016 - Alcoholic Dysfunction

"No, thanks, I don't drink."
"What?"
"I don't drink."
"What? At all?!"

*****

I don't drink. Everyone knows I don't drink and most people know why. It's just who I am. Lately though, I've started to wonder if I'm being snobby or just plain sad because I don't drink at all, never really go to pubs unless it's to babysit someone on the booze, and never ever go clubbing.

I've been wondering if people think strange of me because of it, or if I'm wrong to get annoyed or exasperated when people close to me drink too much (please do consider why I don't drink, here).

The only times I've ever considered drinking was when I was very down or depressed or angry with life in general, and I knew if I started drinking because of that it would be a very steep downward slope. I suppose that fear is also a reason I don't drink; the fear that I wont know how or when to stop, like most of my family. And the fear, too, that I'll do something I'd regret. I have little enough willpower sober as it is.

I've always been of the mind that if anyone snubs me for not drinking, "don't knock it til you've tried it", I would say the same thing to them; "Totally sober? Don't knock it..."

On a viewpoint away from my family though, I still can't say I'd drink anyway. I mean, what is so appealing about losing control, losing morals and inhibition, not remembering the night before or remembering and regretting things you've said or done, the hangovers, the fights, the depleting condition of health when you drink regularly. Someone once answered that it's good because you might do things you wouldn't normally do. Isn't that a bad thing though? Usually when I don't want to do or say something I have a very good reason. Why drink and forget that reason, and regret doing whatever it was I didn't want to do in the first place? Someone else told me it's because their friends drink, they drink. Really? What kind of friends can't amuse themselves without getting hammered?

I know I'm rambling, but I've seen a lot of people do a lot of stupid things when drunk - from one guy declaring his love for me, to my own mother throwing boiling water in my face - and I can't see how my life or anyone else's is better when they're sloshed.