Yashar Ali wonders why the pressure to drink alcohol extends way beyond adolescence.
I don’t like to drink. I don’t like the taste of alcohol. And, outside of a handful of memorable, drinking stories that my friends and I repeatedly share with each other, I don’t get drunk and I don’t like to get drunk. I also don’t like the loss of time that comes with a hangover and the loss of control that comes with drinking.
And it’s not because I have a drinking problem. I never have. I just don’t like drinking alcohol, it’s simply not part of my life.
Even though I am in my early 30s, I still face this incredible pressure–peer pressure–to drink. I am talking about the kind of pressure we’re reminded of when we think of teenagers, college students, or those in their early twenties, and how our friends, during this phase of our lives, were pushing us to drink.
Although we often think peer pressure in drinking is tied to a younger more footloose group, to twenty-somethings who are still finding themselves, I’ve discovered through my own experience and through learning about the experiences of my readers, that age and professional status really plays no role in whether someone will pressure or be pressured. Men and women in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are doing the pressuring.
It seems to me that social pressure to drink is more a cultural issue than an age issue.
I even have friends who claim they could never be in relationship with a person who doesn’t drink. Because that’s what every solid relationship is built on: consumption of alcohol.
In (Western) adult social culture, alcohol is a primary and important component of being part of a group, where people who are not interested in alcohol or dislike the taste, are subject to pressure to drink. They, in turn, are forced to find or create what are deemed “legitimate reasons” for not joining in with the drinking. Failure to drink creates a barrier between the drinkers and those people, who, for various reasons, choose not to drink alcohol.
Why are we judging and pressuring people who don’t drink? And why do we make them justify or explain their reasons for refusing alcohol?
Alcohol (and drinking) is a part of the wide range of social pressures in our culture, and it’s part of the fabric of many people’s lives. However, it’s not an insignificant thing to ask and pressure someone else to drink.
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I get that alcohol helps people loosen up in social settings, but it creates a barrier between people who choose to drink and people who don’t. And this barrier sets the tone for who talks to and who hangs out with whom. It’s as if alcohol is the social glue that keeps us together ,and if we don’t have it and are faced with some people who drink and some people who don’t, things seem to get off-balance and uncomfortable.
The idea of someone who doesn’t drink is so foreign to some people that we sometimes falsely assume that the person who is not drinking has a past of alcohol abuse or we force these non-drinkers to constantly explain themselves.
Mindy, a reader from Chicago in her early 30s, often deals with new friends or colleagues who assume she was an alcoholic or member of A.A. because she chooses not to drink.
So when it comes to socializing, do we only have two categories for people: sober alcoholic or drinker? There are so many people that fall in between these two categories; they’re not really sober, but they’re also not active drinkers.
A friend of mine who works in corporate advertising commented on the pressure she feels when ordering a glass of water or lemonade at a restaurant with colleagues and everyone else is ordering wine or a cocktail: “I’m made to feel like I’m not an adult.”
Susie, a 38 year-old paralegal found herself being excluded from activities at work, because she barely drank.
“You won’t want to come out tonight because you don’t drink,” she would hear from her co-workers in an almost sympathetic tone. (She would always be included in activities that didn’t include heavy drinking.)
“I can still have a good time without drinking. It’s not like I’m standing there with my arms crossed at a bar, frowning. I just wonder if they feel judged if I am not doing shots with them and that’s why I’m not being included.”
For Susie and other people in her situation, the social interaction between colleagues, the same interaction that often aides people in their careers, is something that is stripped from her. Unless she’s willing to drink to intoxication, people just don’t feel comfortable having her around, and so Susie misses out on one part of professional networking.
My friend Erin, who is in her late 30s, found her second pregnancy to be the saving grace, in terms of alleviating the pressure that comes with drinking: “I find it a relief now that I’m visibly six months pregnant, because I can point to my belly and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t!’”
“It will be a drag when I have to go back to explaining to people, ‘No really, I just don’t like it.’”
Having an excuse, whether it’s an illness or pregnancy, seems to offer a reprieve to those who don’t want to drink. But it still doesn’t doesn’t make sense to me. I understand (but don’t accept) the social pressure to drink during high school and college-age years, but why are adults so obsessed with their friends, family, and colleagues drinking?
And why do there seem to be real, social consequences for people who don’t care to learn the difference between a Chardonnay and a Cabernet?
Originally appeared at The Current Conscience.
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photo by andreasl / flickr
About Yashar Ali
I think drinkers that get defensive even if the non-drinker didn’t say anything, have some issues on their own.
I see the same thing happening about food: I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t comment other people choices (hey, it’s a free world).
When “meat-eaters” get to know I’m vegetarian, they ask about it and I just say “Yes”. Then they usually become all apologetic and somehow uneasy… and I still didn’t say anything.
I think they (unconsciously) feel killing a living creature is somehow “wrong” (most of them wouldn’t kill it themselves, after all). Having someone else not doing the same, in a way it breaks the “social agreement” about “killing for eating is ok” (you know, “herd mentality”: if everybody’s doing it, then it’s ok).
They feel guilty, I couldn’t explain their behaviour differently.
From the story and many of the comments above, it looks the same with alcohol: some drinkers feel somehow shameful and guilty about it, and someone not doing the same “mirrors” their discomfort. That’s why they push so hard… they can’t stand that “mirror” (even if silent and minding his business).
Think about a bunch of bullies: if one of them stopped and said “I don’t want to bully this kid anymore”, all the others would become uneasy, aggressive or pushing towards the “odd one”; his choice would make them feel self-conscious about their behaviour.
OTOH, a drinker who’s comfortable with his own drinking (like the people @wellokaythen is hanging with), don’t mind at all about non-drinkers.
I wonder if it’s a similar dynamic to how devout believers react to the presence of an atheist. “What do you mean, you don’t do what me and all my friends do? Are you CRITICIZING us?”
Interesting point. It does seem that for some things, simply not joining in is perceived as an attack on that activity or belief.
I don’t buy it.
I do drink, never excessively, but there have also been times when I have gone off alcohol. For many years I gave up alcohol for Lent. I would still go off to the pub with friends and colleagues and when asked what I was drinking, my reply was orange juice. Sometimes they would ask “are you sure?” but nobody ever pressured me or made me feel unwelcome, and nobody ever felt that my abstinence was an attack on them.
One year Lent coincided with the start of rugby season, and I declined to participate in a team drinking contest. Again, I was pressed once, and then the issue was dropped and never came up again. It was the same at work related drinks functions, friends birthdays, and anywhere else alcohol was consumed. There is another event that I regularly attend where I prefer to keep an alcohol free head, and people who know me through that think I don’t drink at all.
In all these cases, nobody cared or thought any less of me because I didn’t drink.
I buy it. I’m a professional woman in my 30′s, and I experience social pressure to drink. Having been through all the reasons why I don’t enjoy alcohol and choose not to drink, I’ve found a socially acceptable excuse: my mom is an alcoholic. That’s not the primary reason I choose not to drink, but it does make people quit pressuring me and arguing that I’ll like it if only a try a ___. “I don’t like it” is not considered a good reason, nor is “it interacts with my medications”, and it does put a social barrier up between me and the people around me.
I’ve felt this pressure before in the poetry community that I move in. Nothing too severe.
The funny part is that my life has been… well, kind of crazy. Anyone who’s known me for more than six months has heard some of my truly insane stories re: my activism, and they realize that heroic drinking stories just don’t match up.
Thank you for writing this!!! I don’t like to drink, either. As a grad student in cell biology, I find alcohol culture a very frustrating part of both university and science life. Most events involve alcohol, and it’s always a part of the evening events at conferences. Sometimes there are no options other than water for non-drinkers. I’ve definitely had someone ask me if I had been an alcoholic in the past, and plenty of other people have wanted to know why I don’t drink. Why should it be any of their business?
I went to college on a dry Christian campus, but I personally don’t have a problem with drinking alcohol for any faith reasons (there is a story about Jesus turning water into wine, after all). But even now that I’m in grad school, I just don’t enjoy the taste of alcohol and I don’t want to drink for health reasons–I guess that’s what studies in DNA damage & repair and epigenetics can do to some of us scientists! I also don’t want to deal with headaches, saying things I might regret (which I already do enough of as it is), having reduced alertness when I’m trying to get home by public transport and walking in the dark when it’s late, etc.
Fortunately, most of my friends have become more understanding, and I’ve also made it a point to serve alcohol to those who want it at my place when I host social gatherings so that no one will assume I’m a judgy non-drinker.