abuse help: help with drinking! - Help.com

Don’t go to the clubs? Try to do other things with friends instead. Like sports or movies - things that don’t involve drinking.

Order one drink, and then don’t drink it. Carry the full glass around with you, and when someone offers a refill show them it’s full.

Drink something non-alcoholic. Claim to be the designated driver (even if you aren’t) or tell people you have to stay sober because of studying or something going on the next day.

Go other places. Bars and nightclubs and casinos and such are built around drinking. Instead go places where drinking isn’t desirable like ice cream shops and zoos and concerts.

Find friends who don’t drink.

If you get stuck in a social situation around alcohol and don’t have the will power to face down peer pressure to drink, then try try Soda water and a lime for your first two drinks and sip them slowly. They’ll look like cocktails and no one will know the difference. Then, if you want to have a drink, fine, and have soda in between each real cocktail. Usually works for me. I end up having 2-3 drinks over the course of 4 hours or so and am perfectly fine. In fact, it gets amusing after 2 hours when everyone else is lit and your sober. Try it. You’ll realize being drunk isn’t so pretty.

However, the real answer is for you to decide if you have a problem with alcohol and plan accordingly and / or seek help.

You don’t have to be an alcoholic to have issues, but you might be an alcohol abuser. Abusers binge once in a while but can remain sober for weeks or months at a time and don’t really feel they need alcohol. Nor do they crave it. However, when they are around it and start drinking, 1 turns into 2 turns into 5 or 6 before you know it. Inhibition is lost and then they are raging drunk.

The more you are honest with yourself, and honest to your friends about what you will and will not do, the better off you’ll be.