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Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

As a non-drinker, it’s bizarre that there is this rather prominent belief from others that life would be insufferable without alcohol.

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My experience is that non-drinkers are incredibly boring people.

My experience is that drinkers are incredibly boring people.

My experience is that boring people are not corelated to their alcohol consumption.

I know people who don't drink often, much who still party and are "fun" to be around. And I know people who are boring who don't mind a drink.

Back when I was still smoking I also had the feeling that life without smoking wouldn't be worth living.

I succeeded in quitting and of course it wasn't true. Literally every aspect of my life improved. An addicted mind is an unreliable narrator.

Imagine if your life was just going utterly wrong. You're working hard as you can but you can barely make food or rent, and you're so tired every day that all you can do is just lie there like a dull sack remembering constantly and inescapably mulling at just how wrong everything is in your life. There's no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, your existence is just this until you are broken and thrown out.

Now imagine there's a magic potion that make it feel like it all goes away even if for just a little while.

Does that help explain it?

Then that life is already insufferable in my view. As a non-drinker, I would focus on fixing some of the root causes versus trying to dull my misery.

The fact one chooses to imbibe instead is not the thing bringing you joy, it’s escapism. So the fact you would conflate that to others that are content and have no need to escape is ass backwards logic.

If the criticism was phased as, “a drink really helps me unwind after a stressful day/week” I’d get it. But it’s usually projected outwards as “you must be boring/miserable for not drinking”. That’s the rub.

But many times you can’t fix the root cause. Maybe one of your parents is dying. Maybe your relationship with your spouse is falling apart. Maybe you bought a house in the last year and now you’re $50,000 underwater.

wait til you find out some people prefer their faculties dulled by a hangover than being fully present and in the moment for their dreary morning-midday routines.

Strangely some of my faculties are actually made keener by a mild hangover. I'm more empathetic, have keener hearing, and am in a reflective, more receptive frame of mind.

Unfortunately these effects are inseparable from less desirable ones: guilt, anxiety, upset guts, hypersensitivity to smells, hair-trigger impatience, flop sweat.

As a casual drinker, it's bizarre that there is this rather prominent belief from others that you cannot enjoy your life more if you drink from time to time

That’s like saying your drinking status is immutable. I’m a non drinker but that sure as hell doesn’t mean I’ve never drank in the past and know exactly how it affects my enjoyment in life.

Also I say I’m a non drinker as I think it’s the most accurate description but it’s also not a law or taken super duper literally. Middle aged Me probably averages 3 drinks a year. Some years I might have ten, some years zero. I had a few years where I drank every day. I partied a lot as a teen (regular shitface drunk), quit for most my 20s, then started drinking wines when I was in my early 30s, and quit again and have been super infrequent drinker since (about last 12 years). I’m always surrounded by people drinking, I know they enjoy it, I don’t frown upon them for imbibing. It looks like a hobby to me, people talk about whiskey/wine/brewers like they talk about sports teams. I’m just not very interested in it. Sports either for that matter.

That's a straw man though. Nobody said that you can't enjoy life when you drink from time to time. The thread is a response to someone saying that a life without alcohol would be a boring life (and a life focused on consumption, which is an even weirder argument).

Just because you don't find your life enhanced by something doesn't mean that something is useless... And of course we can live without it. I posit we can live quite a fulfilling life as a hunter gatherer in the kalahari.

Anyway, you can be quite a successful billionaire and have no one likes you. Being right and rigid is boring, sometimes being unhinged is interesting.

I agree. I totally fail to see the attraction of alcoholic drinks. They're grown-up drinks, which means that they taste vile and make you feel sick.

Well, I definitely see the attraction. What I don’t get is the projection.

Just because you think your life would be miserable/boring without alcohol, doesn’t mean my actual life without alcohol is miserable/boring. To me, I find people that lean into this projection don’t even realize that their life is already miserable and the drink is what makes things tenable

Alcohol is a very important part of many European countries cultures

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