No Pressure: Not Choosing to Drink

Growing up in the liqueur capital of America, New Orleans, I was constantly surrounded by booze and some of the nation’s greatest parties. My father, though never an alcoholic, always enjoyed at least one glass of wine per evening and had a collection of vodka, gin, and rum on shelves within my reach in our pantry from the time I was five. The first time I saw my classmates getting drunk was in seventh grade during Mardi Gras. My parents and housekeeper always told me about the dangers of drinking, and how I shouldn’t do it without their supervision until I was twenty-one, but my dad wanted me to share his taste for it around the time I became a teenager.

By the time I was an upperclassman in high school, I’d realized that I simply didn’t like the taste of alcohol. I’d tried champagne on New Year’s Eve, wine while vacationing in Italy, and beer with my best friend on the first day after we graduated, and all of them tasted liquid fire to me. Most adults who encouraged me to drink told me it was an acquired taste. However, drinking a lot more to get to a point where I enjoyed it was unappealing to me. I could have fun at nice dinners and hanging out with my friends at a party without drinking, so why should I feel compelled to drink? The Saturday before Mardi Gras, my friend was constantly complaining about her massive hangover from the drinking she did the night before. I couldn’t find a reason for feeling like crap the morning after drinking a lot, either. While I realize that you don’t need  to drink to get drunk to have fun and  that most don’t, I still feel an aversion to drinking. Watching my classmates go crazy every weekend, I don’t feel bad about myself socializing in an atypical way. Not all of my friends lose control every time, and while I try not to judge any of them for it, I just don’t want to join in.

When I was the “girl from New Orleans” my first week at Scripps, it was assumed that I partied and drank all the time, though this was not the case. The first time I ever felt insecure about my habit of not drinking was one of the last evenings of orientation. I had decided to go to the Pomona dance with some friends. We stopped by the room of a friend’s older brother to have some beer and loosen up before we actually went to the dance. A few minutes after we got there, my friend reached into the fridge and started pulling out beers for each of us. When she held one out for me, I shook my head, and she handed it off to someone else. There was no verbal peer pressure, no strange looks in my direction, nothing that should have made me feel uncomfortable about the situation I was in. But I was. I was lonely. I felt awkward standing in that room with two empty hands shoved in my pockets with nothing to talk about. I was impatient to head over to the dance, and getting fed up after waiting for a few minutes, I went over by myself.

I know that most students don’t care one way or the other about who drinks and who doesn’t. But sometimes it can be a little awkward to be one of the few who doesn’t. I have nothing against other people drinking. I really couldn’t care less about what my friends’ habits are, as long as they don’t affect me directly. It’s really a personal choice, and as long as his or her health isn’t seriously affected, I won’t try to stop friends from drinking. But sometimes, I feel like I’m less mature than my friends because I haven’t had the same “adult” experiences that they’ve had. Though I’ve had more time here, it’s still an issue that comes up. However, I’ve found a group of friends that does keep the drinking to a minimum when they do go out, which has helped me keep a more positive outlook on the ways I prefer spending my time. As I’ve spent more time with these friends, I’ve become less insecure about my differences I’m perfectly content spending my Friday nights with my non-drinking friends watching Buffy: The Vampire Slayer over pizza.