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Comment by maga | Hacker News Reader

> For those of you who don't drink, how do you fill your Friday and Saturday nights?

As life-long teetotaler, I always had more things to do than time: hobbies, sports, or simply talking to friends and family. I might be workaholic, since most of time I cannot find time for those things because of work, but if/when I do have free time the possibilities seem endless.

It's Saturday evening where I am right now, I'm going to work some more and then do some chores while listening to an audiobook. But if I were not working, I'd be in the gym for couple hours and then meeting someone.

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I am also a teetotaller. In my youth I watched peers drink, seek alcohol, get drunk, crash/burn etc - apparently with great joy. As for me, I got tired, lost coordination, etc, but had no apparent 'joy of getting a little/fully drunk'. As a result, I ordinarily never drunk alcohol = waste of $$/zero apparent pleasure/abandoned it. That said, the herd effect where other drinkers act to coerce drink for drink matching was in play - so the zero alcohol drink became my choice, I drank coke by design. If someone grabbed my drink = pew, I said I was driving - an acceptable defence. Works well, saves $$ and lets me run with the herd...

As a younger man I was a bit overzealous about this, and having an "assertive personality" (as someone put it) it was mostly me putting the pressure on my drinking peers. On the hand, I was incredibly lucky to find likeminded friends as a student and we needed no extra substances to enjoy each others company, although, people seeing us constantly laughing would assume otherwise. It still puzzles me when people call other people friends but need a drink to relax and/or enjoy their company.

Yes, much the same with me - just bypassed the alcohol via soft drinks/juices and ran with the herd, people got to know I was a non alcohol type and good as designated driver. Usually drank free as coke is cheap compared with alcohol based stuff. Beer was a nuisance as even non alcoholic beer tastes like shit to me. Same with smoking grass - hated any smoke, it mattered not what was burning - I was not breathing it.

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