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Risto_Saarelma comments on Social Necessity of Drinking - Less Wrong Discussion
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"Health reasons," if someone presses it. Ambiguous, but interpretable in a way that doesn't look like you passing judgment to the others who do choose to drink.
Just a mild caveat: I think this would pass without further comment in most polite settings, but if I heard someone say that I would immediately (and involuntarily) speculate to myself that they might be taking medications that interact adversely with alcohol. One of the most common class of such medications is antidepressants. There's still something of a social stigma attached to admitting you suffer from depression, so depending on the environment Raemon might hesitate to give this answer.
I wouldn't have made that connection, but YMMV of course.
How likely it is that people with little personal experience with clinical depression, the ones most likely to stigamatize it, even know that bit?
It was a plot point on an episode of CSI (or Law and Order, one of those shows) so that knowledge is now relatively widespread in the general population.
When I lived in China, drinking as a group over dinner was a common social interaction. The one acceptable excuse, on which no one would press you, was to claim that your doctor has forbid it, which is another form of "health reasons". If people do press you on it, give them a quick cold glance that says "you are being rude" and then get back to the conversation.