Luke Leitch and Carol Midgley ask, what is wrong with teetotallers? I suppose I could cut to the chase and answer; nothing. Still, they ask the question, so why not go along with it?
What’s wrong with teetotallers, eh? Always looking down their noses at the rest of us. Why can’t they just relax, have a few drinks, enjoy themselves, lighten up? A version of this monologue flits through many a bon viveur’s mind when confronted at a party with that most mystifying of beasts, the non-drinker. We may fake an interested smile and make a weak joke about saving on taxis but really we are thinking: “Wouldn’t you rather be at home straightening your towels?” At no point will we think: “Why does it matter to me so much? What the hell is wrong with me?”
I rarely come across this attitude these days. Twenty odd years ago, I did, but today, abstinence seems not to be looked upon with quite the same level of suspicion as it once was – at least in my experience. This might have something to do with the corrosive anti-drink propaganda that pervades society, much like the anti-smoking crusade that preceded it. I neither smoke nor drink, yet am anti neither. It’s up to you what you put into your body and I take no interest in the matter. I simply expect others to reciprocate that tolerance. And, mostly, they do.
As to the question; why? Well, I simply never took to it. The taste makes me shudder and I fail to see why I should waste effort acquiring a taste for something that I find deeply repugnant to the point of making me retch. If you don’t like something, don’t do it seems a reasonable line to take. Besides, as the article points out later on:
As Nancy Astor once said: “One reason I don’t drink is that I want to know when I’m having a good time.”
Indeed – I like to recall with clarity the evening before. The thought of waking in the morning with the previous night’s festivities little more than a hazy blur fills me with horror. Alcohol reduces the inhibitions and I like to be in absolute control at all times. And, given that I tend to drive or ride to functions, I prefer to keep all my faculties intact for the journey home.
Simples, eh?
Well, there are different levels of abstinence, surely. I like the occasional drop, especially in company but not on my own.
Each to his own and all respect to you, but I feel I must point that there is in fact a stage in between being a teetotaller and having only a hazy blurred memory of the night before.
Speaking as one who is made very ill by excessive drink, it’s a happy medium that I have spent years cultivating. I usually manage to hit it pretty accurately these days.
But as Michael Flanders said, “Chacun a son gout”.
“We may fake an interested smile and make a weak joke about saving on taxis but really we are thinking: “Wouldn’t you rather be at home straightening your towels?””
Because the only way anyone can enjoy themselves is with alcohol…?
And I say that as an experienced drinker!
It’s nice to know that I’m not alone. I’m another one who doesn’t drink because I don’t like the taste.
It is a bit of a nuisance though, knowing that various luxury chocolates and desserts are actually going to taste pretty unpleasant to my unsophisticated palate.
As a lifelong non drinker, non smoker, non drug taker, I can agree wholeheartedly with everything you have written. Like you I rarely encounter entrenched opposition to my choices. On the odd occasions I have been given the third degree, I consider it says more about the person questioning me, and their own insecurities, than it does about my own abstinence.
I have no problem with those who enjoy the odd drink or two and see nothing wrong with it. One thing I learned at an early age is that one drink mixed with riding a motorcycle was one drink too many, so I abstained totally when out on the bike – which was just about all the time. I never, therefore, acquired the taste and felt no compulsion to do so.
I did occasionally come across the type of comment such as this one in the comments in the cited piece from an idiot called Gary:
My response to morons like Gary was usually pithy, negative and ended with the word “off”.
Now in my advancing late maturity it’s two bottles of ‘Schell’s’ Best and a browse over the sagas of Old Iceland, or perhaps something about algebra or astronomy in Arabic, whilst Baiba Skride fiddles in the background, and that’s about it for me after a day chasing those effing sheep back into their effing paddock on account of the effing fences are all just too much to keep up with, as they say…. (Actually, tonight marks the end of two days stretching box wire and now, I THINK, I’ve got The Little Bastards dead to rights.)
Twenty-eight years ago it was off to Old Mankato Town to chase Cocaine & The Girls (awfully catchable Was They Then!) but I lived through it and managed not to catch anything else, if you get my drift.
Now, rejoice remembrance! This is I expect the beginning of the strangeness of old age….
Interesting point of view. After all, your state of mind is mainly electro-chemical in nature. With a little self discipline and effort you don’t need any external chemical help. I’ve trained myself to the point where I can be maudlin and incoherent without any alcohol at all. It’s all down to self control.
That said, a couple of stiff whiskeys do help take the sharp edges off a difficult day, although so can an hours leisurely (or not) motorcycling. I used to work on the principle that even if you burned up a couple of gallons of unleaded, that was still way cheaper than a decent bottle of wine at UK prices. Unless you got done for speeding of course.
“My response to morons like Gary was usually pithy, negative and ended with the word “off”.”
My response to Gary’s comment was to burst out laughing. Laughing at idiots is fun. We wouldn’t do it otherwise.