Common side effects of not drinking
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It's amazing for 1. all the health benefits but mostly 2. it changes your perception of life. People are under the influence of alcohol at most social events, but I'd argue it's just for one simple reason: social anxiety. When you have to deal with this anxiety instead of numbing it with alcohol, you go through an emotional and spiritual journey, where you'll uncover who others really are, but mostly who YOU really are.
I highly recommend it.
Protip: How to prevent making people uncomfortable at parties: don't talk about you drinking or not, and directly ask for a mocktail or other alcohol-free drink. If anyone asks if you are not drinking, say "maybe later" and they'll just forget about it.
And I avoid drinking sugary drinks all night because they’ll give me a headache.
My main concern with it as a substitute is that you get through it quickly and rack up the sugar levels in no time. Best bet as far as I'm concerned are 0.0% beers - a third of the calories and a fifth of the sugar - although I'll try to stick to two of those at max. They make me feel groggy despite having no alcohol in them.
It's a non-issue.
Why?
I don't like jail. It sucks.
I get not bringing it up. But if anyone ever asks me, I'll say "I don't drink". If they get uncomfortable after that, their problem.
I think I've had to explain that more often than the part about not drinking any alcohol.
https://cafely.com/blogs/research/which-country-consumes-the...
If they ask at any given time, just say mutter something plausible to move the conversation on - whoever you are talking to won't really be interested and and will be glad to move on to a new topic.
Additionally, alcohol is an addictive substance. I know plenty of extroverts who don't need any booze to socialize and still very much enjoy drinking.
Alas, the addictive nature of alcohol obviously plays a role as well.
Liver problems are surprisingly common as one gets older. It's estimated that 24% of US adults have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Avoid drinking, lose weight, reduce carb intake.
That's debatable. Ethyl alcohol may have slight benefits for heart health but even that is vague and only if you already drink and in moderation. For example 350ml of beer per day is considered moderate.
More likely is your blood pressure will increase, your liver will be negatively affected.
I've never been around drinkers without being pressured to drink. And the more they drink the more pressure. Until they are so pissed they don't even know that you're there anymore. Until they need a ride home.
Basically if you are a drinker you accept the outcome. If you don't drink there's no need to start.
Life without drinking alcohol is great, and I've never once regretted it. If I need to relax I go birdwatching and spend time watching birds.
You know how, when people have a few drinks, they start saying stuff that maybe they shouldn't say? Yeah, that's how I am cold sober. I like my mind sharp, like you, but I also don't need to say more stupid things than I already do.
How do you know that if you’ve never experienced anything else?
I've also never tried jumping off a bridge or climbing a huge mountain and I also know I wouldn't like those, even if I haven't tried.
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Point being, in the grand scheme of things, its sometimes okay to do things for not so good reasons. And you won't save yourself with restriction necessarily. Part of the human condition is it feels good to feel bad. Some people take this way too far, and they won't even know they do it. They'll quit drinking not to be present, but to deprive themselves of that ounce of happiness.
Alcohol is one of the oldest vetting techniques. All of nerdom is newer: What books you’ve read; what memes you know; what music you like; what sports team you’re a fan of; what city you’re from; what god you worship; what programming languages you know; your karma, so on and so forth ad nauseam.
There’s an unpopular theory about the neolithic… that hunter gatherers discovering clay, made vessels to store grain, but didnt understand lids yet. The vessels filled with water when it rained and people being people drank the water and got drunk for the first time. The inhibitions lowered and those that were afraid of others found comradery subsequently organizing into larger groups. Drunk people being drunk, tend towards talk of religion and the world etc and these new groups built monuments over time to memorialize these places of reverence….
I heard this once as a possible explanation for gobekli tepe, the oldest strains of wheat are discovered a mere kilometer away in clay vessels with no lids.
and while its fallen out of favor I cant help but think theres a nugget of truth to it.
It would seem that for the old world at least, a coevolution for alcohol tolerance has been selected for. Contrasted with the devastating effects alcohol has had on new world populations that were not introduced to alcohol until first contact.
How true its is is anyones guess… but I feel it explains a lot from what I’ve experienced
and they still had drinks like pulque which were fermented
Love this concept. Definitely going to steal it.
In the US the average adult drinks 9.6 liters of alcohol per year. Germany is at 12.2, the UK at 10.8 and Italy at 8.0. So some European countries drink more than the US and some drink less, but all in all the difference is not that big.
Isn't it, for example, pretty common to have a glass of wine at lunch in France? If 50% of french do that, that average is already way more spread than in a country where 30% don't drink at all.
I don't drink much these days, I can't say I've lost any social life because of it. There are some I've lost contact with, but I've gained other friends in the active hobbies that I reduced my drinking to be better at.
Internet commenters do love a binary though, and don't forget that most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
The “have you ever tried spending [time] with them, without alcohol?” isn't referring directly to the amount of alcohol the others are drinking, but dumbing yourself down with alcohol, so you aren't as bothered by their behaviour.
Of course the behaviours that would bother you while more sober might be induced or exacerbated by excessive alcohol, but often I find people who are difficult to deal with after a few drinks are people I'd rather not interact with much when they are sober either.
The problem is that it catches up with you. And it is easy to overlook when some people develop a serious drinking problem. My mother became a serious several-liters-of-vodka-a-day drunk. It was profoundly noticeable toward the tail end. It all stopped when the heavy vomiting (from the drinking) triggered a brain bleed and she had a stroke. She was, for months, in a coma, and then for many more months, unable to speak or move. To an outsider, she now appears normal, but to those who know her well, she is not. Her memories are usually confabulated. She cannot perform ordinary tasks (like cooking), and she is frail. Most importantly, the spark that made her funny and interesting is gone. Drinking destroyed it.
Sadly, this is a pattern I saw repeated in numerous family members. But it never really impacted me until it was my own mother.
I am not anti-drinking. But this experience removed almost all of the pleasure of drinking for me. The irony is that I really do miss those joyous, booze-fueled holidays. I have a lot of complicated emotions about it, but I wouldn’t go back.
Probably immediate is the key here. Once you stay with the more distant ones, you may discover many people will just use it as a lubricant to somehow get a long with people they actually don't share that much with - but need to because of social pressure.
We usually mistakenly believe so because of pluralistic ignorance. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance#Research
Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: some consequences of misperceiving the social norm (1993) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8433272/
People who preach do - or were until they quit.
Every article against drinking i've ran across assumed that if you touch one beer once you'll end up drinking 1 liter of vodka per day.
> It’s a sudden realisation that the reality is not as pleasant without alcohol as it is with alcohol.
The same happens with party drugs. Of course you love the world and yourself while your brain is getting showered in exceptionally high levels of dopamine/serotonine/whatever, and afterwards the sober world is comparatively boring and depressing. But you cannot live inside a perpetual high. It would become the norm, and end up boring too, like an everlasting orgasm would soon be a nuisance. We must go down to go up again, and chemical highs can help sometimes, but not anymore than videogames help killing time. The greatest highs are those that are difficult to achieve. But even then, the come-down is hard. Bronze-medal winners come home the happiest: Silver winners are devastated because they almost got there but made a terrible mistake; Gold winners have nothing else to go for anymore, and are disappointed that the applause and congratulations are over in a day after a life of dedication.
- if you drink alcohol, you probably need therapy
- you only think you come from a functional family because you drink alcohol
Also: there are many types of drinking alcohol! Drinking a glass every once in a while, Vs getting drunk every weekend, etc. I wish the author had been clearer on where they were coming from instead of lumping everyone together. She mentioned she was from London, where I hear the drinking culture can be heavier, closer to "go for a few drinks after work every day", which is useful context for a lot of the "side-effects" she experienced.
I'm also always generally perplexed by people's relationship to their culture. This person sounds like they're in a complicated web of push/pull with their culture and expectations from it. I've personally never really felt those; I make up my own mind whether to follow or not what my culture does. Someone drinking alcohol or not is just registered as a boring trait for me, like their eye colour or hair colour. It's so entirely inconsiquential. If someone pushes on that: I just don't care? But that's just me. And I can understand how it might be different in a heavier drinking culture.
Personally I don't love the narrative of the "pure" or "natural" way of living. Sure, alcohol is not a natural experience for which your body was designed, but so is caffeine to enhance your brain alertness, the amount and types of calories we eat every day, the use of internet and all the various devices, and many more behaviors. The point is, our lives are so irreparably artificial (and note: I'm not against the notion) that I would urge anybody to drop the "realness" argument as a reason to do anything.
Your perception of reality is given by chemicals in your brain. If you decide that alcohol is bad for your existence, then great for you, but I find it a bit condescending (and pointless) to say that those who use alcohol are "less honest" about their reality.
Hyperbole is not constructive. (But mental health counselling, on the NHS, is)
I am glad I grew up in a culture where alcohol was not normalized.
Isn't this similar to asking someone to try heroin? I know heroin is more addictive, but statistics argue Alcohol has more negative impact on society than any other drug [1]. By the way someone on reddit tried heroin just once and got addited to it [2].
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9ohdc/2_weeks_ago_i_t...
1) I saw that science states clearly that heroine's addition, harm for my body and for others, are lower than the ones of alcohol's, and...
2) that I believe in the validity of the studies, and also in the way they are been conducted so that they are relevant for my personal goal (trying heroine for an individual, rather than to be more relevant on a global/societal perspective), and...
3) I had somebody/someone who highly recommend the experience and explained clearly why (I don't have this desire atm, therefore I never looked into points 1 & 2),
...then yes, I'd probably try heroine if I was interested in such experience. However, I doubt that you would have all the three points I mentioned to check out - reason why is common sense not to try heroine.
However, I would extend the argument to other drugs quite easily: weed, LSD, ecstasy. All of these are great experience in their own and if not done too regularly, very low harm (surely less than many other bad behaviour considered normal in our society), and close to zero addiction. (NB. all of what said imply that you are doing well mentally and not prone to abuse - in which case stay away from any drug, alcohol included.)
But yeah, drugs are not all the same. I clearly stay away from some although I've tried a few - reading and learning about the different compounds helps removing wrong preconceptions given us from society (e.g. ecstasy is an hard drug and drinking alcohol is instead ok).
I am friends with plenty of people who drink, and I can't say it's been an issue with them that I don't drink. I'll fully admit this could be a difference in genders :(. But usually I just say something like "I've discovered I experience hangovers the next day no matter how little alcohol I drink" and people let it go.
I don't have to lie, and everyone collectively moves on. Every day I wake up after drinking I'm reminded of why I don't drink that often for sure. I do it about once a year, and not for any social pressure.
I stopped drinking and don’t experience a single one of these problems that she so confidently espouses you’ll face.
Not everything has to be so doom and gloom. My life is better than it has ever been. I take pride in the fact that I’m strong enough to avoid alcohol, but I certainly don’t gloat about it. If someone pressures me, I just explain the truth: alcohol truly and inexplicably fucks my stomach up.
End of story.
End of guilting me for drinks.
This just feels like a pity party thrown for either likes or for acknowledgment about how terrible a choice is that _you_ made.
I’m with you, I’ve felt great since I’ve stopped.
There’s a trick to it. I don’t discuss my prior habit and I don’t mention quitting.
I decline drinking when asked and I do not offer an explanation.
Let your no be no.
I haven’t experienced any of the social pariah results that the author experienced. YMMV.
society has a lot of "defaults" that we're suppose to accept. drinking is one. cars is another. eating meat is often one. Some people see it as an attack on their identity when you reject choices made by their society.
That is true, but my attitude towards them is "let them try". Just let them. That attitude alone makes most people not want to try.
Spot on. When I was a freshman in college, my then-girlfriend and I decided to become vegetarian. My parents responded with some puzzlement but were ultimately supportive. She, on the other hand, spent the evening crying with her parents, who saw it as a rejection of their lifestyle. I remember her father asking me with a mix of anger and frustration “but what do you EAT?!” and I pointed out that all the things on the plate that were not meat were, in fact, edible. In retrospect, this was the wrong approach (I was reflexively sarcastic in my youth), and I would now approach the question with a bit more compassion. But the experience helped me see why small things (eg, do you drink or not, do you own a gun or not, do you exercise or not, etc) can foment deep divisions among people.
And if anyone ever asks why I don't drink, I can just say "I don't see a need to" and people don't really pester me any more about it.
"I'm a vegan!".
Instead of just ordering something vegan.
Doesn't it suddenly sound 100x more obnoxious?
If you preach you will get a reaction. If you do your own thing, less so.
She also have social anxiety so believe me when I say she never preach anything and she never say she is vegetarian unless asked. Also she is very tolerant : I eat meat and she never ever said anything about it except of course when we deliberately talk about the topic together. She _prepares_ meat for our guests because she is afraid that they’ll complain.
And oh my, you just can’t imagine how many times she have to explain to others why she don’t eat meat. The first _years_, it happened every. single. time. Be it with friends, or with family, they always want to know, they always ask the _same_ questions and get the _same_ answers. I know this discussion by heart and we still get it. The « but you can’t have a balanced diet » (which is false and, since she is an adult, is intrusive), « but I couldn’t stop eating meat » (which nobody asked you to), « but why? », the « but plants also suffer ».
It’s always the same conversation, the same jokes. Honestly, I’m not vegetarian but I feel a lot of empathy for my wife : she’s just here like everyone to have a nice moment and somehow she’s forced to talk about always the same topic : what she eats. Sometimes this whole thing just makes me want to become vegetarian so that she doesn’t feel alone.
I personally know like 3 vegans and we've barbecued together even. Each eating their own thing. None of them preached to me. And neither did I. Maybe begged for a sample when their stuff looked particularly good. Especially the mushrooms. Oh! the mushrooms!
In this case maybe your friends are the obnoxious preachers. Perhaps they feel guilty for eating too much meat and she reminds them of it?
When I read the article, I couldn't help thinking that the author must be hanging around with alcoholics. The people desperate to convince themselves they don't have a problem are usually the ones that want to 'analyze' the non-drinkers decision-making.
Given that, if the question comes up, I make sure to keep it short and vague. My goal is to stop the conversation without offending the alcoholic asking.
When I am around people that can drink casually, there is never an issue. So another obvious fix is to find a healthier group to spend time with.
This is especially bizarre -
>[Friends] will split into two groups. Those who will find ways to spend time with you without alcohol and those who will keep pressuring you. The second group will split into two groups. Those who stop seeing you and those who start drinking less, because being with you made them realise their own drinking behaviour.
What??? This is so friggin weird! Wtf? Is alcohol consumption the ONLY thing that you ever had in common?
Nowadays I never drink alcohol in social situations but in my (much) younger years I would drink in social situations if given the chance and I didn't have to drive. I have exactly the same repertoire with exactly the same friends in both drinking/not drinking situations. I'm still (very!) happy to go to bars and drink water, I'll even offer to drive others. Some of my friends are big drinkers, some will have a single beer, some are teetotalers. It's just not a big part of our relationships. Nobody's ever commented on me not drinking or who is drinking or not drinking.
I stopped reading this weird shit after that.
This reminds me of something from highschool: One day a teacher had an unexpected absence, and didn't leave any sort of lesson plan for our substitute teacher. The substitute was somewhere around 22, give or take a year, so surprisingly close to our own ages compared to teachers we were used to, and somehow the whole class ended up with her talking about her life in those years between our ages, with plenty of questions from us.
One of the questions was about how much she drank, since she was legal age, and her answer surprised some of us: Once she turned 21, she almost completely stopped. At least for her all of the draw was in it being forbidden, and now that she could buy it whenever she wanted she just didn't care anymore.
Kinda stuck in the back of my mind and I never started.
I drink sometimes, most times I don't. The rare times I am asked why I don't drink I say "I don't feel like it" and everybody moves on with their life.
Maybe I'm lucky, but it's hard for me to understand why alcohol consumption or the self-imposed deprivation of it is such an important personality trait for so many.
I don't want to be a Judgey Judgerson but if this is why you're drinking, you probably have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.
Don't get me wrong, there are friendships that rely far too much on being drunk, at the bar/pub/club, etc, etc which get boring as life trumps on, but relying on alcohol to camouflage life indicates you need bigger changes than alcohol cessation.
Thankfully having the epilepsy as an angle excuses me from the barrage of people who ask why I don’t drink. There’s still the occasional pushers but they stigmatize themselves when everyone else realizes.
Not drinking does definitely hurt your social life though, in the same way that not smoking or not doing drugs does. It’s about the shared social activity of it all, as much as how it makes one feel. However if you’re just semi proactive in suggesting hanging out with people, and set your own social terms, people just naturally adapt to it.
Not drinking has never negatively affected me in the long run socially because of that.
The biggest issue has been dating because while I can explain away my medical condition professionally and socially in other scenarios, it’s difficult to do so when dating as disclosing a medical issue can implicitly be seen as a “defect” in a possible future mating partner for many people. Thankfully, again, just setting the social parameters yourself often just works, and the people who are put off by it aren’t great future partners to begin with.
The other thing I've done is focus on the quality of what I'm drinking, not the quantity. It's one thing to go and swill beer for a few hours in the pub (this is particularly an Australian and UK thing), but quite another to have a cocktail or two made by someone who actually cares about what they're doing.
Don't take this as a critique to the overall article, I actually liked the reflections.
I have significantly toned down my own drinking over the last decade (for… complicated reasons), but I am as steady a coffee drinker as ever. I just plain do not like how my brain operates when uncaffienated.
The most challenging aspect of this lifestyle change was dealing with acquaintances' assumptions. Many presumed I must have developed a serious problem to quit drinking entirely.
For context, my peer group and I began binge drinking in our early teens (around 14-15 years old) and gradually reduced our intake towards our late twenties.
I didn't have any great moments of enlightenment like the author but I believe it's a healthy challenge for one to do if alcohol has been a big part of your life growing up.
I've never been a regular drinker and honestly don't care what people think or say. I regularly refuse to participate in office socializing dinners and it's all good for me - as these usually turn into bad drinking stories and over reactions.
I've always felt great not drinking much and so should you if your like many of us.
Stay fit and healthy and surround yourself with similar people.
there is also a moral dimension to it where I just can't afford certain risks. while I probably take myself too seriously but to a great extent, I got sober because I developed a sense of low trust for my environment as the result of broader social changes and I'm of a demographic that can no longer afford moments of carelessness.
> When you lose friends, it’s because you’ll realise that without alcohol, they don’t have much in common with you.
I still get invited for drinking. I still join parties. I still act crazy. Just without the bad side effects.
Note: going to a dance party the whole night still gives you a hangover. But because you were active. Not because of the alcohol. It’s less extreme.
Dabbled with the devil's lettuce for over a decade before quitting cold turkey.
Don't recommend either. Sobriety and being straight edged is uncool but FMl it does give you clarity of mind.
Holy $DEITY. How much do you need to drink to get a 2 day hangover at 23?
I've been 23 and never managed. And I was drinking.
I stopped drinking mostly due to multi-day hangovers but people I know who drink MUCH more than I ever did experience mild or no hangovers. I get a mild hangover even if I only had a single beer. Caffeine doesn't effect me at all though.
From the well known "sweet == hangover" to more subtle stuff like different brands of the same kind of drink having a slightly different composition that agrees more or less with your liver.
Of course, if you get drunk every day, the above subtleties cease to matter. And even if you're a weekend warrior, you've got to take breaks or water your wine* or put more tonic water in your tonics if you want to do an all nighter.
* Yeah, I know, blasphemy.
This is why I think it's mostly genetic - it doesn't for me. Literally any and all alcohol gives me a hangover. Drinking water doesn't help me avoid them either. I've drank SO MUCH water to try to avoid hangovers, they always happen no matter.
Watering down your drinks so you ingest less alcohol, like they did in antiquity... yes.
This is all because I was working out and doing HIIT. Literally poison to do that .
My relationship with smoking is different though. I smoke on occasion but I crave it for the next day or two. If someone told me smoking was healthy, I would start today.
I strongly advise against getting into casual smoking.
Children do not have this problem, I suspect, because there are no expectations of “doing.” They just are who they are, especially at young ages. I wonder if the author tried instead to engage in a pursuit that she liked for itself (eg, for us hackers here, a makerspace) that she might make more friends. Because the pressure of “doing” something and “trying” to be friends would be off. All of my best friends from adulthood were made this way—-we bonded over a shared passion without actually trying to be friends.
Drinking was never normal for me, so I'm comfortable being uncomfortable. This means I don't for example feel the need to be dishonest in the ways she describes.
I quit because I couldn't drink much of anything without getting a headache. Still drink NA beer, since I'm a big beer fan. (Review: meh. But darker beers are more passable.)
My overall experience has been positive. I'm also older than the author of TFA, and though not wiser, when you're older no one gives a fuck what you do, and they don't give a fuck what you think. So a lot of these social problems go away.
Spend some time with addicts and the ones who choose to share advice instead of personal experience are often a long way from healing because they haven't built the courage to look inside themselves yet. They speak this way because they're scared.
She's obviously working through some things.
A private journal might work better than a public one, because then she could delve into many of the topics she went light on: her sexuality, her relationship with her therapist, her self-image.
Yet another thing she may be addicted to? Attention.
Talk therapy works for many types of disorders. Group therapy scales some but not all. Because certain personality disorders manifest as everyone in the group trying to one up each other.
There are huge swaths of blog and Facebook culture (and even academic publishing) that enable this. Best to avoid participating.