You could look at the cost of alcohol as the price you pay to enter a social setting. If you were expected to consume some beverage, and they were all priced the same but exorbitantly, what would you do?
It has not been my experience that someone who doesn't drink stands out in any social setting that I would consider important. If you're getting blank or worse stares, it may be your delivery or it may be you need new social settings.
My recommendation would be to use the question as a platform to engage the questioner and others around. Tell a funny anecdote. Expound on your rationalist beliefs and how they relate to alcohol. Say you don't enjoy, then share what you do enjoy.
Be truthful and earnest and you'll go far if you're amongst the right people.
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!"