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KIRSTY STRICKLAND: All your sober pal wants for Christmas is for you to be less weird around them

Free-flowing booze is as much a part of Christmas as holly and tinsel but if a friend wants to stay sober that's nobody else's business.

Photo shows five beer bottles, four wearing little Santa hats and one without.
The friend who stays sober doesn't need to feel the odd one out. Image: Shutterstock.

Tis the season to be jolly… and drunk.

As we edge further into December you’ll notice that the hand/eye coordination of those around you starts to get progressively more haphazard.

Booze is everywhere at this time of year.

As a country, we are so enthusiastic about our alcohol consumption that at Christmas we even drink the stuff that nobody likes and that no right-minded person would ever order in a pub come January.

Case in point: mulled wine. Can we stop pretending we enjoy it?

Image shows thw writer Kirsty STrickland next to a quote: "Instead of interrogating the choices they make about what they put into their own bodies this Christmas, maybe we could try… not doing that?"

It’s a drink designed by the Christmas market bigwigs and advertised so effectively that we kid ourselves we’re having a festive “experience” by handing over a fiver for a polystyrene cup of tepid red wine with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.

Bucks Fizz is just orangey prosecco that has gone a bit flat.

And I don’t actually know what eggnog is but I’m instinctively suspicious of it anyway.

Your sober friend’s reasons are nobody’s business

While many might be gearing themselves up for a month of hangovers, cocktails and bad decisions involving the slightly shady looking guy from accounts, other – far more sensible people – are looking forward to a sober Christmas period.

The reasons for this are many and varied. Crucially, they are also none of our business.

photo shows mulled wine warming in a pan.
Does anybody actually like mulled wine? Image: Shutterstock.

There is something about non-drinkers that makes enthusiastic boozers lose their minds (and their manners) a wee bit.

It’s not enough for your colleague or pal to say they don’t fancy a drink, whether it’s just for that night, that month, or forever.

Some drinkers will seek reasons for what they see as thoroughly anti-social behaviour in a sober friend.

Are you an alcoholic? Are you on medication? Are you driving? ARE YOU PREGNANT?

I drink. I’ve also participated in the odd sober month here and there, whether it’s Dry January or Sober October.

photo shows a glass of wine in the foreground and a Christmas party scene going on behind.
Maybe your sober friend CAN have fun without alcohol.

During lockdown I had an extended period of not drinking because it was becoming all too routine to pour a glass of wine of an evening, as a “treat” for surviving another day of dystopian misery and the many stresses of home-schooling.

This Christmas I’m looking forward to the usual festive fizz, inches of Baileys and my beloved Old Fashioned whisky cocktails – which I try to restrict to special occasions because these days I have the alcohol tolerance of a gnat.

But some of my friends are sober and it won’t affect me in the slightest if they order a virgin mojito while I’m getting in about the bevvy.

Be nice to the non-drinker – they might just drive you home

We need to treat choices around alcohol consumption in the same way we do food preferences.

photo shows a woman's hands refusing a glass of wine.
Saying no to alcohol doesn’t make you a weirdo. Image: Shutterstock.

If your vegetarian colleague ordered a sweet potato curry on the Christmas night out, you wouldn’t start berating them for not wanting to enthusiastically strip the flesh from a rack of pork ribs.

You wouldn’t ask them if they felt like they were missing out. Or if they were going to have a fillet steak later. Or if they had to go meat-free because they had started eating a whole packet of bacon for breakfast.

I saw an interview with the excellent Kirsty Mulcahy from Sober Buzz Scotland on the BBC the other night.

She was speaking about how Christmas puts pressure on non-drinkers to join in with the revelry – especially those who are newly-sober and about to enter their first Christmas without the familiar comfort of a three week hangover.

“When Christmas comes it feels like we need to have a drink, people expect us to have a drink,” she said.

“So many people feel that they are pressurised by friends and family. And that can be what makes them slip and take a drink again.”

It’s clear that we drinkers need to give sober people some peace.

Instead of interrogating the choices they make about what they put into their own bodies this Christmas, maybe we could try… not doing that?

Better still, learn how to mix some delicious alcohol-free drinks and serve them to your sober pals in fancy glasses with festive adornments.

You’ll be glad you did when they offer to drive you home at the end of the night.

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