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Comment by wildrhythms | Hacker News Reader

The tech industry is rife with drinking culture and alcoholism in general. I do not drink, and I frequently feel isolated as a result, both at business and social gatherings. 30+ year old colleagues will demand a reason for why I don't drink, as if I'm the one engaging in exclusionary behavior :(

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I don’t drink, but I never felt isolated because of that. I do go to bars though, I just order a coke, a juice, or even a coffee. Yes, I receive a soft pressure to drink. Mostly when I was in college. Yes, people are surprised and ask (sometimes afraid is a touchy subject) why I don’t drink (I just don’t like the taste). A few of the conversations are repeated dozens of times over the years. Some people are hesitant that I am judging them, but pretty early is clear that I am not. But all that is just some conversation, maybe even an ice-breaker. So it never affected my sociability. It is just a fact.

Edit: ok, a few of the other answers are pretty judgemental towards people who do drink, so if that’s your case, I understand why it would make you isolated

I think this is a really good and healthy approach: engage with the social aspects, don’t get snooty, shoulder the (minor) cost of repeating the same conversation. I look up to this!

Has anybody befriended you after those type of conversations? I've had success explaining why I'm not drinking, but afterwards, it's difficult to reconnect.

Not drinking was never the main topic, just a passing topic. It was never an issue at all. Reconnection or not were due to other things.

But I must say that I never made friends on bars. My friends were neighbors and school friends (in my teens), then college friends, then a few coworkers. And their friends. So I go to the bar with them, not to make friends.

In nightclubs, to meet women, it had a larger impact, but not necessarily a negative one. It would be a conversation point, but I felt that some women actually preferred, maybe felt safer with someone that could better understand and respect limits, idk. I am not from US though, not sure how the culture is here. I never bought any woman a drink (not sure if it’s for real or just a movie thing)

Not sure if someone who'd genuinely take issue with someone else not drinking would make a quality friend. Perhaps a good acquaintance, friend-of-convenience or friend-for-a-purpose, but friend-friend?

I wouldn't call it alcoholism, but I do think there's too much emphasis on alcohol in team building. Getting trashed with your team and making memories (or lack thereof) is kind of a fast track to becoming tight. But there are healthier and better ways to do it.

This is 30+ year old me speaking, but mid-20s me would be out until the early hours of the morning with the rest of the team on a work night, and I loved it. But now that I manage a team, I pretty much never make alcohol the focus of any company event - not really healthy or something I want to be actively promoting to employees. I guess I'm a bit of a puritan now.

Being a mature adult who is interested in reality isn't "Puritan".

I feel this. As someone who has seen some real shit... I feel like that kind of intimacy in a professional environment could actually be detrimental.

I don't want to see my boss wasted. Nor do I ever want to fall in love with the hot scrum master again.

Bravo.

Being up all night actually is akin to drinking for your body, or so I’ve read. I’ve definitely felt the same effects from sleep deprivation.

I experienced something similar, when I stopped drinking alcohol for health reasons and still noticing mental impairment when staying at parties until morning.

Unless you drink a ton most of the hangover effect comes from sleep loss and dehydration.

Do people actually gets trashed and wasted with their team though? Usually I find that there is a "work" portion where people head to the bar after work and have a few beers and get buzzed and talk about work. And then people leave and people break off into groups and the "friends" portion of the night starts, when you might actually get drunk with your group of friends from work. But there is no illusion that there is any connection to work at that point.

It's the same way people get defensive when someone else says they're a vegan. People may often take it as this person signaling something they do as 'normal' and your refusal to partake means there might be a health, moral, or other flaw in their practice. That someone else never said anything further, cast down on the questioner for drinking/eating meat/etc., or said "it's debate time", but it's the symbol that the very thought that maybe they should second guess themselves that disgusts them -- and this event was supposed to be fun, and you are making it serious.

I guess the pro-tip is to always have non-alcoholic beverages at a gathering.

Or when you say you don’t intend to get married. They take it as a personal attack on their decision to get married when it actually has nothing at all to do with them or their marriage. Even the most progressive people can be weirdly defensive about the cultural norms they’ve adopted.

A conscious decision not to have children can have the same effect

> I guess the pro-tip is to always have non-alcoholic beverages at a gathering.

Alas you may find that those offered contain sugar and/or gluten ...

True. I forget sometimes that 'beverage' set doesn't include water.

Soda water with a lime is a classic. Looks like a vodka soda and won’t get you drunk.

In my experience people get annoyed at hanging out with (the more intransigently judgey type of) vegans because it radically limits the possible places to go eat, and it can get tedious hearing a moral lecture at every available opportunity. I’d speculate that some vegans need to constantly talk about their veganism as a way of suppressing their own uncertainty about their decision. [Not unlike people who have adopted other causes as a core part of their identity; vegans are hardly unique here.]

I’ve never seen someone get mad when a vegan e.g. brought their own food to a social gathering, or directly answered questions about their experience of veganism.

I don’t really buy this explanation because vitriol against vegans is alive and well even in regions and communities where vegans are effectively non-existent. N.B.: I grew up in rural Wisconsin and have never knowingly met another vegan in my life.

>some vegans need to constantly talk about their veganism as a way of suppressing their own uncertainty about their decision.

I met up with some friends in a park recently. It was hot so I suggested ice cream and one vegan dude I'm not that close with comes with me to get it. As we are walking back I notice he is eating an ice cream which is weird cos he's vegan. Without me prompting he says

"Oh damn, I forgot I was vegan"

Then he goes on a monlogue about how he's been feeling so good since he became vegan and he thinks it's great but he sounds totally unconvincing. Like he doesn't believe himself. Later he pulls some pre made vegan food out of his bag and slowly starts eating it. Turns out his girlfriend packed it for him. I talk to some friends about it later on and they inform me that he regularly cheats and pretends to himself it was an accident. Dude is probably malnourished and under the thumb of his vegan girlfriend. It's kind of sad.

There are teetotallers, and then there are teetotallers. There are vegans, and then there are vegans.

I lived in Manhattan for just under 8 years, and have been in Hong Kong for almost 9 years now. I have more friends and colleagues who are vegan here (and a few Jains), but I've never seen the social posturing here that I would sometimes see from vegans in NYC. I don't mean to imply all, or even a majority, of teetotallers, vegans, etc. are virtue signalling in New York, just pointing out the near complete absence of posturing and virtue signalling (at least over those choices) here in Hong Kong puts New York in sharp contrast. I took my wife to New York for the first time a bit over a year ago, and our AirBnB hosts were way over the top sharing their dietary choices, to the point is was very confusing to my wife. I had to tell my wife something along the lines of "Don't worry about it. These aren't actually super strange people. It's just something some people do here. We don't have to worry for our safety." We have vegan friends and colleagues here, and my wife's sister-in-law believes in a branch of Buddhism that doesn't eat beef, but posturing over dietary choices was completely foreign to my wife.

My weirdness was that I didn't own a TV for about 10 years prior to getting married. I understood a lot of people who didn't own TVs were really annoying about it. I presume not owning a TV is too passe as a virtue signal these days. With me, it only came up if someone asked me what I thought of the latest episode of XYZ.

Anyway, I see huge differences between New York and Hong Kong about how people present that they don't drink alcohol, are vegan, etc.

I think certain people are desperate to create an identity because they rejected their past identity (became atheist for example). I don't really understand why people are so militant about these things either. I don't drink normally but I'll drink on occasion (with my colleagues for example). Because of this I never get questioned if I decide to stick with water on a particular occasion. My colleagues don't feel like it isn't perfectly valid and it requires none of the (perceived) virtue signalling on my part.

Reminds of the classic Onion article, “Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television” https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d...

A friend who spent much time grappling with how to refrain from social drinking came up with the essentially factual sentence "I've had _plenty_ of alcohol, thanks" (said with enthusiasm in a way that implies he's partied in the past to the point where he had a problem and has to refrain now going forward, without actually sounding like a buzzkill - it takes a bit of practice but is easy to get across in just the right notes)

I'd like ways of saying no to alcohol without implying I have addiction problems.

how about, "I've had all the alcohol I want tonight, that's for sure!"

If anyone doubts the strength of the social pressure to drink alcohol, it's pretty telling that even in societies that stigmatise addiction, it can be easier to hint at alcoholism than to simply say you don't like to drink.

During my 20s, I routinely gave up drinking for Lent. My friends were all drinkers though, and going our for drinks was very much part of our routine.

What worked for me was just to get my own drinks at the bar, and always order non-alcoholic stuff. When folks were buying rounds of drinks, I'd just say "Nah, I'm good for now". No need to mention that I wasn't drinking, and no need to explain why. It's easy to time your drink orders so that you're out-of-phase by few minutes. Then you're ordering at the bar, and you have total control over it.

That way, I've got something in my hand to drink along with everybody else. Maybe it's a soda-water with lime, or maybe it's a near-beer poured into a pint glass. But I was taking part in the social aspect, and that's what mattered. I never lied if asked what I was drinking, but I wouldn't go out of my way to bring it up/make it visible either.

Anybody who's had some good nights at the bar will tell you - there's nothing wrong with being a non-drinker, as long as you're not an asshole about it. Nobody likes to feel judged (even implicitly) for their life-choices. But if you can avoid giving off that vibe, nobody will care at all what's in your glass.

In my observation, the social pressure isn't to drink _alcohol_ per-se. It's to drink _something_. Something that you bought at the bar, and something you're drinking along with everybody else. Soda-water is fine as long as you're pacing your drinks with the people around you, so that you're being part of the group.

"it gives me painful heartburn"

The Unit is an old TV-series, but they got this quote exactly right:

>Best way to get yourself out of a jam: confess to something illegal, immoral, or embarrassing.

Once you do that, basically nobody prods further.

I'd like to think the younger generation is better at "tolerating" not drinking.

I remember my father and his colleagues used to have drinks together on occasions, and throw up, and get home sick, and wake up with a headache. My father hated alcohol, yet he still felt obliged to drink together. I had acquainted several of his colleagues, and not surprisingly, none of them like drinking. Most of them hated drinking.

So, it's actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone thought others expected everyone to drink, thus showed up to drink, and validated everyone's expectation.

If they were to sit down, sober, honest about their not liking alcohol, they would have found that a bunch of people who didn't enjoy drinking, forced themselves to drink with one another.

This impression was marked on my mind, that I initially thought I always had to drink, too.

But, I was wrong; we had plenty to do in gatherings, BBQ-ing, playing cards and board games. And as long as I'm into some of the activities, not drinking isn't a barrier to friendship, or trust, or "team spirit".

It's quite liberating that the circle I'm in has jumped out of the self-fulfilling prophecy of "obliged to drink".

Many statistics have shown that younger generations are less likely to drink: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45807152 (among many other things: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/44880278) so it seams like staying sober is becoming more normalised. The recent growth of non-alcoholic drinks and bars certainly suggests that.

I imagine that since drinking is a social activity, without the social pressure to drink many are simply forgoing it entirely - which itself acts as a feedback loop that further reduces the social pressure to drink. I think a lot of people are discovering that you really don't need alcohol as a kind of "social lubricator" to have a great time out.

Drinking culture and alcoholism are not equivalent. Drinking culture is an annoying peer-pressure thing that builds comraderie, but takes up a lot of time. Alcoholism is a disease that leads people to drink alone more than not (to avoid stigma).

>Drinking culture is an annoying peer-pressure thing that builds comraderie, but takes up a lot of time.

It takes less time than building it naturally in an office environment, hence why it's popular.

Ancedotal, but my experience has been that the tech industry is more understanding of not drinking as a choice than society at large.

Of course, different companies have wildly different cultures

This is also my experience, but I’ve always worked with pretty down to earth people. The better leaders I’ve worked under have made it a point to always ask new employees if they would prefer any non-alcoholic options in particular before any events, rather than assuming.

I don't think its specific to tech. It's cultural. For instance, I think the oil/gas industry is even more alcohol soaked.

For what it's worth, I work for a large tech company and have never felt like I had to drink to be part of the culture.

Working in general is alcohol soaked in our culture. All over the world. Working people drink together.

Alcohol has been marketed so heavily in all cultures for so long, and by so long i mean since beer was safer to drink than water, like pretty much since we invented fermentation, other than some brief puritan periods, alcohol it has been a huge part of human culture.

If you stop to think for a bit, how many wars, how many disasters how many deaths, conflicts and other terrible things in human history that's happened, where alcohol may not have been a direct factor, but the people doing these things probably drank regularly.

Alcohol is this strange partially acknowledged influence over so much of human culture and history, it's mindboggling when you start to really consider it.

So we're talking about situations where it's not particularly a positive or negative influence, just an influence? You could make similar arguments for a lot.

How many times have indoor toilets changed the world through the butterfly effect? I doubt it's a small number.

There's a piece of dialogue from a show I really like which has stuck with me for years.

---

Person 1: "Is everyone out here really so lifeless?"

Person 2: "Yes. Yes we are. That's why we drink."

Person 1: "Well, I drank just fine before."

Person 2: "Yeah, because your world was so overwhelming and scary and you needed a break from it all. Now, you're going to drink because each day is so goddamn dull, and that takes a lot more booze."

(Edit: formatting)

> 30+ year old colleagues will demand a reason for why I don't drink

Sorry to hear people treat you this way.

Depending on the situation and my energy level, I have a few standard answers. Obviously I'm careful about which one I use in what circumstance, but I get a kick out of shocking people who push when they shouldn't, and I find it teaches them not to push.

I'm very aware these are all excuses that I shouldn't have to make, but I feel they teach me more about the person I'm dealing with than just setting up a "dig in the heels" approach of "I don't want to".

My favourite is "My parole officer told me not to drink again". Playing with delivery on that one is a lot of fun. Say it quietly like you're scared someone else will hear, or say it super loud like you think it's a massive joke, and you might just drink again anyway!

"I promised myself I'd go a month without drinking to see how I feel" (How they respond to that tells you a lot about if they have any care in the world for you and your choices)

"A good friend was killed by a drink driver. I've had a hard time with alcohol since" (true story, so I don't feel bad saying it)

"I'm a professional athlete, alcohol messes with my training"

"Drug testing at work means I can't drink"

"I'm driving"

"I want to get up early tomorrow and train"

Many people can remember an excuse like that. I met a few coworkers who get a kick out of this - and it makes you appear manipulative and erratic when I catch you on the lie.

I prefer the truth - not a suspicion of the guy being a sociopath.

Society is comfortable with misleading statements, especially at companies outside of tech departments.

Misleading, yes, but what I meant is lying outright. The workplace has much lower tolerance for it.

Would you concur in that small groups (like most workplaces) will avoid or barely tolerate bullshitters caught in the act?

I’ve been reprimanded earlier in my career for not given these “blatant” bullshitters “the benefit of the doubt”. It trained me just assume honesty despite evidence.

I’ve since been able to move to smaller companies where the truth is more acceptable. In larger orgs you can never say someone is dishonest without damaging your career. At least that was my experience and observations.

"I only do hard drugs", people get a kick out of that one.

Ok, so what's the real reason?

I just ask for a glass of wine and essentially hold it the whole night

This is perhaps the most effective thing to do, and yet we don't do it because deep down we want people to respect our choice to refuse to drink.

I've done it before when offered/given, but I'm not gonna buy a $10 glass of wine as prop just to fit in.

Soda water with a wedge of lime.

Then proceed to talk about how gin & tonic is your favorite drink

Move to italy and you can choose to have a false of wine at the same price as a beer

EDIT: false -> glass (damn autocorrect)

Heh I have a funny story on this:

My buddy (non-drinker at the time) had a job that required him to grease the wheels with clients and a major lubricant was alcohol.

He came up with an idea: cranberry juice in a wine glass

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly well, till one of the senior clients came up to him and whispered in his ear: "it works better if you don't put ice cubes in there" :)

Anyway, he started drinking pretty quickly after and hasn't looked back since.

Haha that's a fantastic story!

I’m always happy when people get mad that I don’t drink because it usually means they’ve never met an alcoholic whose life has been ruined by the bottle and that’s happy to me.

Of course, they should know better than to ask the guy with an extremely addictive personality type who has played more WoW than hours they’ve ever spent watching TV. But hey, the world must be becoming a better place if fewer people know how bad addiction can be :)

I don't get pressed about it often, but usually when people ask why I don't drink, I just say that I have poor self control and all my memories with alcohol end in vomiting.

If they push it further than that, I tell them I have family with addiction issues and don't want to risk it.

Or they have an acohol problem and by not drinking you're un-normalizing alcohol consumption and making them feel self-concious of their faults so they lash out to distract from that.

No idea if that's a true thing that happens, but that is definitely the sterotype of people who want everyone to drink.

That's exactly it.

My line is "no thanks, it's my least favorite drug"... you'll get some interesting reactions to that one.

“What’s your most favourite drug?”

"Caffeine"

( https://sliders.fandom.com/wiki/The_Java_Jive )

Oxygen.

I feel this is true with adult life in general. Drinking and going to bars is always the default social activity, particularly for young adults.

I agree. I feel like tech industry in this regard probably is below the average of all professions.

I am always surprised when people feel like you have to drink if you go hang out in bars.

Order a coke and some cheese sticks and hang out with your drunk friends, it’s not an issue.

I think being sober around drunk people is like going to a naked beach with your clothes on. It just doesn't feel right, and if you don't want to drug yourself up then you shouldn't want to be around people who are.

It won't feel right if you're trying to fit in the same way, because you fundamentally are lacking the necessary attributes to do so (drunkeness, lack of clothes), but that doesn't matter if you don't feel a need to fit in. If you have any interest in people-watching, or perhaps one might call such interests anthropologist tendencies, things are fine. Observe, interact and join conversation or events as you please.

Besides, most people are multi-dimensional, even if you don't fit in on this thing, you might fit in on another axis. Why are you even with the group to begin with? Focusing on that will be more important for social bonding than focusing on joining or not in alcoholic drinks.

Or just abstain from groups, but that comes with its own costs

Or going to a normal beach with a hijab? If your friends can't respect you deciding not to drink, it's much like being uncomfortable with you going to the beach with them with a hijab.

That's due to a lack of social activities post work.

I don't drink either, but I'm perfectly happy to answer "It's unhealthy and I don't like it" when people ask me why. Of course, I also try to avoid social interaction, so if this is a rude response it might not be as useful for others.

That's akin to declining chocolate from a fat person by saying "no thanks, it makes me fat". I don't drink for medical reasons , although I used to in my twenties. I don't feel the pressure to drink, but understand why some people feel they need a reason. Saying "I don't feel like it" should be sufficient for most people

Just say you snorted some lines and don’t want to mix the drugs.

> That's akin to declining chocolate from a fat person by saying "no thanks, it makes me fat".

If the fat person asks you why you don’t want it, there’s no reason to lie to them.

"I just found out I'm pregnant!"

Yeah, that might not fly for many of us here…

[Every non-Muslim non-Mormon culture] is rife with drinking culture and alcoholism in general.

Some just replace it with something else. In my experience khat culture is effectively identical to drinking culture in much of the ME and in ME enclaves in Western nations.

So are muslim cultures, at least the ones that I'm familiar with.

Drinking occurs in Muslim and Mormon households. Some are okay with it. Some have immense guilt for perceived sins, which can feed into a negative feedback loop in alcoholism, other substance abuse issues, and mental health issues. The advertising industry has blood on its hands where alcohol is concerned, at least, but alcohol is addictive enough to bring addicts out of the woodwork.[0]

Alcohol is also a part of society and culture. It’s neither good nor bad inherently. It’s only bad to use it against your own moral code, or that of others, or that of your local jurisdiction. What you do with that abuse potential is up to you.

Please drink responsibly, if you do at all. Drinking’s perceived minor heart benefits give people license to drink when they may not otherwise, to little benefit. However, social drinking is an opportunity to socialize, and with the intent on the socializing, the potential harms for overindulgence can be curbed. It’s easier to not get addicted to begin with.

You have to be able to stop drinking for your choice as to when and why you drink to hold water, or your drink of choice.

Cheers, HN.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/add.13284

Israel and India are below some Muslim countries in alcohol consumption per capita [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_c...

Asking someone why they don’t drink is such a deranged thing to do. I can’t believe how often it happens.

Asking someone why they don’t drink is not deranged. Pestering them until they give in might be, though.

This. Fortunately, "I am allergic to alcohol" always work. (Not sure if I have one -- I do have some allergic-like reaction to alcohol when I was a child, but I am not going to risk it)

That’s unfortunate. “I have a liver condition” could work. Kind of like wearing a wedding ring to prevent unwanted advances in the work place.

Or just tell them the long and thoughtful truth on why you don't drink in detail. Mental clarity, avoidance of toxins, better workouts, etc. A nice exhaustive list.

I garauntee they'll be sorry they even asked and zone out in 10 seconds or less.

I mean sure, if one feels invested enough in such people to expend the considerable effort to enlighten them and the folly of their judgment. But if one is already convinced of their own way, such an effort could be not worthwhile, or even fall on deaf ears.

Or just tell them No. As long as you are not hurting anyone, you're under no obligation to justify your life choices to your co-workers.

I suppose some people might find that stand-offish, but the type of people who won't respect boundries on something as simple as this definitely won't respect boundries when it really matters.

If you refuse to befriend jerks, you'll tend to find yourself lonely often.

And if you never stand up for yourself, you'll find that all the people you befriend happen to be jerks.

In real life of course you have to find a balance. There is a line and its going to be different for every person

Or you'll start a dumb argument.

Mental clarity not important for hangouts, toxins is a dumb buzzword, you're not working out tonight, etc.

The real list of reasons is probably very short, and should not be inflated to be annoying on purpose.

Edit: Okay, so why the downvotes? Am I wrong in interpreting "exhaustive" in the context of that post as "inflated to hell and back instead of trying to be a real list"? I would be very surprised if I'm misreading that.

FWIW, people who cut out alcohol for muscle building reasons (As opposed to direct weight loss/diet reasons) are well aware that the effects of oestrogen release lasts for weeks, up to 6, iirc. It’s a pretty good reason to not drink. For general weight loss, I’m unsure if the alcohol effects anything on a chemical level, but alcoholic drinks are calorie dense as hell.

Alcoholic drings have a lot of calories, but they are also known to increase your appetite. Finally, they can disrupt proper judgement, of whether you need to eat a dessert or not :)

A fun fact though: beer, milk and orange juice pretty much have the same calorie density. This is why I drink mostly water, very little milk and orange juice and hopefully not too much beer.

OJ I’m not surprised about at all but milk is way worse than what I thought it’d be!

When you drink, even in moderation, your mental clarity probably isn't at peak level again for at least two night's rest.

That's my experience anyway. People who think they're back in tip-top shape after a night out tend to be the ones who drink so often they live in a fog and can no longer distinguish between that and clear mindedness anymore. I think that's true for a surprisingly large amount of people.

Are you comparing that to a non-drinking night out that goes just as late?

This is how you get people to hate you; it's the same reason vegans have a bad image.

Then that's rather pretty shitty of rest of us. The rest of us should just have someone's "No" and bugger off.

I happen to be excluded from your "we" ;) We would like it if people didn't do this, but it happens and it doesn't help us to be annoying. Especially in cases where people don't realize that they're prying being sanctimonious in response can come off as being unreasonably smug.

Then maybe people shouldn’t ask why if they don’t want to hear the answer. I think it’s a rude question to ask so I don’t really have any pity for someone who finds themselves bored with the response.

Being rude to people who are rude (especially in cases that they don't realize that they are being rude) generally sours relationships, unfortunately.

That depends more on how you say it. Try not to invoke guilt. After all, you presumably like these people and don't want to make them feel bad - but you just don't want to drink. Guilt is where it can go wrong, so you kind of have to dance around it.

I have found it’s generally quite easy to say “I don’t like the way it makes me feel”, which is relatively guilt-free. A less-strong one might be “I don’t like the taste”. It helps that it’s true in my particular case, of course.

> A nice exhaustive list.

This made me laugh!

I do drink but never much. I’ve always found just having something in hand that looks like a drink will prevent most of what you describe though.

Tonic water with lime on ice is popular to fit the “just so it looks like I’m drinking” need.

Amazed at the number of fellow teetotalers in the replies here

Keep in mind the parent comment essentially selected for these people ;)

I am one, for the simple reason most of my male ancestors were alcoholics and I decided the easiest way to not be one was to avoid it entirely.

I don't know if the USA is representative of the rest of the world in this regard but, with respect to drinking, American adults fall into deciles that surprised me[1]. Roughly 40% consumed almost no alcohol in the week before being surveyed, 40% were low-to-moderate drinkers, 10% averaged about two drinks per day, and 10% holy shit that's a lot of booze.

[1] https://kottke.org/plus/misc/images/drinking-rate-usa.jpg

I think that chart is misleading, 0 drinks in the last week does not mean "doesn't drink at all, " which implies total abstention. You can easily go weeks or even months without a drink as an occasional drinker who only partakes at social gatherings.

Going a week without acohol is considered a category below low-moderate acohol usage? That seems weird to me.

I would describe myself as a low-moderate consumer of cake. I definitely don't eat it weekly.

I just say “health concerns” and leave it at that.

It's interesting that you would read this article in particular and then say "as if" that way.

(I mean, "as if" is still appropriate for your average party, but the article is describing a situation where that really is true!)

In a few years that will be upgraded to cannabis smoking and you'll be gatekeeped out if you're not down with the herb.

I’ve never been implored to smoke marijuana by any people smoking marijuana. They are also far more pleasant to be around than drunk people, with zero chance of violent outbursts.

Just relaying my personal experience, but I don't drink either and have never felt excluded. I occasionally get asked why (most people don't even notice) and I tell them the truth "I feel like crap the next day, even with just one drink".

It's not about the tech industry but the prevailing culture of the country and region. Drinks after work is extremely common in most places.

In the US, there is a huge portion of the country, if not majority, that must drive home from work. Women certainly can’t afford a couple drinks before driving, maybe even one, as it can impair their driving abilities and result in drunk driving. Probably true for many men too.

Any amount of alcohol can cause impairment in any person.

Yes, of course. And I would recommend abstaining from any driving after any amount of alcohol, but I meant sufficiently impaired that it causes you legal troubles.

You can always hang out with them but not ordering any alcohol, or is it frowned upon there?

I’ve had to push for non-alcoholic entertainment at every company I’ve worked at.

I understand the value of happy hour wholeheartedly, but encouraging your employees to drink at work at your workplace is downright creepy.

> ...encouraging your employees to drink at work at your workplace is downright creepy.

How is encouraging your employees to drink at your workplace creepy of all things?

A manager offering an employee amphetamines to improve their performance is unethical, and extremely creepy.

A manager encouraging employees to take up smoking to fit in better with their coworkers is unethical, and extremely creepy.

A manager encouraging employees to consume alcohol at work in order to foster team building is not fundamentally different than either of the above, it's just milder and deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.

I drink in general, yet at work gatherings with alcohol I stick to sparkling water.

I'm approaching my mid-30s and never had anyone "encourage" me to put the water down and suck on a beer. Nor do I think wheeling a keg into the office is the same as a manager encouraging you to drink.

You definitely stand out when you're in a drinking context and your hands are in your pockets. There's something that can feel distrustful about that in some scenarios. I'd encourage non-drinkers to at least learn to play along and have some beverage in their hand.

A lot of our creep-detector software seems to kick in when someone isn't playing along with social ritual, and complaining that you have to play along doesn't really serve you. They're just basic social skills.

To recap: there's nothing creepy about bullying people into drinking -- pretending to drink if they must! -- to prove their loyalty to the group, and despite the fact that should be common knowledge for everyone, you've never seen it happen?

If they always bully you into pretending to drink, remember to bring some fake vomit to seal the deal.

This discussion is absurd even on a linguistic level.

If you have a glass of water in your hand, you are drinking. Maybe you're not drinking alcohol, but calling it "pretending to drink" is just silly.

Presumably it's entrenched by convention because it's a successful practice; organizations that do it are in some small way more successful than ones that don't. I doubt that is true for amphetamines.

I don't know about offering cigarettes, but I've definitely been in environments where smoke breaks were an effective way of building connections across the organization.

Would you feel the same way about "successful practices" which discriminate against employees on the basis of race, sex, or religious preferences? There are plenty of commonplace social practices which do not benefit employees or society. The mere presence of a feature does not prove that it is adaptive.

But they do benefit employees. I am not a smoker but a number of people in a former company were and they shared a camaraderie that if you didn't hang out with them you wouldn't get. It also cut across levels, so you could be an intern and it was an easy time to hang out with some mid level manager and get noticed.

Huh? Amphetamines are extremely popular in successful organizations, from banking to biking to booking (college studies).

For sure, but I'm not so sure they would be net-positive for an organization. Plenty of people can't take them in a sustainable way, and if they were given out like beer at happy hour I think a lot of folks would go off the rails.

My last employer offered an on-site therapy benefit and I sometimes wondered whether we'd see a progression from therapy -> on-site psychiatry -> little nudges to take ADHD tests -> everyone is taking Adderall.

Of course it's successful to intentionally manipulate you with alcohol. Just because you can explain a phenomenon does not justify it; that's just giving up on the concept of "values" altogether.

> ...deeply entrenched by convention as socially acceptable behavior.

Have you considered that some things are deeply entrenched because they work?

I think most people who aren't teetotalers and who have worked at a startup have brought beer or whiskey to the workplace for after a long day, and I don't think that it's that different when the boss brings the beer: if you are working with people you can't trust, you probably have other issues.

Nobody's saying you have to drink, but it's not a tragedy if that leaves you out of some of the benefits of social drinking.

>> if you are working with people you can't trust, you probably have other issues.

If think your workplace is exclusive of people you can't trust, you're probably very naive.

And coffee? What about sugary sodas? Energy drinks with supplements?

I think even your examples make clear there is a spectrum here and not absolute equivalence.

You can’t assess these things in a vacuum from their position in society. If adderall were over the counter and considered as safe as alcohol, the spectrum would change.

If alcohol were offered in a culture where it’s frowned upon it might be seen as worse than cigarettes.

It introduces a non-work ritual into the workplace that is exclusionary to non-drinkers. It is naturally divisive to the workplace by encouraging social bonds between drinkers and excluding non-drinkers without a regular alternative.

It's like having a basketball game every Friday and expecting the guy in a wheelchair to show up and keep score. Sure, they can socialize a bit, but its inherently ostracizing and annoying especially if the person doesn't want to keep score.

Sure, voluntary social drinking among employees is fine whenever. And work sponsored drinking on occasion is fine, same as a work sponsored basketball game once in a while. Wheelchair guy won't have a problem with that. But every week? Ostracizing.

But having the sole, weekly, work-sponsored social event as something exclusionary is cult-like and creepy. It makes drinking integral to regular social bonding at work.

Sure, people can sip a sparkling water and play along. And they do. And sometimes it's fun, but it's almost never the context under which that individual prefers socializing. And once people have had a few drinks, it is ostracizing because they are not drunk. They cannot discuss their drinks, offer shots, or engage in drunken antics.

I don't drink either and have had similar experiences as the parent comment, but "creepy"? What?

What part do you find confusing? You forgot to explain your confusion, sorry!

Edit: apparently I‘ve been rate-limited by HN’s anti-spam techniques, so I can’t comment further for a few hours, but encouraging employees to ingest a drug, especially at a workplace, especially a drug that makes people more susceptible to manipulation, doesn’t seem to square with any good-faith interaction between a company and its employees. The point of throwing a party with alcohol at the workplace seems to be an effort to throw money at employment satisfaction, but extremely cheaply and to no positive material effect for the employees. Why not just give the money spent on the party to employees and organize off-site as “normal” people uninhibited by corporate values? Well, that doesn’t benefit anyone BUT employees.

I’ve been to a fair number of off-campus celebrations, lunches, dinners, events, etc and the atmosphere is greatly relaxed and more respectful for it.

"Creepy" means everything these days and you'll find people invoking it for everything. A guy dating a woman five years younger than him? "Creepy". Wheeling a keg into an office on Friday? "Creepy". Approaching the opposite sex? "Creepy".

So I think you'll send a clearer message to explain what you mean instead of leaving it up to everyone's interpretation of the word "creepy".

Edit: To respond to your edit, I can see how you can think something like that. But at the same time, alcohol is also an effective age-old mechanism for social bonding, and social bonding is important at a workplace. I think there's a certain cynicism in looking at social drinking at the workplace as some manipulation-play that errs into the side of unreasonableness. I, myself, often opt out with a sparkling water, yet I think the ritual is useful to really meet and befriend others at work.

The nice thing about our drinking rituals is that they are inherently social. We don't need to go to some contrived "team building" activity. And it's effective to get people to talk to each other in a way that "Okay everyone, it's social time! Get chattin'!" just isn't.

Alcohol definitely has its downsides. It's unhealthy. It can get people to make fools of themselves. It can make people aggressive. For sure, these are problems. But I wouldn't so quickly dismiss the upsides. Some social drinking can make things possible that I'm not even sure how to replicate without it, like getting people to actually open up and be real with one another. There's something to say about that that isn't just negative. Just like I don't think the workplace is optimal when we're all just impersonal professional drones who never really get to know the real human behind our coworkers.

I’m not sure how you’re treating the opposite sex to be considered “creepy” by approaching them, but it’s definitely something to be concerned about.

Anyway get your drinking rituals away from me, I don’t want to bond with my coworkers, especially not at the workplace. I consider it creepy to even conflate a paid relationship with anything personal.

If I make friends with my coworkers, that’s certainly not the business of my boss, or their employer, or really anyone.

Creepy = doing anything differently than me

What do you mean by “non-alcoholic entertainment”? Events where alcohol isn’t present?

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