Same here, though I grew up as a Mormon so it wasn't as much my own personal choice as it was a religious conviction. I'm an atheist now, so it is a personal choice now. I find it can be really enjoyable to be "the sober friend" at group outings—being the only one with my wits about me while my friends get super relaxed, outgoing, and nonsensical all of a sudden is pretty funny.

I don't think there's anything evil about drinking, I've just gotten this far in my life without it and figure "heck, might as well go for broke" at this point. I do believe that alcohol advertisements on TV and radio should be banned like tobacco ads were, though. The fact that I have been conditioned by ads since I was a kid to think that beer is delicious and harmless is unnerving to me.

Ideally, drinking ought to be a personal choice to exchange risk for pleasure. This only holds true when drinking is done responsibly, though. Irresponsible drinking can ruin lives, relationships, and hurt or kill people. Budweiser and Heineken may be required to say "drink responsibly" at the end of all their ads, but it's extremely obvious they don't actually care. At the end of the day, they make more money off alcoholics than responsible drinkers, so they and their marketing cannot be trusted. The incentives are too misaligned.

What’s your experience been? I also have never drunken, and really don’t plan on it.

My mistake was avoiding parties and socialization in college along with drinking.

Well, I think it helped me strengthen my will power, that’s for sure.

Also watching people around you get drunk a couple of times early on was quite the turn off. It’s actually rather sad.

Often I am considered to ‘have excellent memory’ compared to my peers (I am 44 now).

There was no religious motivation to start and even though I was Buddhist for a few years I consider myself Atheist now. It was just an early aversion towards the taste and then a heightened sense of peer pressure that didn’t sit well with me. After that it became a game of ‘let’s see how long I can keep it up’. Now it’s second nature - but I do notice there is a deep seated aversion towards alcohol and probably a side effect of conditioning myself against it. That probably goes with all drugs (I don’t take any)

And finally yes, society is very hostile towards sobriety. Less so in the US. People always feel embarrassed and defensive, interestingly enough.

It also turns out to be a great example to people who struggle with alcohol and children, so I am rather happy having stayed away from the rat poison ;-)

Exactly why I didn’t drink. The more my peers tried to pressure me into it, the less I wanted to try it. It was like refusing to join some weird cult.

interesting === awful?

that's how it looks to me when non-drinkers have to explain every time themselves

If you really don’t want to explain, fill a beer bottle with water and drink that all night. I frequently have one or two beers then do this for the rest of a party, and feel great the next day.

I learned to just carry around a half-empty bottle if I was at a party. As long as you had something in your hand, it wasn't a topic.

My personal problem is that I can't help drinking that bottle in the lapses between conversation or whatever. So filling it with water is perfect for me.

Same. Drinking whatever is in my hands is almost a tic. Filling it with water is an excellent idea!

Don’t mind that at all. It’s fascinating to see how people react to one’s explanation. Very polite people will actually ask if I am okay if they drink around me which of course is no issue whatsoever.

I've rarely had to say more than "no thank you". It's never been awful.

On the plus side, per-capita alcohol consumption does seem to be on the decline in many countries over the past few decades [1]. So hopefully in the future it will be less difficult for others to make a similar choice.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-alcohol-1890?t...