The dynamic between you and your T clearly isn't working out. I think it's worth telling her that you want to stick with her, but that the way things are being approached isn't helpful to you, and the type of pushing she is doing isn't helpful. There's probably a way to talk about this that isn't so frustrating and unproductive, and I think that in and of itself is something to explore.

It's very hard to offer further perspective -- what I say now isn't meant to be critical or nitpicky, but more a description of my experience trying to parse what you're writing. What you're describing is on the border between a T being pushy about something that might not be a major issue, and a client denying a pretty serious problem. For me, a lot of my feeling stuck on it comes from not knowing what you mean by "drinking". I know you mean consuming alcoholic beverages. But saying you "drink" three times a week means very different things to very different people, and to "stop drinking" also means different things to different people. Whether you or your T is being reasonable about it depends on what you really mean.

If when you say you "drink" three times a week, you mean pick up a 6 pack on the way home on Monday and over the course of a couple weeks, have a beer with dinner every few days, then I "drink" more often than you do -- my husband and I enjoy wine with dinner a few days a week. But for me, if I say I'm going out "drinking", I mean I'm focused on getting a buzz, which is a very different situation, and something I'd say is problematic if it's happening three times a week.

I know that people sometimes hate it when their previous posts are brought up again, but if you don't want me to remember it, don't say it! Anyway, that caveat in mind, I remember your having some serious job/financial issues recently, and while I'm glad to hear that the job stuff seems to be progressing, I doubt you've suddenly come into lots of disposable income. And, aside from being just exhausting and probably causing me to make my body hate me, another reason I don't "go drinking" three times a week is that it's expensive! Even the casual alcohol consumption I do now is something that is only recent, with an improvement in my financial situation -- whenever money has been tight, alcohol is absolutely one of the first things that I cut down on. What I'm saying is, this tells me that drinking is not just something you don't want to "give up" (I'm getting to why I'm putting that in quotes later) and seem a little defensive about, but also something you value. What is it about it that you value? Again, I don't know whether you mean you "drink" as in you spend $10 on a six pack that lasts you 2 weeks, or you mean go out with friends. Either way, though, it's a pretty significant expense, especially if you're going out.

And besides "drinking", I'm not sure what you mean when you say your T wants you to stop drinking. Does she want you stop consuming alcohol completely? Or does she just want you to restrict recreational drinking to maybe once a week? And if she wants you to stop completely, I wonder if that's because you seem resistant to the idea of even reducing the amount of drinking you do (although I don't know that that's true, since you didn't address it directly). For some people, that medium is just really hard to find, and it's either all or nothing. There's nothing wrong with that, but I can't tell if you and your T have tried to figure out whether it's all or nothing for you, or you can curb your drinking. If she is focused on your quitting cold turkey without exploring an intermediate possibility, I could see that being very frustrating.

You don't have to take meds if you don't want to take meds, of course, and some Ts are not very good about respecting this. Is it in any way tied to the drinking, though? I just wonder because antidepressants can definitely lower alcohol tolerance. Don't remember whether Zoloft is one that does this.

I'm sorry you feel that you and your T are stuck. It's hard, though, to know what's really going on, which is probably why so many responses are asking you about your drinking habits. Also, because I don't know exactly what she said about your coworker, I can't say how much of it was her making an observation and how much she was really insisting that it was the ONLY reason or a HUGE reason why she endorsed you. But, regardless of whether she's taking a hard line on a dangerous situation, or being pushy about something that is pretty subjective, her current technique is not helping you. I don't think the answer is for her to drop the subject entirely, because like many others, I see lots of little red flags all over the place and you might not need to resolve that with me, but you do need to resolve them with T. I do think it'd be worthwhile to try to meet her in the middle somewhere, and explore exactly what would happen if you drank less.