Why is being sober looked down on?

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Glad to hear you like where you live and that you rarely get hassled anymore.

However, should you ever need to move back to the city for whatever reason, hopefully you'll then be better able to find compatible people.

People drink alcohol for one of two reasons: to enhance one's happiness (more common for NTs) or to drown out one's misery (more common for aspies). Whether they're happy enough as it is, but they want more happiness, or their misery is too much to bear, and they want to drown it out with alcohol, both reasons are equally valid. I always drank for the latter reason, since I was 12, mind you.

So when someone chooses not to drink without having a concrete reason, it gives them a vibe of unearned privilege. Namely, their level is happiness is so high, and their level of misery is almost zero, that they literally DON'T NEED to drink. (This doesn't apply to people who don't really have a choice, like not wanting alcohol to interact with their antidepressants, being gun-shy about drinking after seeing alcoholic family members, or practicing a faith like Islam or Mormonism.) At the same time, they're not different from the drinkers around them: that is, similar income level, lifestyle, overall health, and demographic. So, this can provoke feelings of suspicion and resentment: "What's this person doing differently than me, that he/she doesn't need to drink, while not telling me about it?" Hence, looking down on sober-by-choice people. It stems from suspicion and resentment, not overt dislike.

And on a personal note, all sober-by-choice people I ever knew were snooty, self-righteous, overprivileged jerks. Just to clarify, not all jerks I knew were sober, but all sober people I knew jerks. Who all basically coasted through life without having to really work hard for anything.

I never drink and have never been drunk in my life. But I don't think I'm snooty though, quite the opposite actually. I just don't like the thought of not being in control of my actions, or the after effects of drinking (hangovers).
I used to suffer a great deal of depression but I still never drank.

An NT once told me that a lot of people drink alcohol in a clubhouse environment because clubs are actually suited for being drunk. She's a rather extroverted party animal, but she said that one time when she had to be the designated driver she didn't enjoy the clubbing half as much as she does when drinking. She said it was too overwhelming and she wanted to leave sooner, while all her drunk friends were enjoying themselves and oblivious.

I don't drink for three reasons:

1) My mother did a good job of instilling in me a fear of the possibility of getting addicted to alcohol and other mind-altering substances. My mother's fear, in turn, stemmed from her experience of (a) her father dying young due to alcohol-related liver damage and (b) her brother having a generally messed-up life due to alcoholism.

2) I don't like the smell, or the taste, of alcoholic beverages. I also can't stand the feel of fizzy drinks, including even soda.

3) I don't like the idea of consuming a substance that increases the likelihood of me saying things I shouldn't.

My mother would most likely be classified as an alcoholic. Her family drinks a lot in a "fun-party-celebrate-be extroverted-laugh and dance a lot" type of way. It was always a turn off for me. I felt intimidated by their behaviour because I was ceaselessly introverted and mute. I would hide from them and they thought I was a party-pooper. I was kind of shunned by them all for my reaction. To be honest, it was quite obvious that I was shunned. I was always seen as an outcast even at age 5 or 6 when I was too young to drink, but old enough to show my displeasure with their party behaviour. I associated that feeling of "not being good enough" with the fact they would drink and have a good time, and judge me for being so intimidated.

Then I also dated an alcoholic / addict who stole from me and my children. He also abused his own kids, emotionally.

My best friend is an alcoholic. When I visit him he can drink an entire case of beer in a day. Then he forgets to prepare meals or he passes out early in the evening, snoring. I love the guy but it's hard to watch. He's even driven the car drunk before. Now I refuse to go in his car.

I drink a bit sometimes, with moderation, but always on my own terms.

I've seen too much of the damage it can cause for others - emotionally, physically, and financially.

That's not been my life, everything I have I had to work for, and much was stolen or finagled away from me by those I trusted, while I was drinking and smoking pot. Sure, I was well-liked, handing over my paycheck to a NT liar. Instant popularity.

I'm not and never will be popular, drinking or not-drinking won't change that a whit, except I feel better and can know God if I choose to, if I am sober. I don't care what the drunks think about me. I reckon you're right they do resent non-drinkers. My response is fine, that's kind of my baseline assumption about people anyway.

Maybe because,

https://www.sidehustlenation.com/the-bu ... bs-theory/


https://www.roliedema.com/crabs-in-a-bucket.html

Well now you've net one who's not having a great life and you've just made me feel even more miserable so thanks for that.

This was similar to my own experience. My parents were in their late 30's when they had me, like I am now. That's the age when you still want to party, albeit in a more low-key manner than, say, a college student. So I'd see these dinner parties, with everyone but me drinking. I was usually the only child present, unless one or more other parents brought their child too. Which meant these parties were usually boring for me.

The adults looked SO HAPPY every time. They'd laugh at anything and everything, and often at my expense. Like, the guests would laugh uproariously when my parents yelled at me in front of them. Also, there was always alcohol in my home, and I saw my parents drink to relax after work. At the same time, I never saw them look and feel miserable. Their seemed to experience only two emotions: happiness and anger (the latter usually directed at me).

So, I put two and two together, and figured out that alcohol was the reason why the adults in my life never seemed to feel any unhappiness. I tried my parents' whiskey for the first time when I was 12, after a quack therapy session left me feeling suicidally depressed. (I took a big swig out of the bottle, and replaced it with water.) That one swig of whiskey lifted my mood faster than anything else I ever tried. I wanted to sing and dance! Which I refrained from, so my parents don't suspect anything.

That experience forever clinched the connection between alcohol and happiness in my mind. I've been drinking ever since. Usually by sneaking it or by purchasing crappy-tasting cooking wine, which isn't age-restricted in my state. Once I became old enough to buy alcohol for myself, I started drinking ever more. In fact, during my state's Election Infection quarantine, I've gone through many bottles of liquor just to keep myself out of depression.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 18 Mar 2021, 5:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, that's pretty terrible, unless you want CIRHOSIS OF THE LIVER on your death certificate and someone (or no one) cleaning after your uncontrolled poops you might want to rethink your parents' terrible coping strategy. Drinking makes as much sense as hitting yourself on the head with a hammer.

It ain't perfect, but it works well enough for me. I lost the ability to care. My philosophy is "laugh now, cry later".

Me too.

Not sure if it's a choice for me or not.

1 I'm on anxiety medication so all this talk about 'privilege' and 'place of happiness' makes no sense to me

2 I have had close-to-family-members become abusive on alcohol while abusing it:
A - My paternal grandfather. He was every kind of abusive to my dad's family. My dad cut him out of his life as an adult so I never met him. He was an alcoholic as well as a bunch of nasty things towards his children.
B - My stepsister. She went from loving mother to drug addicted, alcohol addicted abusive mother and back again. The thing that changed her was either the hard drugs and/or the alcohol.
C - My neighbour. Yes I know for privileged people that sounds an absolute joke. But I lived in a very thin walled flat, he had to pass my bedroom to reach his own flat, he could hear everything I was doing and he used to yell abuse through the walls as well as low level physical abuse. I was 12-14, he was 50 something.

3 I hate feeling out of control. It really scares me. My sensory overload increases when drunk. My social defences/boundaries go down. At the risk of being snooty, I see myself as my mind and when I'm drunk I lose control of myself. I cannot mask when drunk and that used to bother me. Every time I've felt comfortable and been drunk has not been in public: it has been when I was surrounded only by people I knew to be 100% safe.

4 I have a ridiculously addictive personality which I try to (yes I know this sounds snooty) channel into healthy stuff instead but even so: I'm up on pinterest for hours tagging pins. I don't want to bring this level of addictive personality to a physically addicting substance.

5 Yes I am snooty enough to judge people who by choice take over my town centre (why not stay in their own city?!) ruining experiences for shoppers/diners/museum attendees at 1pm-3pm on a Saturday afternoon. I think that alcohol drinking esp at that binge level ought to start at 5pm or later. Town is scary to go into on a Saturday afternoon due to the noisy stag and hen parties. When I hear gangs of people shouting it increastes my anxiety.

I hardly drink at all. I hate the times when I have been tipsy because for me, I already experience difficulty with spacial awareness and balance when I am in a partial shutdown, so it is a negative experience to be drunk where I just sit on the ground and don't want to move until I am sober, and I end up soo dissapointed with myself, so on the rare occasions that I drink an alcoholic drink, I do not have that much.

I also pass out if I go sick and need rescuing. I have never drunk to that level in my life so I have never had a drink induced hangover, but if I did things would become serious because someone would need to clear my airways while I am collapsed on the floor so I can breathe. I have had to do that for my Mum on occasions.

So I have no incentives for enjoying alcohol other then a rare glass of wine with a meal, and I hate the taste of beer unless it is very wartered down with lemonade, but I can't touch anything with artificial sweetners in it, so that counts out all lemonades... Actually only a few non alcoholic drinks I can buy. Plain water, Coco-Cola and Pepsi and some milkshakes and sometimes a coffee as that is all that is out there in the shops. (Even Ribena now contains artificial sweetners in their non diet drinks so I have nothing. All orange squashes have them... Oh. I can drink milk but there again if I drink too much milk in a day it does effect me, which is why I don't over do the milkshakes, so really speaking it is water or cola I can drink.

I don't have a clue what alcohols contain sweetners or don't as I can hardly read the small print so I avoid anyway.

So yes. I can't sat I am a tea totaller as I never have liked drinking tea as the taste turns on me, which creates a dilemma on official tick box forms which do not have a box foe me because they say tea totaller or start at one unit of alcohol a week onwards, and I have about one or two units of alcohol spread over a year, so I can't say I don't drink alcohol, but neither can I say I drink as much as a unit a week either.
Don't people think of that when they make these tick box forms? It is why I can't do internet forms that don't let you sent them if one leaves a section blank without lying, but they say if I lie on the form I will be prosecuted! So in the past many things I should have been intitled to I could not get as I could not use the forms.

I think NTs would say teetotal in that case.

Or in a case like mine which is similar.

Yes I know it's technically lying but NT society works on this kind of white lie.

Who is pressuring you to drink?

You don't have to interact with them

You could ask them to stop