However, this doesn't mean that you can't go out, or that you have to avoid any social situation that includes alcohol. Especially if you have isolated yourself in the past, you want to start to attend social events again.
But people can be pushy with the subject of alcohol, and they may not just ask if you want to drink, but try to encourage you to drink. This sucks, I know, especially when you actually kind of want to accept and are only rejecting it because you know that it's bad for you but there is a part of you that wants to say yes.
Here are some tips and tricks not to succumb to peer pressure. It will also be helpful to keep some of this info in mind in order to not get upset.
When people offer you a drink and you refuse, they are likely to keep offering. Don't get annoyed, they are probably not doing it with bad intention even if their insistence makes you feel bad. They may have good intentions and simply be trying to get you to 'have a good time'. It is commonly assumed that that's alcohol's purpose. And most people don't see that for some people alcohol can just be either plain uninteresting or actually pretty damaging.
What you probably want to do when someone insists over and over again is something along these lines:
But that's why I'm writing this post, to offer you other solutions.
Bringing someone along who knows you're not drinking. If you have a mental health issue, having someone at the party/social event who knows about your issues and who knows that you can't drink is a really good idea. That way, if people keep offering you drinks, you will not be on your own rejecting them, you will have someone by your side offering you their strength and maybe even pushing those people away (even if that friend is drinking too).
If you bring a friend who doesn't drink either, then even better, since it will be 2 of you not drinking and things will become much easier because your friend's behavior will encourage yours and the same the other way around!
You can say that you have a New Year's resolution not to drink. People are more likely to stop offering you drinks if that's the case.
If they have seen you drinking earlier the same year, you can do a version of the previous one which is to say that you have stopped drinking for a while to be healthy. And it is the truth!
I'm not a fan of lies. I actually hate them. But if you're getting stressed out from being pressured to drink, I think that's a fair enough reason to blurt out an innocent lie such as claiming to be on antibiotics. It will not work on a long term basis, but if it is for a one-off that you're going out or once that people are especially annoying, you may just choose to use it.
If your problem is that you actually want to drink but you know that you shouldn't and you don't know whether or not you'll be able to control yourself, you can just take the necessary amount of money for the transport back (or in case you'll need a taxi back or whatever), and leave the rest home. Or give your money to a friend that you trust. I know that when I take more money than I need out, sometimes I think "I may just as well buy alcohol" when I'm caught in the moment. So, lately I tend to take a lot less. Only the amount for a few soft drinks and what a taxi would cost in case I'll be too stressed to drive back or whatever.
If there are some people that when you meet up with them they always get drunk, and they keep insisting on you drinking despite you repeatedly saying no... You might want to reconsider whether it is good to keep hanging out with those people, at least for the moment. I'm not saying, go on and break a friendship just because your friends like to drink. I'm only saying that if your relationship consists solely on meeting up to drink and you can't drink (or shouldn't or don't want to) then maybe they are not the right people for you to hang out with at the moment.
Also, I want to emphasize that I wrote this post because I don't want you to have to stop going out just because you can't drink. You should do the things that you like, because in order to get better from depression, you should do the things that you like to do and do as much of them as you can. But I am not saying either that going out is necessary if that is not your thing.
I hope this was helpful!
I'll confess: I tried doing a vlog about this but I'm so bad at it... and I was gonna post it anyway but then I found out the sound and the video weren't on sinc... -.- so yes, I'll try next time.
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