Originally Posted by Trollheart

Thanks Fetcher. Yes, as I said, and as you correctly point out, being a non-drinker in Ireland is - or was, before we got a bit more cosmopolitan and attitudes began to change a little - frowned up as if somehow you're the one out of step. People would regularly look at me with wide eyes and say "Really? Never?" when I told them I didn't drink, as if they either pitied me or reviled me, as if this was something they had never come across before. As if they wanted to go and get their friends and point me out excitedly and whisper "Yeah, I know! Never took a drink! Ever!" like you were some sort of sideshow attraction.

And you would feel compelled to try it, if only to shut them up. The amount of times you'd be given a Coke or an orange and the smart comments like "don't go dancing on any tables now" and suchlike got very wearing, which was why I eventually gave in, temporarily, both to experience the "other side" of the drunken conversations (which never happened, as I only got drunk twice in my life and both times it was unpleasant enough for me to know I did not want to do it again) and to fit in. It didn't really work. Even then you'd get the "hardened drinkers" looking at your pint of Smithwick's and saying "ah sure that's not a real drink!" as if there was some weird standard you had to live up to.

I never needed drink. To be honest, and to contradict what I said in jest to Batty earlier, I'm actually quite personable and don't need to be drunk to have a good time. People think I'm funny (as in, humorous, not strange), interesting, kind and really quite ordinary. I don't look down on people when they tell me how drunk they got, though I never have and never will understand the attraction. Like I said, having an alcoholic sister sort of tips the scales a little too.

For those of you - most of you - so proud of your drinking though, let me ask you this question: how many lives has rampant non-alcoholism ruined? How much violence has been perpetrated by sober people? A lot, surely; I'm not denying that or making out that those who don't drink are saints. But in comparison to those who have committed these acts while drunk or under the influence of drink, not that many. And how many people today incarcerated have said at their trial that they wouldn't have done what they did if they hadn't been drunk at the time? Ever hear anyone say "Your honour, in my defence, I was totally sober"?

Once again, before anyone says it, I'm not painting all those who drink, even those who do so to excess, with one brush. There are those who can hold their drink, I'm sure, and never get into trouble. But the undeniable fact is that a very large proportion of violence, especially domestic, hate crime and other crimes take place while the perpetrator(s) is or are under the influence.

Here's a hypothetical. An alien race visits us. They watch us, study us and see how violent we are. After extensive research, they identify our consumption of and obsession with alcohol to the main reason for our violent disposition. They use some sort of mind ray to erase the very idea of alcohol from humanity's minds, while simultaneously destroying all stocks of alcohol. Earth wakes up, having forgotten there ever was such a thing as alcohol. It's not Prohibition, it's just gone and nobody even remembers what it was. Nobody will want or miss it, nobody will be "gasping for a pint" as we no longer even know what that means.

How do you think our society would then progress without drink?