Out on the beach for a while today, i ran across two people waving for attention; turns out they were stuck right past the ‘4wd only past this point’ sign. I got them unstuck, made sure they didnt need anything else and was about to head on my way. One of the women offered me a couple road sodas, and i declined- i havent drank alcohol in about 13 years and have no inclination to start again. The other woman actually scoffed, and said ‘what man isnt going to accept a beer from a couple women on the beach, are you a f-slur?’
So i left.
Why the fuck do people who drink alcohol act this way around people who dont drink?
I stopped drinking like a few years ago just because I don’t really enjoy it anymore.
It’s made socializing more difficult. My friends aren’t even heavy drinkers, but it seems like the only thing adults actually do recreationally is “go to a bar” or “have a drink”
We also smoke weed and do ketamine nowadays
I quit originally because when my daughter was born her first few months of life were hectic. She spent a month in the hospital, had two surgeries, etc etc and i decided that she needed my attention more than i needed a beer. It always seemed like the days i had a couple beers were the days she had the worst problems. Easiest way to make rhat not happen aas just not drinking anymore. I do not regret it in the slightest.
Ive been tempted once in a while, dont get me wrong. A particularly hard day, or a celebratory event, what have you. But at this point i just dont have an interest in it beyond thinking about it for thirty seconds or so. Im more interested in seeing how high i can make the number of days w no booze go up.
It really does seem like the only thing adults do is ‘lets go get a beer’ after work
Drug use in social rituals is almost ubiquitous. In Australia before sunset we get a coffee if catching up, some people chew khat and chat, in the Pacific islands they have kava rituals after work, tobacco smoking is a very common activity to bond over.
It just really sucks that alcohol is the social drug of large gatherings and intimate moments in a lot of cultures. I gave up taking it last year after internalising how out of line my beliefs about risk and side effect aware drug taking was with alcohol (organ damage, sleep impact, GI health, addictive potential due to mu opiod receptor activation etc) and spent a lot of my twenties not drinking earlier in life.
I’m not terribly judgy about it, getting high is fun and life is hard. I get it. But it’s such a messy drug that people on it are kinda boreish to be around if you aren’t, it tends to escalate bad situations, and it destroys bodies and minds over time. It can end up isolating because like yeah I’d love to hang out, no I don’t want to go to the place where everything is expensive, people talk too loud, and you get increasingly less coherent and more repetitive.