1) - “No thanks" / "a coke please“ is usually fine. “I don’t drink alcohol” if pressed. But my impression is that the delivery is most important (stating it firmly without looking embarrassed seems to work best)
-With people you meet regularly you seem to get less resistance being an official teetotaler than an occasional drinker who doesn’t feel like drinking one particular evening.
-Drinking very slowly can limit your intake to a single glass per evening
-If drinks are free and things are busy it’s sometimes easier to accept a glass and not actually drink it (or at least not finish it)
-Designated driver is culture specific. My impression is that in some places (e.g., UK, Scandinavia) it is expected to drink nothing if driving, while in others (e.g., France) you are often still expected to make a "small effort".
2) Quite culture specific. Fairly standard is to wait for everyone to have a drink in their hand before starting.
3) -People like to drink because social interactions often feel smoother and more natural when participants are a little drunk, and they can also be more fun
-People expect others to drink because:
-It’s better if all parties contribute to the enhanced socializing
-Sober vs. sober and drunk vs. drunk conversations tend to work well. Sober vs. drunk ones do not (and it’s much less painful to be on the drunk side)
-Some perceive not drinking as a signal that you don’t want to or can’t enjoy yourself
-Some people see non-drinkers as implicitly judging those who do drink
It's been over a year since I graduated from college, but only recently have I felt like I'm officially entering the "adult world." Navigating the social arenas of the adult world requires the same basic skillsets as the college world, but a lot of the rules are different and I'm struggling to learn them. Among them is how to drink socially.
As a general rule, I don't drink. I don't like the taste of alcohol. I don't like paying the exorbinant prices that alcohol costs. I don't like the feeling of my brain slowing down and making it harder to string sentences together. I don't mind the physical disorientation - that part's pretty fun. But that part also seems to be slightly frowned upon in an "adult" setting. I'm not opposed to it for any particular moral reasons.
When I do drink, I prefer to get it over with as fast as possible, whether I'm officially drinking a "shot" or not. In college that at least had a sort of "daring" quality that was respected. But it's pretty obviously taboo at classy cocktail parties and even somewhat taboo at "casual adult" parties.
So there's a few separate questions I have:
1) Are there any good, cached buzzword phrases I can use that'll make it socially acceptable to not drink? "I just don't like it" seems to draw disdainful stares, and while I haven't tried it I get the sense that saying I'm morally opposed to it would make me look even more like a stick in the mud. Saying "it's ridiculously expensive" makes me look like a cheapskate.
2) If I must drink socially, is there a breakdown of the general social conventions I should be aware of so I don't need to have them pointed out to me over the course of the next few years?
3) Is there any particularly interesting analysis of *why* drinking is so important to social interaction? Knowing the underlying causes might at least give me some better appreciation for why I have to learn this other than "because!"