drink that I ordered and I found that the few rounds of back-and-forth insisting-and-saying-no left me feeling irritated.

I appreciate that he was doing his job and encouraging a party spirit, but I ordered a soft drink, and did not want any hassle. I would prefer something to say that is to the point and not insulting, as typically the insister is aiming for hospitable and missing the mark in my opinion, or so I like to think.

I am trying to find a turn of phrase that will not start a debate either. I once has a soft drink with some pre-dinner nibbles, then later in the evening was told "good girl" when I accepted the offer of a glass of wine with dinner. I think this says more about them than me but wanted express irritation about that incident.

Sometimes "maybe later" is vague enough but it is not strictly accurate if I later on chose not to partake only to face another round of insisting.

I posted this in Feminism chat - I am not sure whether this behaviour is gender-related or not, maybe someone else might have some thoughts on this.

[Usernamegone]

Haven't had any stick from bartenders but I used to quite often with friends who expect you to drink if your not pregnant/driving. Normally, if I get questioned I just reply I'm thirsty (then when the start repeating I go all croaky and start repeating I'm so thirsty) or if there is a more unusual soft drink behind the bar I just tell them I really fancied an X.

[Bananalanacake]

I don't get any stick myself, but I have often said 'I do drink, just not every week' no further questions asked.

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

I'm a long term sober alcoholic so obviously anyone who knows me won't offer me a drink, but I've found that even strangers just accept me saying that I don't want a drink. The only people, in my experience, who badger me to have a drink are people who have their own booze problem, and they can be very persistent.

I was at a business Christmas party once and a very drunk woman kept trying to get me to have a drink. Finally she almost shouted at me "WHY don't you have a drink?" To which I replied that if I did I'd make her look like a fucking amateur. Got a laugh and she stopped pestering.

[Terrifiedandregretful]

I really resent people trying to force me to drink and have got angry on occasion so now no friends try it! For what it's worth, XP (male) struggled a lot more with this. I think I've always been known as someone who doesn't drink much, whereas XP is considered the life and soul of the party so his friends really didn't let it lie until he gave in (which he generally did eventually, thus motivating them to repeat the same behaviour next time).

[EBearhug]

I have about 3 units a year. Mostly, I just ask for a lime and soda or Coke or whatever. If I get asked, "don't you want a proper drink?" I mostly reply, "No, lime and soda, please." This is generally accepted. I do occasionally get people who ask if there's a reason I don't drink, and I usually say I prefer the taste of non-alcoholic drinks. There are a load of other reasons, but I find it boring to talk about, so tend not to.

I can't remember when someone last had an issue with it. I was out with a group years back where someone refused to get me a drink unless I had alcohol. I went to the bar myself. I was not the one with a problem there.

[ClaudiaJean2016]

"No thank you", as many times as necessary.

I hate the pressure people put on others to drink alcohol. If a person doesn't want it, they don't want it. A reason should not be necessary.

[KickAssAngel]

Oh, and I'm a teacher, and rapidly becoming a grumpy old woman. I do a very good hard stare and "I said NO".

It works.

[KickAssAngel]

I think for a lot of people it's just the convention to drink, and they are so conditioned to it, that they genuinely find it hard to compute when someone doesn't follow the convention.

I also suspect that women are more likely to get pressured into conforming than men, although there are certain male groups where not drinking would be seen as a big problem.

[NotCitrus]

I was at a conference once where I needed to schmooze an older patronising man. And didn't want to drink so asked for orange juice.
Cue lots of "go on love, have a proper drink!"
So I retorted "OK, make that a pint of orange juice!"

Got the necessary agreement out of him, was sober and didn't put myself at risk nor end up with anyone I'd regret (about 30% of attendees ended up in some strangers hotel room...), but god I felt sick after about 10 pints of juice!

I suspect the men I was talking to wouldn't have been as patronising to another man, but then they refused to chat to my male supervisor (more junior than them) at all, so general fuckwittery as well.

[RelationshipAdvicePlease]

My husband doesn't drink and when he first meets people at a social setting the pressure has been on to drink. He just says no thank you and if pressed (which always happened) he used to say that he had some medical issues that alcohol didn't agree with.

Over time, he has been happier to say "I used to drink too much and now I don't drink any more".

As we have got older the pressure has dropped off and he is now more surprised when men and women of our age (nearly 40) are still drinking to excess or giving a shit about what other people do.

It's a thing though - I 5:2 diet and get a lot of "go on, one biscuit won't hurt, you're making me feel bad" when I'm on fast days. People just need to learn that everything isn't about them.

[VestalVirgin]

The strange resemblance to other ways in which women are pressured to do unhealthy things to our bodies seems to strong to be a coincidence.

It is certainly an inbuilt feature of the society we live in, and probably a feature of patriarchy. (Since we all live in patriarchy, it is not really possible to know whether things would be like that if we didn't).
That it harms men, too, doesn't disprove that.

I cannot imagine that in a fully free and equal society, anyone would feel the need to make others drink alcohol.

There are roughly two reasons why people bully others into drinking alcohol (not counting wanting to sell something here):

1: To make themselves feel better about their own alcohol consumption and
2: To make the other person vulnerable.

The two can overlap, for example when someone feels vulnerable while drunk and wants to bring others down to the same level.

1 would be the main motivation in "social drinking" environments where people socialise with actual friends, 2 would mostly be men trying to get a woman drunk so they can rape her, or, perhaps, people trying to get others drunk so they will betray secrets.

1 exists because people are unhappy and feel a need to drown their sorrows in alcohol even though they know it is bad for them. 2 exists because of patriarchy. (And also because of 1, as if 1 didn't exist, attempts at 2 would be way more suspicious.)

I have had happy drunk people try to get me to drink, too, but me reassuring them that I was totally okay with their drunk silliness was usually enough to be left alone.
Am pretty sure aggressive attempts to make other people drink are caued by underlying unhappiness.

[StrawberryQuik]

I find this sometimes with new people but not with old friends, when we were younger there might be a bit of 'oh go on...' but now they just accept I'm not a big drinker/sometimes just fancy a coke/won't drink if I feel a migraine coming on.

No idea if it's a gendered thing as when DH does not drink it's always for a reason...e.g. work night (isn't allowed alcohol 8h before the start of a shift), driving, upset stomach etc.

[OneFlewOverTheDodosNest]

I think this is a people-are-arseholes thing, rather than a feminist thing because I've seen men be far more pressured by friends into drinking than women.

Obviously it's hard to say at a population level, but when I worked in bars I'd frequently see men encouraging drinking and faster / stronger drinking amongst friends and not letting it drop ("I've bought you a pint now so you have to drink it"). Sometimes men got quite aggressive about it, as if not drinking or skipping a round was a personal insult to them. I've never seen quite that with women, although I'm sure the questioning could be very annoying.

[DrDreReturns]

A friend of mine went out early in her pregnancy, she knew she was pregnant but wasn't ready to tell anybody. Obviously she didn't drink but some of her friends wouldn't let it go and kept pestering her about it. Very rude.

[Doobigetta]

I started reading thinking this isn't a feminist issue, and I'm still not 100% sure. I'll (very) happily sink a couple of glasses of wine. I know three should be my limit and I'll pay if I have a fourth. I never, ever do shots. I think they're stupid and pointless, for me they bring the evening to a close straight away because I'll feel ill, and my reward for ending the night that way will be a hellish next day. So I don't touch them. And that has, actually, frequently put me in a position where I've had to be very, very assertive not to be bullied into drinking them. I have to say no over and over again, and explain that at the age of 40 I know my own mind, thank you. Quite often these days I accept the bloody things and tip them away on the grounds that it's no ruder than trying to bully me into drinking them. So the parallels with consent are pretty clear, really.
But it does happen to men as well. I know my partner frequently gets pissed off at the over-reliance of some of his friends on drinking themselves into oblivion as the only acceptable form of entertainment.

[Kallyno]

Oh, I so so so get this! I'm not t total, have never had a problem with alcohol but just very very rarely want to drink. I drink a glass of something or a bottle of beer just a couple of times a year - nothing virtuous, I just prefer cake, tea, and coffee. I get constant offers of a drink but worse, imo, is that friends (mostly those who have a glass or two a day) often treat me as a slight spoil sport for not joining them in a glass of wine. "Oh go on", they say. "Just a little one?". Etc., etc.

[Bikermum82]

I am tee total and have only found people im out with to be the problem. My brother especially who seems to take it as a personal insult. He often says well you wernt an alcoholic back then as you stopped ok and never drank that much. Out of everyone he is the hardest person to get off my case about it. Then again he never saw the 2bottles of wine and bottle off spirit minimum i drank almost everyday from the moment i could get my hands on it. He cant seem to understand that just because i had a job that there was a problem. Ive found with anyone else the annoyed sharp no thanks works.

[TheHubblesWindscreenWipers]

"No thanks."

Repeat as needed. Never JADE (Justify Apologise Defend or Explain.) JADE is something women seem forced to do constantly. We cannot be assertive but polite can we? Then we are bitches, or cold.

I'm not TT per se, no problem with alcohol, I just haven't had a drink for a couple of years due to being pregnant then co sleeping. And frankly, just not wanting to

If I've said this I get the barrage of 'oh but you can drink while pregnant.' Why do I need to justify and apologise and explain? I didn't want to drink. My polite no thank you should be enough.

Very, very bad of a bartender to push booze. I would have complained about that.

[deydododatdodontdeydo]

This is very much a feminist topic also because it is about bodily autonomy. People telling women what to do with our bodies. Sounds familiar?

Is it something that only happens to women, or never happens to men though?
Or happens more to women.
I doubt it very much.

[VestalVirgin]

Lorelei, yes, exactly. I have witnessed friends of mine being bullied into getting way drunk. In one of these cases, the friend was already a little tipsy and wanted to stop. Other "friends" of hers then bullied her into drinking more, and she crossed the point after which a drunk person thinks that she isn't that drunk. With predictable results.

Since I myself firmly state that I don't drink, the people who do this to my friends usually don't try it on me. (People I consider friends wouldn't try, they know they'd not be my friends much longer.)

I recommend this to all people who feel they're bad at saying no and might be bullied to drink more than they planned. (Which to women is actually very dangerous because you never know if there's a rapist nearby. So this thread fits on the feminist boards.)
You can still drink at home - but if you never drink at parties, people will eventually stop trying to make you.

If you feel you're strong enough to oppose those people .... I haven't tried myself, but I think shaming them would work well.
"I said no. How do you think it is in any way okay to disrespect that?" "We tell kids to just say no to drugs. That doesn't work so well if a no isn't respected!"
With a bartender, you could also threaten to not return/ to leave immediately. If you drink soft drinks they'll still earn more than if you just walk away.

We need to start to react to attempts to bully us into putting poisonous substances into our bodies with exactly as much shocked outrage as it warrants.
Just because poisoning yourself with alcohol is more culturally accepted than doing the same with other substances doesn't mean it is okay to bully people into doing it.


This is very much a feminist topic also because it is about bodily autonomy. People telling women what to do with our bodies. Sounds familiar?

[erinaceus]

The person behind the bar asks what you want , you tell them.

Indeed. I felt quite shaken the time when I experienced the bartender to be insistent that I added vodka. In my opinion, it is unprofessional on his part. I would be surprised if any employer encouraged their barstaff to "upsell" alcohol at a bar when the customer is quite clear, as I was, what it was that I was asking for, unless the management are irresponsible. Maybe this bartender was new to bartending or trying to meet sales targets or just wanted me to have a good night or something like that? I have no idea.

I agree as well that being teetotal makes things different. I have the sense that people who drink regularly interpret my decision to partake or otherwise as some sort of judgement about their behaviour, when it is not intended to be.

[Lorelei76]

special, I think being teetotal is a bit different. If people know you have a drink occasionally they think "why not now".