As if you need even more of a reason to think I’m odd, I don’t drink.
I don’t like the taste, I don’t like how I feel when I drink and the only ways alcohol will (generally) ever enter my body is:
- if I have a cut and need to disinfect it
- if it gets added to food to give flavour
- if I am obligated to toast someone (with a glass of champagne for instance)
- if I am curious and just want to taste this particular wine to see if I can tell the difference between other wines I’ve tasted (just a sip, not a gulp)
Otherwise, I refuse all offerings of alcohol, and half a cup is still too much for me to drink.
Lots of people get really uncomfortable when I say I don’t drink. It’s almost as though I am not part of the group, or the “team” if I don’t drink.
Or they think I’m a religious nut who treats her body like a temple and/or I have a personal problem with drinking that I want to start lecturing everyone on.
It’s just something that is foreign to them because.. EVERYONE likes to drink!
It’s even worse when I go to France. 😛
That whole country is full of wine-lovers.
No one can understand why I don’t drink wine, and BF’s cousin makes it his personal mission in good humour, to try coax get me to drink by telling me things like:
You are being awfully rude to the host if you don’t drink at least a bottle by yourself.
He never pushes me but he teases me about it.
In the past, I just made up socially-acceptable excuses like:
- I am on medication
- I need to drive
- I’m allergic
Lately however, I’ve just been saying the truth: I don’t like it.
It kind of surprises people.
There’s not much else to say to that other than: “Oh.”
…but the only difference is now I’m treated like pariah because I’m the oddball who just doesn’t like the way alcohol tastes.
They might also think I’m just an uppity, rude snob.
*shrug* So be it.
I’m actually tired of making up fake medications and reasons.
Sooner or later, a liar always gets caught.
It’s better to be honest about something as banal as not liking alcohol than to lie about it. I don’t want people to think I’m a liar for everything over something as stupid as not wanting to drink.
The only part that could hurt me career-wise, is that clients like to go out and drink. There was a monthly bar hop that happened at a client I was at once, among all the workers, and I’d always decline.
I was pulled aside after a few refusals and told that I was not being a ‘team player’ because I wouldn’t go out to drink until 2 a.m. in the morning, and come in to work red-eyed and hungover.
That rather shocked me at the time because I thought it would be more professional to NOT get a hangover at work the next day, and to be productive to earn my keep.
Or am I wrong?
Anyway I learned my lesson. Turns out, drinking is also a social lubricant.
If you drink, you’re in. If you don’t… you’re on the outs.
Next time I encounter this kind of corporate culture, I’ll go on occasion and order a fake Rum and Coke (just the Coke), and then make up some lie about having to drive home.
