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Why I Don't Drink

neal.is

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Re: Why I Don't Drink

#61

Post by burntroots »

RogerL wrote: post #9
mjn wrote: post #6

This feels like a very "American" article [1], in the way it frames the discussion. The intro suggests the author has a policy of not drinking at all (or only every few months), but most of the bullet points only apply to why you shouldn't binge-drink. I did not find anything in this article that applied to normal drinking. If you drink a glass of wine with lunch, and one or two with dinner, as a typical southern Eur…

I was about to post the same thing. A glass of wine with dinner, for example, can enormously enhance the experience without any of the downsides that he mentions. Not that I care if people don't drink, but several of the arguments were pretty spurious.

for you. Not everybody reacts to alcohol the same way.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#62

Post by burntroots »

kelnos wrote: post #56
sheetjs wrote: post #7

> Almost everyone will at some point ask me why I don't drink, which is fair considering it's engrained into human society. There should be no need to explain why you don't drink. Period. There's nothing wrong with not drinking and there's nothing weird about not drinking. If people are asking with any sort of condescension, you are probably spending time with the wrong people.

Explain != justify. Not drinking is, for better or worse, fairly unusual (at least in some circles). It's natural to be curious when someone says they don't drink. As long as the questioner is asking out of curiosity and not pre-judgment, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Which is exactly why I respond with "I just don't." To which people usually shrug and move on. Every once in a while I get somebody who is curious or somebody who wants to be an asshole. With the former, I make a joke. With the latter, I change the subject.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#63

Post by kelnos »

burntroots wrote: post #62
kelnos wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain != justify. Not drinking is, for better or worse, fairly unusual (at least in some circles). It's natural to be curious when someone says they don't drink. As long as the questioner is asking out of curiosity and not pre-judgment, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Which is exactly why I respond with "I just don't." To which people usually shrug and move on. Every once in a while I get somebody who is curious or somebody who wants to be an asshole. With the former, I make a joke. With the latter, I change the subject.

That's fine; you've decided that you don't want to talk about it. Other people are fine with talking about it.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#64

Post by kylec »

mjn wrote: post #42
kylec wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not making an argument about nuanced tradeoffs, though. He's saying that he gets no benefit ("It makes me feel bleh", "Alcohol does not increase my enjoyment of activities") and that there are some drawbacks for him ("It dumbs you down", "It's expensive"). You might have different personal experiences with alcohol, but you can't deny the author his.

> You might have different personal experiences with alcohol, but you can't deny the author his. I can deny the author his unfounded generalizations, though. He's explaining why he doesn't like getting trashed, going out to a club and having a dozen drinks. All his bullet points are about that situation. Sure, I agree that is bad. It results in hangovers, feeling shitty, large expenditures of cash, and other such bad…

Not all the author's reasons have to with going out or party/club culture. Look no further than the first two points:

    - It makes me feel bleh.
    - Alcohol does not increase my enjoyment of activities.
Those points have nothing to do with binge drinking or party/club culture, and are sufficient justification for the author's preferences (Though I maintain that no justification is necessary at all). Everything else is just additional examples of drawbacks, and there's nothing wrong with them being specific to a specific kind of drinking.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#65

Post by [deleted] »

mjn wrote: post #42
kylec wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not making an argument about nuanced tradeoffs, though. He's saying that he gets no benefit ("It makes me feel bleh", "Alcohol does not increase my enjoyment of activities") and that there are some drawbacks for him ("It dumbs you down", "It's expensive"). You might have different personal experiences with alcohol, but you can't deny the author his.

> You might have different personal experiences with alcohol, but you can't deny the author his. I can deny the author his unfounded generalizations, though. He's explaining why he doesn't like getting trashed, going out to a club and having a dozen drinks. All his bullet points are about that situation. Sure, I agree that is bad. It results in hangovers, feeling shitty, large expenditures of cash, and other such bad…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#66

Post by tomasien »

joshlegs wrote: post #51
tomasien wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might use this comment to respond to every single person who uses the cost of alcohol as a reason not to drink saying "there are so many other things I'd rather buy.." LIKE WHAT? A PEN? That's a pen. You can never convince me that I should believe that pen is objectively more valuable than a night out treating friends. Forget it. If it's more valuable to YOU because you love pens and dislike drinking, fine, but thi…

It's all where you place your value at. Is that so hard to get? I like pens (yeah they're expensive pens). And folks like me obviously find value in things other than alcohol. Nobody's trying to say that drinking is worthless: it's just worthless to US. If you get enjoyment out of it, more power to you. I'm not sure why there's so much controversy about not liking the act of drinking :S :S

If you don't like drinking, why bring up the money? It's an irrelevant point, unless you're saying "I like drinking, but I like pens more so I choose to spend my money on pens" at which point I say "I respect that, but we're clearly not going to be friends". But if it's "I don't like drinking, btw I like pens so I spend the money I would spend drinking on pens" then it's not why you don't drink - it's what you do with your money since you don't like drinking. In which case we can be friends.

The way it's presented in this post is none of those, and seems more to me to be an attempt to make me feel silly for spending my money on "things I won't remember" (something that never happens to almost anyone when they drink). I don't feel silly at all for it, and my personal view of life makes me feel that placing value on physical things above experiences is extremely silly.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#68

Post by joshlegs »

tomasien wrote: post #66
joshlegs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all where you place your value at. Is that so hard to get? I like pens (yeah they're expensive pens). And folks like me obviously find value in things other than alcohol. Nobody's trying to say that drinking is worthless: it's just worthless to US. If you get enjoyment out of it, more power to you. I'm not sure why there's so much controversy about not liking the act of drinking :S :S

If you don't like drinking, why bring up the money? It's an irrelevant point, unless you're saying "I like drinking, but I like pens more so I choose to spend my money on pens" at which point I say "I respect that, but we're clearly not going to be friends". But if it's "I don't like drinking, btw I like pens so I spend the money I would spend drinking on pens" then it's not why you don't drink - it's what you do wit…

> The way it's presented in this post is none of those, and seems more to me to be an attempt to make me feel silly for spending my money on "things I won't remember"

I didn't get that at all out of it, and not sure why you did. I read it as "I get this question a lot, and I'm just ready to vent a little. So this is why I don't drink." Don't read into something that's not there! :) I feel like a lot of the people who don't like this article have read it as a criticism of their decision to drink, which it doesn't seem at all to be.

Re: Why I Don't Drink

#69

Post by lyudmil »

kelnos wrote: post #49
mjn wrote: post #6

This feels like a very "American" article [1], in the way it frames the discussion. The intro suggests the author has a policy of not drinking at all (or only every few months), but most of the bullet points only apply to why you shouldn't binge-drink. I did not find anything in this article that applied to normal drinking. If you drink a glass of wine with lunch, and one or two with dinner, as a typical southern Eur…

I (an American) drink fairly often, and occasionally to excess. I have a fairly high tolerance, so usually I won't notice much of an effect until I'm drinking at a rate of greater than 2 drinks per hour, or, if I'm drinking slower than that, until I've had at 7+ drinks. So it's not unusual for me to go out with some friends, have 5-7 drinks, and not "get drunk", only developing a slight buzz at most. As long as I'm m…

I think the OP saw a lack of nuance in the argument and explaining was speculating about where that comes from. I don't think anyone suggested that the European way is better. In fact, your reading of the OP's argument is very "American" because you talk about "European" as if it's a thing. Drinking culture in Southern Europe is very different from drinking culture in Central Europe. Eastern Europe is another thing altogether. Hell, even the way Spaniards drink is vastly different from the way Italians do. Also, in general Europeans get really drunk occasionally, just like you do, so even if there was a "European" way of drinking it would include your behavior.

Basically, I think you're reading into it too much. I don't think the OP implied what you think he or she did.

>> I have noticed that, as I get older, I need to hydrate more and more to avoid a headache afterward. Annoying.

Drinking water only helps relieve one of the causes of a hangover (dehydration). There are many many others, so it may not be the amount of water you need to change, but your choice of drinks (clear, distilled beverages generally contain less congeners, which are one of the main causes of hangovers).

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