I have been told on occasion that I am rude and "ruining the party " because I don't drink alcohol. I don't tell others not to, I don't explain at length why I don't (alcohol has a supremely nasty *to me* aftertaste, that's why) ; I just grab a coke or a water and don't mention that I'm not drinking.
But no someone finds out and lectures me. Seriously.
I get this, too, and it steams me up a bit. What really got me, though, was how I would get shocked faces from people at work when I mentioned on one occasion that I don't drink. (They often do on Fridays after work and I said no when they tried to push me to have a beer with them. Note that I sat and chatted, I just didn't drink.) One guy just would not give up on the fact that I didn't drink, and kept going on about it while I bean-dipped continually, until I finally said my goodbyes and left.
A week later, the guy who had been nagging me came up with an article from a guy who 'survived' Febfast.
This, for the uninitiated, is a challenge whereby people don't drink alcohol for a whole 28 days and donate the money they have as a result to charity. You can also have people sponsor you and add that money to your total. Come March 1, there were heaps of articles in the paper about how amazing people felt having been without alcohol for all that time, how they were sleeping better and had saved so much money and lost weight, etc.
This guy in the office was saying how amazing the people were who were doing this, it was so great for them, he was thinking about trying going without for a week to see how he felt, etc, even though it was just IMPOSSIBLE for people to go without drinking forever.
I couldn't help myself (not ehell approved, I know!) and pointed out the obvious - that it
was quite possible for people not to drink.
He looked at me and said, "Yeah, but you're weird."
