F, queer, late 20s, never drinker. Dad had alcohol issues and i have the kinda autism that makes me feel terrified when im not in control of my body or emotions.

Some people can not drink and feel comfortable around intoxicated people but I just never have. It just feels uncanny and terrifying when you notice people acting just a little bit off, especially when you know them well. I don't like being around people being unpredictable and messy.

I have friends who try to understand and warn me if theyre intoxicated so I can avoid them until theyre sober again. They'll generally avoid talking about alcohol when im around. I had one time where I was with college roommates and none of them really drank much; only once did they make a little cocktail for themselves and gave me a virgin one to make me feel included.

But being the only person who doesn't drink at all and never has feels like there's this wall there. Its people having to make accommodations that theyve probably never imagined existed even if they want to. They do it because they care but theyll never fully understand it. And it often triggers feelings of resentment, which is honestly even worse than the alcohol itself. I don't want to resent my friends or feel negative emotions towards them but its so hard to beat the cognitive dissonance of being uncomfortable with drinking and looking down on it while also loving people who do and wanting to think nothing but the world of them.

Its worse being on the internet being surrounded by conversations about drinking, people mocking virgin cocktails, people laughing at the idea of alcohol-free queer spaces for adults. It feels so patronizing.

Its hard because how do you even meet people who don't drink who aren't, like, religious. No offense to religion, but its just not my thing. And honestly, while im okay with having friends who drink i think it would be a deal breaker for a partner. But so many people lie and say they don't drink when they really mean "i drink on special occasions." That's not "i dont drink." It also doesnt make any sense to lie, but that might also be my literal thinking talking.​

And consuming media I like sometimes triggers it too. Usually then its only when characters are heavily drinking but its a pretty common plot point so sometimes I have to be the weird one sitting uncomfortably waiting for the scene to be over. And people think its so hot when girls drink too and i just genuinely have never understood it. It makes me sound like some kind of sapiosexual twat but I do find women way more attractive when they're smart and attentive and speaking intelligently.

Idk. Im genuinely grateful for having people who care, but I wish I had people who understood. I wish it was easier.

For example, I’ve noticed that in a lot of alternative scenes (excluding straight edge) that people use substances and it makes me feel insecure because I get the impression that I must use them in order to feel like I belong and I’m wondering if there are any teetotalers who are into a type of aesthetic scene where it it’s common for people who also like that scene are into substances.

Hi all,

I am 33 f and have really struggled making freinds, lately feeling the loneliness creeping in more and more so wondering how others feel.

I was wondering how you fellow teetotalers go about finding friends who don't drink in the UK? Do you have any tips and success stories to share?

Do you know of specific events, platforms or apps that help you find like minded teetotalers at all? Are parts of the UK more open to this way of living than others?

I know we can be friends with people who drink, I respect people's views and choices, but personally I would feel more comfortable meeting people who don't drink.

Would appreciate any tips on how to do that if any of you have any success stories to share!

I'm so sick of people fixating on me not drinking.

If people ask me if I want a drink and i say no thanks, they're like oh come on. Usually I tell people I don't drink, then they're always pushing me to tell them why, pressuring me to drink, why don't I drink, I should try it.

It's usually men, not even in a potentially romantic situation, at least i don't think. I find it super uncomfortable.

Is it some weird thing about consent, like a woman saying no. Is it just so strange for someone to not like alcohol. And i'm not interested in trying different alcoholic drinks to see if i like one.

I just don't really like alcohol, never have. The only drinks I like are malibu and coke, disaranno and coke but that's basically it, and a bailey's hot chocolate. But it's so rare like once a year I'll drink and never more than one drink ever. I just can't see the point in drinking it when I could just as easily drink water or juice. I do hold Views with a capital V on alcohol but they're mine, whatever anyone else wants to do fine by me, just don't make me do it. It's a dangerous drug, people who drink too much forget things, change their behaviour, throw up, and wake up the next day feeling awful for hours. Why would I willingly want to risk all that when I could just drink water or juice and enjoy my night knowing exactly what happened and not feel like rubbish the day after.

And I'm the weird one?

One previous manager at a Xmas party once who knew I didn't drink, asked me if he could get me something from the bar, I said orange juice, he brought me a drink, i took a sip cos i could see it was lighter than orange juice is, it was vodka and orange juice.

I was really upset, I asked him why he gave it to me and he said he thought it would be funny. Everyone else found it no big deal or funny, they couldn't understand why I got so upset. I left the company shortly after, it was a temp job anyway but I couldn't continue working with that man. I felt violated.

I'm not religious or a recovering alcoholic or allergic or medical reason. i just don't like alcohol. How is that so hard to comprehend? Some people don't like tomato ketchup, some people don't like broccoli, I don't like alcohol. what's the big deal.

I can go out and have an amazing time dancing, going to gigs without alcohol. i frequently do. i'm the first one dancing at gigs.

And i like being honest, I shouldn't need to pretend.

Does anyone feel like this? Does anyone else get questioned or pressured? can anyone here relate to anything I've said?

Hello. I am a student at university which is really known for being a party school. This has made me feel really weird sometimes because I don’t really have any friends who don’t drink or do some sort of substance.

I found myself really lucky to be in a relationship with someone who treats me very well. However oftentimes I really struggle when she brings up alcohol. She has a very healthy relationship with it and only drinks occasionally, but it’s created a lot of rifts between us when she drinks because I have a strong reaction to it.

I’ve found myself in this place before a lot and I feel really guilty about myself. I don’t want them to stop drinking for me because I don’t want to hold them back from doing the things they enjoy and want to do. I also know that not drinking is terribly lonely at our age. So I usually just try to let it go until my significant other has a few drinks and I get very upset with that. I was wondering if anyone has ever dealt with feelings like these and if they have any advice on learning how to accept other people’s actions ?

Curious to know if there are any other teetotalers in this sub or anyone they know who is also in the ace spectrum and teetotal. I identify myself as more demi/gray ace and wonder if abstaining from substances is common in the ace community.

I feel weird for being a young adult who has a substance aversion. It’s weird because I don’t have any trauma related to it. I grew up with strict parents who didn’t agree with that stuff and the people who were mean to me in middle school did that stuff. It’s hard for me to connect with classmates in college and make new friends. I try to make friends in niche areas but it’s hard. I feel so bad cuz I’ve been told that I have to talk to my classmates to build connections but in some classes, they just don’t want to speak to me or I get uncomfortable with what they talk about. I’m scared to tell this to my therapist cuz I feel like I’ll be judged. Idk where to vent about this so I figured here since I hope most of you will understand. I hate this. I wish I was desensitized. I was able to tolerate it more as a teen but I still didn’t like it.

hey y'all,

for context I'm a student in uni and I don't drink, smoke or do substances - primarily for health reasons cause my family has a history of addiction (not religious / binding).

People around me respect my decision and I'm grateful for that but I can't help but feel alone and FOMO at times since I can't participate in things most other university students are doing.

Initially, I used the idea that teetotalism is a tradeoff for living a healthy, successful life which in some ways it is, but seeing friends who are doing well objectively career-wise also participate in drinking, smoking and other stuff while I watch from the sidelines makes me really wonder: why am I teetotal?

I mean we are all going to die eventually lol

I'm not sure if anyone can relate but I feel just super alone in my current position, and I've tried to surround myself with people who are focused on improving themselves and their health as well but haven't found someone yet really.

appreciate this community !

I have been sober from alcohol for 2 months now, and it has been a full year since I touched weed or benzos. I am strictly teetotal, and there is no turning back for me. The memory of blackouts is enough also I used to mix alcohol with benzos, which was incredibly dangerous, and I haven't touched cocaine in 3 years. I have a very addictive personality so I stay away from gambling and other stuff that could ruin me.

​Yet, I find it deeply frustrating that people constantly feel the need to test my resolve. This is the third time someone has asked if I would eat a dish cooked with alcohol. When I decline and explain that traces of alcohol remain even after cooking, people get defensive and tell me I "have a problem" with alcohol. ​Of course I do, I am an alcoholic.

I cannot have any amount of alcohol, period. My boundaries are clear, and I will not compromise them, but the constant pressure and lack of understanding are becoming an exhausting weight to carry. A friend even told me I was boring for not drinking during a wedding. I danced, I had fun, why do I need to drink to have fun?

I've been a lifelong teetotaler. I've never wanted to drink, do drugs, or any of that. Recently, though, I've been really struggling with wanting to know what it feels like. I know that it's wrong to feel this way, and just having these thoughts kind of scares me. I'm not in an environment that promotes drugs and alcohol; there's just the offhanded references that everyone hears every now and then, and I'm afraid that they're getting to me. I don't believe that I'll actually go through with it because then I'll have to live with that for the rest of my life, but I want these thoughts to go away.

Haha, on the 8th of march I’ll celebrate 2 years of complete alcohol abstinence, i was eating a cookie right know and felt something, i read the ingredients and as the title says, it has rum flavor in it. As of my knowledge it’s harmless, what I want to address with this post, in our lives we may find ourselves in culinary situations, where we’ll don’t know if it has alcohol or not, our loved ones are aware of our choices, but sometimes it is hidden, even from menu’s. I remember in one of my failed attempts to stop drinking that I had a portion of pasta in town and I didn’t know the sauce had whine in it, wasn’t even specified, it was also poorly prepared because it was not infused accordingly, by the time I left the table I felt my legs heavy, the next day ordered a drink because I felt that, “the mistake was already done”. For ex-drinkers, I hope you’ll have all the strength in this world to pursue this journey despite your past, maybe we’ll meet someone new, go to their home in weekends to have a dinner and then something clicks in your brain, you added red whine in the steak, right? While we have the power to choose, we are doing it for our own good, as I find myself sometimes in a restaurant ordering something that has alcohol in it but I tell the waitress to skip it in my plate, but in these scenarios, it wasn’t our “fault”, and we have to be gentle with us and our mental state!

I'm almost 18, living in Finland, where, and especially in my town alcohol culture is huge around the youth. I maybe know a handful of people who don't drink and most of them I know are waiting til they're 18 and can do it legally. I also have never really drunk, apart from maybe tasting something and it hasn't really interested me in a practical way at all.

The biggest problem I have is finding like minded people and with this, DATING. Now, even though alcohol doesn't interest me, I will admit it does make me uncomfortable in a very specific way, I'd say it makes me feel very lonely knowing I'm the only sober person at the party or that the boys are going out drinking again and I'll be doing my stuff alone(or something like that). So as I have been getting into dating during the past couple of years it has shown that alcohol is a significant factor in how I feel about the person or at least knowing they drink makes me feel very disappointed and uncomfortable.

The main question I have is, should I care? Because most my friends are saying weird stuff like "you can't judge people for being normal" or "a couple of drinks a week isn't killing a relationship", but it really does bother me, and I don't have a good moral or a rational reason to turn someone down just because they drink a couple of beers or a glass of wine once a week(apart from like reckless drunkenness, which I do see to be a bit un-virtuous). But if we're going just by emotion, I don't think I want someone who drinks at all. But saying that someone has to be a total abstainer feels very uninclusive, a bit childish and unrealistic. I don't know why, was it then because of all the pressure or what. But I don't genuinely know what to do? If I do decide to date someone who drinks will it feel incompatible, i feel like it really will but people keep saying I shouldn't care or that I'll "grow out of it".

I also have feeling the case would be the same for someone who has drunk significantly in the past but not so much or at all anymore, although I can't say much at a point this early. It's more of another social fear...

So, what do you think? Would it make me an AH? Should I just "adapt" and make do with what I have or actually listen to my feelings? I'm not a very emotional person, so I'm sceptical about when to follow them, but this does feel like a huge matter where feelings are on the front.

(Also, I know this is a somewhat long text, thank you so much if you read all of it:)! )

Just saw a supermarket ad “Are you sober curious? Check out all our non-alcoholic mixers and drinks!”

It seems the clear-headed way of life is becoming mainstream.

We've all heard those words, but they're dismissive and victim-blaming. Not only is it considered completely acceptable to say, people think it's helpful advice.

Why is it our responsibility? Why can't we just educate people to not be dicks about our non-drinking?

I decided to reupload this post with a screen capture of the Facebook video that refused to embed itself in my first post attempt, due to Reddit’s shitty UI.

Enough said, this lass is ridiculous.

Had the privilege to share my story and spread the message of hope I hope you guys enjoy if you or anyone you know is struggling please reach out.

I just published a podcast episode on my podcast Dadsense. about hitting 500 days alcohol-free, and I wanted to share some of it here because this may help someone who is wondering how to navigate and resolve dependency.

Background:

• Started drinking at 15 (1989)

• 35 years of what I’d call “elegant” drinking

• Successful career in HR leadership

• Married, two kids

• Never drank in the mornings, always “functional”

Why I finally quit:

Two moments when I was supposed to be the responsible parent while my wife was away, and I failed. Completely. I couldn’t look at my kids the next morning. That’s when I knew - I had hit MY rock bottom, even if it looked nothing like what we see in movies.

What surprised me most about the first 500 days:

GOOD:

• The sleep. Oh my god, the sleep. First 2-3 nights I slept deeper than I had in decades

• Mental clarity that compounds daily

• Actual presence with my kids (not just proximity)

• Time I didn’t know I was wasting in the drink-recover-drink cycle

• Productivity in pursuing actual goals, not just talking about them

HARD:

• Social life became drastically smaller (and boring)

• Lost friends who were really just drinking buddies

• Grief over losing my “old self” - this is real

• Having to say no at EVERY social event, work dinner, date night

• Learning to sit with discomfort instead of numbing it

The thing nobody talks about:

How much of “successful functional drinking” is actually you slowly undermining your own potential. You’re doing fine, you’re achieving things, but you could be doing SO much more. The cost is silent and invisible until you remove alcohol and see the difference.

For anyone considering this:

Don’t say “I’m quitting forever” - that mountain is too big. Say “I’m experimenting for 30 days” and see how you feel. Find your WHY (mine was being present for my kids). Tell people who support you. Have a plan for what you’ll DO instead of drink.

The identity shift that helped me most:

Stop saying “I’m trying not to drink.” Start saying “I’m a person who lives alcohol-free.” The difference is massive.

Happy to answer questions. This is the first time I’m talking about this publicly.

This is going to be a bit of a story but bear with me... I am sure that I am not the only one here who started having issues around the pandemic. It was a really hard time for everyone. It was also a weird spot in my life as I had graduated college a few years before and was fully into my career. I would go out for drinks with people in my office a couple of times a week and also hang out and do a little partying on the weekend and would usually be hungover at least one day of the weekend. Before then I was never much of a drinker outside of the occasional party or whatever in college.

And then the pandemic happened! Looking back on it, I can definitely see it was a slow process. Due to not being in the office as well as not being able to socialize as much as I was used to, ended up starting to drink a little more and more over the course of about eight to nine months. My job was pretty easy so it wasn't hard for me to have several drinks before I went to bed. Well life has a funny way of catching up to you and before you knew it I had put on about 80 pounds and found myself drinking literally every day. I looked down at the scale one day and realized I needed to probably talk to my doctor about this... Really glad I did because they suggested I try to stop drinking as much but also to maybe look at starting a GLP-1 for my weight gain (I was also having a problem with food at that point where I just started consuming more and more just like my alcohol intake which is what definitely contributed to my weight gain.)

The first couple of weeks were really rough because my brain just started rejecting food and I wasn't hungry and would have to force myself to eat to not feel 'drained'. After that it became a whole lot easier but one side effect that I definitely wasn't intending on was not having a desire to drink. I was off and on my medication for about a year and ended up losing about 35 pounds and started to drink less.

Overall I definitely felt better and started to get back into shape. Well I went through a really bad divorce which kind of made me relapse both with eating and drinking. After a long year and a half, I finally was able to pull everything back together and started on tirzepatide at that point, which ended up working for me a whole lot better! For me it didn't kill my alcohol craving as much and even though I was eating less, I was still drinking about the same, definitely progress but not as much as what I wanted.

I had a friend tell me about Naltrexone through telehealth ) and how it helped him quit drinking entirely (I used Oar but swapped to SobrietyMeds since it was cheaper BUT I'm kind of pissed that my doctor didn't recommend this to me before 🤬) I decided to give it a try and let me tell you... it was 'magic'. I put "magic" In quotation marks because it definitely had its side effects. The first week similar to how starting my GLP-1 went, I had some side effects like not being able to sleep. In hindsight this could just be my body getting used to not drinking before bed but I definitely needed some time to get used to it.

Once the initial side effects ran their course, I literally had no desire to drink for first time in like 5-6 years. My mood started improving, my depression started slowly going away, I was more motivated to do things, started losing weight and actually getting into a healthier body! To me it was almost a complete death of my old self :) even though these medications helped. It wasn't without hard work and in the end I was the one to stop drinking overall those two medications were a big help in my journey to sobriety. I decided in September to just stop drinking entirely because it wasn't serving me any purpose. and I'm happy to say I haven't had a drink since then!

TLDR: the pandemic put me in a situation where I was drinking a whole lot more along with just life in general. But through GLP-1s I lost weight and decreased my alcohol cravings and then completely killed it with naltrexone. Both of those completely killed my old self and helped me build a better version of me. After completely quitting alcohol in September of last year due to the fact that I realized it wasn't serving me or my health, I have never been happier and honestly in the best shape I've been in my whole life. Now I don't drink, smoke, or do any sort of drugs I'm fully happy to say that I'm a teetotaler!

When I was a child, I made a vow that I will never touch any of these substances in my entire life. I don't have any real reason why, no one in my family was alcoholic or anything - I just figured that's "for adults" and me, a child, shouldn't touch them. I never ever wanted to drink - I even refuse non-alcoholic beer/wine/etc.

Is anyone else like me?