I started drinking (about once a week) two years ago.
It's moderately nice from time to time, but I also think the decision to avoid it for twenty years of adulthood was a good one - I established who I am and what my coping mechanisms are for stress, and now it's a nice little social adjunct.
My advice: if you're even the least bit undecided about drinking, don't do it. You can always give it a shot later. Or perhaps you'll never drink; that's great too.
Most of my interactions with other people involved getting obliterated so I was never able to really by myself around other people.
First become a real person and develop a healthy coping mechanism for stress. THEN, maybe, think about getting your drink on.
If you drink too early in life and too often you might become a complete social retard like I did.
There is a bit of writing in the wonderfully titled "Modern Drunkard" magazine that puts it well, "The Zen of Drinking Alone" - http://www.drunkard.com/issues/03_03/03-03_zen_drinking_alon...
I would say that drinking early does not on the whole make someone a social retard, given the patterns of alcohol consumption among the communities generally deemed to be sociable, but two of the most useful things I ever learned was how to have a good night in a pub while sober and how to have a good night on my own while drunk.
I like drinking, and brewing, and would never give it up; that said, it's crazy to me that others find it so far outlandish that someone would want to abstain. It's kind of like having kids: there are great reasons to want them, and great reasons to not want them. It shouldn't be hard to appreciate both perspectives.
If you're the personality type where that's hard, then please stop drinking immediately. You'll just have to accept that. I've had too many friends in their 30s having to rebuild their lives after alcohol problems.
Just a few days ago I was muttering to myself about why I couldn't just stop caring about the opinion of an essentially meaningless person, and enjoy the excellent things around me. The moment I had a beer, I stopped worrying about them, and got on with it. The understanding that I had previously been an idiot outlasted the mild inebriation.
I will be exploring why one drink was so remarkably helpful here. In the meantime, it was helpful, and I would have been in a healthier mindset if I had drunk it sooner.
Many things -- alcohol, caffeine, food, exercise, work, video games, reading -- affect how we think and feel. We can use those effects for good and bad. The trick is to understand those effects, get the good, and avoid the bad.
Well, no, I don't. But its an unavoidable force that has and will continue to dictate almost every waking moment of my life.
Switching from one broadly socially acceptable state (drinking socially) to another broadly socially acceptable state (never drinking) does not change the level to which society dictates how you live your life. The only thing that changes is that your sobriety may be a curiosity for people that engage in drinking.
It depends. Did you switch because society told you to? You can drink if you want, or not. I'm just saying, if you drink are you doing it because everyone else is doing it or because you want to for good reason?
I made a choice to not drink, and it was based on practical concerns. I decided the negatives outweighed the positives in my case. Simple as that.
So if someone talks to you about dangers of such things as marijuana while sipping wine or beer - you're talking to either dangerously ignorant or dangerously dull person.
Or maybe you're talking to someone smart enough to realize that just because a bunch of things are in the same category, that doesn't make them equivalent.
In many US states, including the ones most frequented by HN's target demographic (CA, WA, OR, CO, etc.), being a legal user is much less of a pain than being an illegal user (and you get much better choice in goods too!)
That may be true but is irrelevant. The original claim was that someone talking about the dangers of marijuana while drinking is an idiot.
My claim is that talking about one says nothing about their knowledge of the other since they are different things. I can talk about the dangers of bear attacks while driving a car. I can talk about the dangers of flying while using a ladder.
That doesn't make me a hypocrite, it just means I'm not spending every waking moment sorting my activities and discussion points by aggregate danger level.
Not that I'm saying you're any of those things, mind you, but your analogy was fairly flawed. :)
Back to the topic, though I'd love to spider on the drugs-in-society vein, I'm glad OP documented the experience. Have a feeling it will make me much more conscience of the assisted wind-down when I grab a beer after work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug A drug is a substance which may have medicinal, intoxicating, performance enhancing or other effects when taken or put into a human body or the body of another animal and is not considered a food or exclusively a food.
It's weird, you could be hanging with a group of people who are the most socially liberal, equality-seeking types on the planet and they find out you don't drink alcohol and it's OH. MY. GOD. and suddenly they're almost as intolerant as those they oppose.
That does not mean that people should be teetotalers (in the end, only a minority of drinkers is thus affected, though a scarily sizable one); but it is important to understand that alcohol abuse is both frequent and dangerous regardless.
This didn't sound right to me, so I did some digging and found:
"In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States."
http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...
I couldn't find any data on non-fatal car accidents, but my intuition says that it would be a smaller proportion (i.e. alcohol-related accidents are more likely to be fatal).
Can you share your sources?
It's a nervous system depressant. This does not mean it makes you emotionally depressed.
It is extrememly unlikely alcohol is involved in the majority of car accidents. Please post a source.
Depressants usually have calming effects (hence the colloquialism "downers"); relaxation and removal of inhibitions are common effects (see also the OP about using drinks to wind down from stress). I don't see how that is at odds with what I wrote.
> It is extrememly unlikely alcohol is involved in the majority of car accidents. Please post a source.
You're correct, I misremembered that. The study (a) looked at drivers killed in accidents, and (b) it was alcohol or drugs. Alcohol was involved in only 40.2% of these fatalities.
[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2012....
If my dad was any example to go by then I think this is the right decision for me.
edit -- I'm pretty sure your second sentence appeared after I commented. In any event, I don't mean to put you out. Just curious.
I'm also OK with recreational drug use for the most part. You're free to do whatever you please on your own time, as long as it doesn't affect me. I don't feel any better than someone because I don't drink and they do, that would be silly. That's just about everyone.
The reason it doesn't outright kill you is an enormous amount of evolution to occasionally consume "somewhat overripe fruit". That doesn't mean you're evolved to chug grain alcohol like water, or get drunk every night like the goof in the article, it just means your body is quite very well used to handling a bit of fermented grapes once in awhile.
Hacking one's body, is like eating non-human food like grains or potatoes or beans or artificial sweeteners / colors / flavors.
The author didn't say he gets drunk every night, he said he drinks every night.
I have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner most nights. I get drunk (i.e. have more than one drink, feel drunk, feel worse the next morning) with a much lower frequency.
I also have a glass of wine that goes with some meals, but I don't cook "chicken in wine" every single day. Wine doesn't go well with everything. When I'm eating something unhealthy like pizza, well, you gotta have beer with pizza, but I don't eat bad food every day, so... Or even stuff in between good and bad, I had saki and sushi last weekend, close enough to natural human food to not bother me occasionally, but not eating/drinking that every day.
Of course, it's Wikipedia, so who knows if it's true ... but amazing nonetheless.
I've never had more than 1 drink in a day and usually only drink once per month out to eat when someone else is driving.
Alcoholism is scary for most of us that have seen it up close.
I'm not sure what you got out of this article that confirms your aversion to this drug. Care to elaborate?
People would look like you have 2 heads if you said you take stimulant drugs daily and have withdrawal without it, but coffee is incredibly popular.
Sometimes what you don't do is incredibly important.
I don't look down on anyone who drinks, as long as they're not getting blasted just for the sake of it. Okay...maybe I judge you if you drink cheap beer...but only in good fun!
I'm 22, and I tried wine on my own terms at a wine tasting solo the other day; I felt like I wanted to vomit. Holy crap!
I have my hobbies, and my friends, I just don't drink. Usually 'no thanks' is enough, I've found that even around new people I don't have to say 'I don't drink/smoke' mostly because I don't want to seem pretentious or judgemental. My hobbies include heavy lifting, green tea, and generally eating really healthy; barring something catastrophic, I think it'll pay off.
I'm guessing you never been close to an alcoholic. It's a disease. Specifically it's an addictive illness. Saying it's just a little self control trivializes that it's an addiction.
Well, of course. You're bucking a social norm that is generally enjoyable in and of itself, has a handful of well known reasons for abstaining, and also carries a low amount of baggage that would prevent open discussion of your reasoning. What do you expect?
I too, think alcohol is a drug with a poor value proposition. At least for me. The 'high' is rubbish, and the come down is painful.
I am also part of a minority in this respect in my culture.