I wouldn't call myself a teetotaler, but I avoid alcohol for the most part. I'm not against it or anything, though getting drunk has always struck me as really stupid and pointless. I never understood the appeal. That's not why I avoid alcohol, though. I just can't stand the taste. It's like a mixture of earwax and hydrochloric acid. It tastes like poison.
I've not spent a lot of time around drunkards, but I've encountered lots of pressure from social drinkers to try things. I oblige them. I don't need to be all stonewall about it. I'll try a sip of whatever they make me and tell them I don't like it. They get all excited when they see me take that sip, and then act all confused and crestfallen when I tell them all I could taste was alcohol and it was putrid. Like others in this thread, I don't understand why drinkers get so worked up about non-drinkers. It really seems like they have some emotional investment in the issue.
There are two exceptions. I used to hate coffee, too. It tastes like chalk and ashes. Then my wife put some Baileys in a cup of coffee for me. That turned me right around. Now I regret getting into it, because I've become dependent. Somehow I've grown to love these two vile things when put together, but I'm sick of being addicted. There's no point in the foreseeable future where I'll have the opportunity to be groggy and worthless for a couple weeks to break that, but I plan on it as soon as one arises. The second exception, is I will have a really weak drink for my wife once in a while on major social occassions. She gets a kick out of it, and I'm willing to do that for her.
I avoid soda, too, but only for health purposes. That stuff is one of the biggest causes of health problems today. I will have a soda once in a while when I'm at a friend's house or a restaurant, but that's it.
So basically I drink 2 or 3 potions of coffee/sugar/irish cream/piracetam a day, and then ice mountain water... because ice mountain is the only bottled water company I know of that uses reverse osmosis filtering, which I think is the only filtering method that removes flouride.
I'm wary of my kids, though. They've both managed to get their hands on alcoholic drinks and promptly chugged them down. I'm amazed at that, because I seriously felt like throwing up every time my dad let me try a sip of beer as a kid. My 2 year old got his hands on a glass of whiskey that a friend of ours left on the table, and he drank the whole thing straight down. Holy shit. I tried a sip of it and wanted to die. I'm really going to have to be careful about cultivating the right attitude towards alcohol with them, which will be tough when I'm not a drinker and don't understand the appeal.
Interesting note:
I am the only person I've ever met IRL that doesn't like alcohol. If not for the internet, I would think I'm the only one. Indiana is pretty drink crazed in general.
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Topic: Teetotalism (Read 8161 times)