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The 5 Best Ways to Deal With Aggressive Enablers

Kelly Tompkins
5 min readMar 7, 2020

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Or, how to say no to a drink.

Photo by Taylor Davidson on Unsplash

Have you ever gone to a bar or an event that has alcohol while you were sober? More than likely, you’ll come across this scenario at some point. Most of the time, you’ll do just fine. People don’t really know how to handle something so different like this so they’ll be more curious than anything.

Until you come across the aggressive enabler, and honey, you will.

They have a drinking problem themselves and seeing anyone not drinking ruins their own perception of their relationship with alcohol. Don’t worry about paying for drinks around this person, they will already have 3 ready for you. If you stop drinking, they’ll keep buying drinks for you and will cause a scene if you don’t keep up with them.

How do you deal with this person? What do you do when a simple “I’m not drinking anymore” doesn’t cut it?

Be vague. Talk about the “incident” and try to get a distant look in your eyes. They’ll be too concerned with what the incident could have been to keep trying to get you to drink.

If they keep pressuring you to drink after you’ve said you’re not, get silent. Then say something vague about…

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Kelly Tompkins
Kelly Tompkins

Written by Kelly Tompkins

Austin,Texas sober girl. Lover of horror movies, cats, and fitness. Occasional bad poet.

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