Work drinking events are different from personal ones in one important way. The cost of being awkward is professional, not just social. The wrong answer to a partner-pressing-a-drink-on-you situation at a client dinner can damage your career in a way the same situation at a friend's birthday cannot.
This makes the work-event question higher stakes, but actually simpler to navigate, because the right answer is more obvious. The script needs to be confident, brief, and uninflected.
The script
"I'm not drinking, thanks. I'd love a sparkling water."
That is the entire script. No explanation. No "I'm doing dry January." No "I'm on antibiotics." No backstory. The brevity is the trick. People who are doing the offering at work events are usually doing it on autopilot; the brief decline lands neutrally and they move on.
The temptation to over-explain comes from a sense that you owe the person an account. You do not. The standard professional posture is to make decisions about what you do or do not consume without requiring sign-off from anyone in the room. People who drink do not feel they owe anyone an explanation for ordering their second wine. You do not owe anyone an explanation for ordering your first sparkling water.
The conference
Conferences have a specific drinking pattern. Welcome reception with champagne. Cocktail hour each evening. Speaker dinner. After-party at the hotel bar.
The strategy for conferences is to be present at the social events but make the conversation, not the drinking, the activity. You are at the conference to network, to meet people, to maintain relationships. The drinking is the medium other people are using; you can use a different medium without forfeiting the goal.
In practice this looks like: walk in, get a sparkling water at the bar, find a person you want to talk to, talk to them. Most of the work of a conference cocktail hour is the conversation. The drink in your hand could be anything. Make it sparkling water and proceed.
Conference dinners are tougher because the drinking is more sustained. Stick with the script, order something with food, keep the conversation going. Conference dinners typically end earlier than personal dinners; you can survive a two-hour stretch sober even when everyone else is on their third glass.
The client dinner
Client dinners are the highest-stakes work drinking events because the implicit social contract is "the wine is part of building the relationship." Some clients will be confused by your declining. A small number will be put off by it.
The strategy is to order the food enthusiastically, ask the client about themselves with the kind of interest that translates well, and let your presence and engagement do the relationship-building work that you were going to outsource to the wine. Most clients, by the end of the dinner, will not remember whether you drank or not. They will remember whether the conversation was good.
If you are entertaining a client whose company drinks heavily, your decision not to drink does not require disclosure unless asked. If asked, the script above is the answer. Many client-relationship people who quit drinking report that their client relationships improved, not deteriorated. They were more present in the dinners, remembered more, followed up more accurately.
The holiday party
The work holiday party is mostly performance. Everyone is somewhat self-conscious about being there. The drinking is doing a lot of the work of making the performance bearable.
The trick at holiday parties is to arrive on time, stay for the part where management gives the speech, do the conversational rounds with the people you should be seen with, and leave at a reasonable hour. This is the same advice that a sober colleague would give a slightly drunk colleague who wanted to advance professionally. The shorter you stay, the less you have to navigate.
The after-work drinks
The most common work drinking situation is the casual after-work drinks invitation. "We're going to the bar; you coming?"
This is the easiest to opt out of and the easiest to opt into. Going for one and leaving is socially fine. Skipping it without explanation is also fine. The after-work drinks crowd cycles continuously; nobody is keeping score of who showed up when.
If you do go, the script works. If you do not go, no explanation is required beyond "I can't tonight, but next time."
What you gain
The professional advantages of being sober at work events accumulate slowly but compound. Better memory of who said what. Better follow-up on the things people mentioned in passing. Better composure under pressure. Better judgment about what to say and not say.
Some senior people will figure out you are sober and silently respect it. A few will be put off, but those are usually the same people who are over-drinking themselves and will leave the company in a few years anyway. The center of professional culture in most industries has been quietly moving toward more sober behavior for a decade. You are not behind the curve. You are on it.