Another good reason...to Enjoy a Sober Season

The first of the annual, How Not to ruin your career by getting hammered at the company party, stories has hit the wire services. NPR has this week's winner, mischief-under-the-mistletoe-office-partygoers-behaving-badly

If you're a Lose the Booze reader you know that Margaret Gold provides all sorts of great tips and strategies on how not to humiliate yourself at a work or family holiday event.

Whether you are getting sober, moderating carefully, or are a long-time sober person facing the annual stress marathon of holiday events, here are a few good tips to help you stay sober through the holidays:

• Have an appropriate non-alcoholic beverage in your hand at all times, if you are in a must-attend, drinking business or social situation. 
• Ask for non-alcoholic drinks, soda water, etc. to be served in a real glass, with a twist of lemon or lime. Stemware, a highball glass, or whatever everyone else at the event is drinking from, no straw please, will minimize the number of questions or pressure you’ll likely receive from others about your beverage choice, at the event. 
• Insist with staff if necessary – there’s nothing more conspicuous than Coke in a plastic cup at an open bar event. If they tell you that they’ll have to charge you for your soda water or Sprite as if it were a vodka tonic, reflect for .7 seconds on how much booze has cost you, at similar events, over the years, and pay up. 
• Plan an escape if the temptation gets too great.

For many, many more detailed strategies, scripts, trigger management techniques, and support for the choices you are making about drinking this season, please consider looking at Staying Sober Through the Holidays, Margaret Gold's new book for sober people who want to remain that way through Valentines Day and beyond. 

If you are still looking at whether it might be time to Lose the Booze, start here.