It’s only a few weeks to Christmas and local hotels and restaurants are filling up with people partying with colleagues.
The Christmas lights are up and twinkling the length of Aberdeen’s Union Street, helping to illuminate, in the early hours, the sometimes parade of dishevelled and drunken revellers staggering and falling about.
We appreciate it when our employers lay on a good night out at Christmas, but none of us wants to be the one that people remember for going way over the top and making a fool of themselves, as well as saying stupid things to colleagues that should never have been voiced.
Remember that if your company is laying on a Christmas party for staff, then while there you are still technically on duty and drunken antics could lead to disastrous consequences.
Being drunk lowers your inhibitions and reduces good judgment so that what may seem amusing and witty to the drinker can in fact be offensive and coarse. Nobody wants to wake up the morning after a works party and cringe at their own behaviour or, worse still, not even remember what they did.
If you work offshore on an installation or vessel, then you are used to not drinking alcohol for perhaps significant periods as they are “dry”.
So it is very tempting to make up for lost time when you’re back onshore over the Christmas holidays. However, drinking in moderation will pay dividends for your health and wellbeing.
Here are a few “old chestnut” tips to help you get through those festive nights out on the town without overdoing the alcohol:
Try drinking water or something non-alcoholic between your alcoholic drinks. Apart from lowering your alcohol consumption, you’ll feel less dehydrated. You could even try a non-alcoholic cocktail and look sophisticated whilst staying under your limit.
If you are going to a works night out, decide in advance how much alcohol you are going to drink. This may sound a bit prescriptive but once you have decided how many drinks you will consume, it’s then easy to remember to switch to non-alcoholic drinks when you reach your limit.
Remember that some drinks, especially cocktails, have more than one alcoholic ingredient, so bear this in mind when deciding how much you intend to drink on a night out.
Get familiar with how much alcohol various drinks actually contain and steer clear of alcohol-based cocktails/drinks with exotic names that you have never heard of and have no idea what they contain.
Avoid allowing others to top up your drink as it’s so easy to lose count of how many drinks you’ve had.
Remember that if you’ve been up late drinking at a social gathering you may well still be over the limit for driving the next morning.
Steer clear of getting involved in rounds of drinks or you may not be able to stick to your limit without feeling that you’re not joining in.
Eat something before you leave home to go out for the night – this applies even if you’re going out for a meal.
Don’t eat too many salty nibbles at a party as this will make you more thirsty and likely to drink too much.
If you do find that you’ve consumed a larger-than-usual amount of alcohol, then drink plenty of water when you get home. Then give your body a rest and avoid alcohol altogether for a couple of days afterwards.
It’s good fun to get dressed up for a special night out but the results of getting “wasted” are certainly not very glamorous. You could lose friends that you work with, the respect of your colleagues or even lose your job.
Your evening won’t be boring just because you haven’t gone over the top with alcohol and think of the pleasure of waking up the next day with no regrets and a clear head.
So limit your drinking but be sparkling company at your Christmas night out.
Phil Smith is an executive director at occupational health specialist Abermed