Ask HN: Are you a drinker or a teetotaler?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339667

by ducuboy • 12 years ago

31 63 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I was a daily drinker, mainly beer, I live in Belgium.

But I turned into a `teetotaler` for few weeks already, and I intend to stay this way for a while. I'm curious how you guys are coping with the booze or the lack of it.

ducuboy7• 12 years ago

Drinker

ducuboy7• 12 years ago

Teetotaler

DanBC• 12 years ago

Two units per day with some days drink free and not savin units up for the weekend.

Units are a UK public health thing. units per serving is given by ABV * serving size in litres.

chton• 12 years ago

I'm a Belgian too, and the beer is always a temptation. Personally, I consider myself a drinker. Not daily, but one drink a few times per week, with heavier consumption on Saturdays.

Coping with booze for me is a matter of 'everything in moderation'. I can thoroughly enjoy a good beer or whisky, but I know that enjoyment is enhanced by spacing that out. I'm also quite frightened of dependence, but not enough to stop drinking altogether.

jacquesm4• 12 years ago

teetotaler.

If you can you should do this as a poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

ducuboy7• 12 years ago

Great, have you ever been a drinker?

Don't have enough karma to create a poll, there are the two options below as comments

jacquesm4• 12 years ago

Never drank a drop (dad was an alcoholic, consider me immunized)

onion2k• 12 years ago

Poll created: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339900

J_Darnley• 12 years ago

It easy for me to avoid alcohol because every drink I have ever tried tasted like it was full of poison.

jacquesm4• 12 years ago

Technically, alcohol is a poison. (And acetaldehyde, a product of alcohol metabolism is worse.)

probably_wrong2• 12 years ago

I don't drink either, but I decided to try the scientific method regarding beer, to see if I don't drink it because I truly don't like it or because I'm influenced by knowing the effect alcohol has on my body beforehand. So I tried the following:

* I got myself some German non-alcoholic beer, to remove alcohol from the equation altogether. This measure is flawed, though, because apparently non-alcoholic beer sucks. In the interest of science, we'll temporarily dismiss this as an excuse from drinkers and move on.

* I went to the Guiness factory in Dublin, and ordered myself a quarter of a pint. This should be a good baseline beer.

Result 1, non-alcoholic beer: it tastes awful. I'd describe it as sparkling tomato juice. Regular drinkers were apparently right.

Result 2, alcoholic beer: it tastes like beer. It turns out I don't like beer.

I don't know what I was hoping to get from this experiment, but there you go. Expect a paper one of these days.

bencollier49• 12 years ago

Guiness takes like stout.

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

Beer can be an acquired taste, Guinness especially.

arrrg• 12 years ago

Non-alcoholic beer can be great – if the number one goal of whoever made it was not to just imitate beer with alcohol as best as possible.

Brewers that don’t approach the problem of leaving the alcohol out of the beer that way end up with what’s basically a somewhat different kind of drink, but one that is also enjoyable on its own merits.

xmstr• 12 years ago

As a former drinker (mostly beer), who now partakes an an occasional non-alcoholic beer. I can say that most NA beer does indeed suck, but not all of them. Erdinger and Buckler are pretty good and even O'Douls Amber is not too bad.

rubiquity• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, Guinness is one of the most overrated beers in the entire world. While not a lager, it's essentially a light beer that uses a toasted malt to give off the perception that it is a "heavy" beer. It is also served on nitro to help give the beer a mouth feel that it doesn't truly have.

jasonkester• 12 years ago

Depends on the situation.

When I'm travelling, I tend to drink quite a bit. You meet lots of people on the road. Lots of them are on vacation. It's Steve's last night. We've got to celebrate.

When I'm back home, I tend not to drink at all. First of all, it's not Steve's last night on the beach anymore. But also it's nice that it's not Steve's last night for once. I also tend to value concentration when I'm home and working. To have a beer is to lose the ability to focus for the rest of the day, which just makes me angry. (Beach Jason doesn't have this problem, since he's not focusing on anything).

Age changes the equation as well. In school, the assumption was that you'd be obliterated every Friday and Saturday night. And likely at least once or twice during the week as well, since hey, it's Taco Tuesday, or Bomber Night at Alex's, or Twice As Drunk Night at Shermer's. It was just what you did.

Again, leaving school after five years of that it was quite novel to have a Saturday arrive and be able to consciously choose not to drink anything at all. That's never happened before! Cool.

Over the years, the novelty just wears off and the effect of alcohol becomes perceived as more of a negative. These days, living in France, I'll still uncork a bottle or two a week out of a sense of duty. (It is, after all, five dollars for a better bottle than they even sell at Albertsons, so it'd be rude not to.) But then it often takes a few nights to finish that bottle. A thought not easily conceived, I bet, by a version of myself 20 years ago.

probably_wrong2• 12 years ago

Non-drinker here.

I'm curious how you guys are coping with the booze or the lack of it.

The same way I'm coping with the lack of ketchup in my chocolate cookies: I didn't know I was supposed to cope with it.

ducuboy7• 12 years ago

I meant if you gave it up.

simi_• 12 years ago

You haven't lived until you had ketchup with chocolate cookies.

On a more serious note, I too never feel the urge to drink, but I am however addicted to sugary drinks. Makes me wonder whether there's a connection there.

pgt• 12 years ago

I'm a daily red wine drinker. Trying to keep it at, or under half a bottle of vino. Wine, like food, is better when shared :).

philh• 12 years ago

Social drinker. I rarely get more than tipsy, even when I give myself permission to (e.g. parties and pub crawls when I don't have to be up the next morning). If I do get drunk, I'm unlikely to get a hangover. I almost never drink alone.

jawns• 12 years ago

I'm glad this question is being asked on HN, because it sounds like a culture of drinking is pretty prevalent in at least certain parts of the startup/tech scene. I'm hoping that the answers here will reassure people that you don't need to drink to fit in.

I'm in my mid-30s and have never drank. I have a lot of reasons for choosing to not drink, but probably the biggest is that I don't like the idea of it affecting my behavior or decision-making (especially because I've seen how it affects OTHER people's behavior and decision-making).

Nevertheless, I've tried to not let it affect my social life. In college, I went to plenty of parties, and it was a bit weird being one of the only sober people in a house full of drunks, but I never felt ostracized because of it. After college, I was one of the organizers of the Four-State Bar Crawl (four bars, four states, one crazy night) -- and naturally, I was one of the designated drivers.

I now work in an office where beer is stocked in the fridge, and most of my colleagues partake. But again, it doesn't really bother me because there's soda stocked too.

Advice for people who were previously drinkers but are now trying to abstain:

* Don't needlessly place yourself in tempting situations.

* If drinking was previously how you relaxed, or had fun, or networked, or socially lubricated yourself ... seek out alternative ways to fill the void. For instance, if beer gave you confidence in social situations, consider attending a Toastmasters International session, which can help you with your contemporaneous speaking skills and boost your confidence.

* Befriend other non-drinkers. We've had a lot of practice at finding ways to have fun without alcohol.

* Seek out support (and accountability) from other people or from groups like AA if it's a real struggle.

kohanz• 12 years ago

Your post could have described me as well.

The only thing I would add is that for me, in university, I did run into some friction about my choice, from time to time. You'll find that when people are young, making a choice to go against the status quo and being secure about it will bring about all kinds of insecurity in others (e.g. those who are drinking, but only out of peer pressure). It helped me identify who were really my friends (the ones that didn't hassle me about my choices).

When you get older (e.g. out of school), it gets much better as being a non-drinker becomes more acceptable and even admirable for some.

chrismcb• 12 years ago

It is prevalent in at least certain parts of the startup scene because it is prevalent in the world.

sebst• 12 years ago

Rarely social drinker, except when it comes to a red wine with a first class dinner.

endgame• 12 years ago

Why is MattOhio12's post [dead]? I'm guessing it's because his early submissions didn't go over well.

I think if dead comments are upvoted by people with accounts in good standing and showdead on, they should be un-dead-ed.

jrockway• 12 years ago

I used to drink daily.

I went out with some friends that are super-hardcore drinkers and drank too much. Took the train home, but it was rerouted, so I grabbed a Citibike. Hit a pothole. Went over the handlebars. Landed on my head and may have broken a rib. Laid down on the street for a while, and remember thinking that this was probably the end. (I realized a while later that people say they feel really warm when they're dying, but I was really cold. Returned the Citibike and went home.)

Anyway, I don't drink much anymore. I do brew my own beer, though! (And drink that on an occasional basis.)

baldfat• 12 years ago

Don't Drink: 1) My dad turned mean when he had a little to drink. 2) My brother was a jerk after two beers. 3) I don't want to be a drink. 4) My friends were idiots after they drank and got in SO MUCH trouble. 5) I know that 10%-20% of all deaths are due primarily due to alcohol (WHO) and the world would be a better place without it. 6) I like soda to much to ruin my chances to drink them delicious calories with that gross stuff.

Don't ever miss drinking and when I am around drinking I am always feeling like I made the right decision.

uptownJimmy• 12 years ago

For a long time I didn't much care about it: I had a single drink once a week, maybe went out with buddies on Friday nights and got pretty drunk.

I drank a good bit during my thirties, in the way of so many 9-5 workers. Then got a little too exuberant around the turn towards forty, probably a combination of "Hey, so this is how it feels to feel good!" + self-medicating for the lingering effects of really bad childhood trauma.

I'm dry as a bone from here on out. Once I got used to the feeling, and once I got into the swing of studying and exercising and fathering, I've increasingly seen the stuff as being generally more treacherous than is commonly assumed. I don't know many people older than 30 who drink regularly and are actually drinking in anything resembling true moderation. And it shows, increasingly as one grows older.

So I actually feel kinda lucky to have figured it out (the semi-hard way) instead of sinking into a life of physical indolence and endless rationalizations. There are a LOT of people who are somewhere in the middle chunk of the spectrum we call "alcoholism", a lot of people with really good jobs who would be a LOT happier right now if they didn't have to obey the rule about "never before 7". It's just the nature of the thing: it tends to make itself more and more important as time goes by.

Adirael• 12 years ago

I like beer, don't care much about liquor or wine but won't turn it down. I like to open a can of beer at night while I code a bit before going to bed and sometimes I go for a beer after work. I may drink around 0.8 beers per day.

I do abuse coffee, I think I'm in need of a tolerance break

I'm in Spain.

middle334• 12 years ago

15 years sober. So, I don't drink. Before that, hoo boy :-)

I was at a bar last night with co-workers, and as long as I have a diet coke or something in my hand I'm okay. Weekly AA meetings keep me on the level, too.

A old co-worker of mine who was more public about his sobriety used to crack the keg at beer busts, reciting the Serenity Prayer over it and telling jokes as he pour cups for everyone else. He had fun with it.

swombat• 12 years ago

@OP: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8339988 (I saw that thread before this one). Congrats on the move. It feels great, no?

Wintamute• 12 years ago

There's some evidence to suggest that drinking every day, or even drinking well over the recommended limit, could be healthier in the long run than abstinence.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wo...

facepalm• 12 years ago

What strikes me is that I can leave beer in the fridge untouched for weeks or even months, but I can't do the same for chocolate in the house. Stephen King describes how sometimes he can't stand seeing people sitting in front of a glass of wine without drinking. "Drink it already" goes through his head - I'm somewhat the same with chocolate. Only solution is to not have chocolate in the house.

teachingaway• 12 years ago

>I can leave beer in the fridge untouched for weeks or even months, but I can't do the same for chocolate in the house.

same here :-/

nysska• 12 years ago

I'm totally opposite - "Don't eat it - more for me" goes though my head. Seriously addicted to sweets, I can't go a day without a treat, but I can go months without alcohol.

anonymouse1• 12 years ago

Don't drink, love me a good hit of dope (heroin) tho

jbrooksuk• 12 years ago

Every now and then I'll buy a four-crate (it's hardly a crate) of Kopparberg. Sometimes they'll last me months (one a month) or a couple of days.

I don't drink often, but when I'm out with work or some mates, I'll have a couple. I prefer driving though - I hate being a passenger, especially when I've had a few drinks.

Instead of drinking alcohol, I do tend to drink a lot of energy drinks. That's my problem.

brudgers• 12 years ago

Neither. I started drinking beers with my buddies when I was in 9th grade. By my early twenties I started to realize that there wasn't any new ground to be discovered via alcohol and a few years later the choice between reading and drinking after work became more obvious and reading more often won out.

I reached a point where drinking as an activity ceased being an interesting hobby.

When my beloved quit three years ago, pretty much any reason to drink socially disappeared and other than a weekend in the mountains with some 9th grade buddies and a beer at a couple of dinner parties I have abstained.

And that's pretty much the essence of it - I tend toward abstaining from alcohol, not teetotaling. I'm fortunate that I can take that approach. Some people have to forswear alcohol completely in order to avoid its potentially destructive side effects.

jamesdelaneyie2• 12 years ago

Daily drinker as well. Although it varies. Sometimes I'd have a week without taking a sip without realising and other weeks I'd get through a bottle of wine over the course of a night after work.

cpfohl• 12 years ago

I drink, in fact I brew my own beer, wine and cider, but I've never been drunk. My opinion has long been that it's a pity beer has alcohol, and that it's a pity that alcohol contributes so much to a beverage's unique flavors.

Actually, I'm just a big beverage guy. I get just as psyched about a tonic and infused simple syrup combo as I do about a great beer.

glimmung• 12 years ago

Was a cheerfully enthusiastic social drinker until I had a bit of a "long dark teatime of the soul" (unrelated to drinking) three months or so ago, at which point I gave up everything but coffee while I needed to focus. Am surprised to report that I haven't missed it. Have had a drink on a couple of special occasions since, and didn't enjoy it very much.

In the future I can see myself drinking on special occasions, but not habitually - I really hadn't realised the extent to which I was doing it out of habit rather than for pleasure.

As for coping, I'm now spending over an hour a day in the gym on workdays, which is a much better deal!

nisitg• 12 years ago

I'm a social drinker.

Agathos• 12 years ago

Since turning 30, I've noticed my hangovers have started lasting all day. Who has time for that? I still drink fairly often, but rarely more than a drink or two a night.

quaffapint• 12 years ago

When 5 o'clock rolls around, it's beer time, or after mowing the lawn, or after being out a long day. While I enjoy trying different craft brews, it's almost more what it symbolizes that I enjoy. Once that beer is poured, the work of the day is over (outside the 2nd job, being family:)).

AnimalMuppet• 12 years ago

People drink for many reasons, I suppose, but one of the common ones is to lose some inhibitions. But looking at myself, I'm already more uninhibited than is probably good for me. It seems like I'm where many people get after two or three beers. So, since I seem to be permanently there, I don't really see the need to drink. If somebody wants to have a couple of beers to join me, that's fine.

Getting drunk is a bit different matter. Getting drunk means you're not really in control of yourself any more, and bad things often happen thereafter. Worse, you're not enough in control to make sure that bad things don't happen. It's pretty unwise to put yourself in that situation.

pm90• 12 years ago

I never drank until a Vegas trip a couple of months ago. I still don't stock beer in my fridge, but when I go to bars, beergardens, I do get a glass.

Beer is really an acquired taste, but I do like its taste. I tend to drink after a lot of beer, so I don't get drunk, I do feel a little buzz though.

As a teetotaller for my whole life, what do I feel? The main reason I stayed away from alcohol was my fear of addiction. And that fear is still there...I don't want to drown my sorrows with alcohol, ever. I want to be able to feel the complete pain, get over it, and move ahead with life.

So my advice is: you have a choice. You don't need to drink a lot. But one beer and a few shots won't make you drunk. On the contrary, it makes you appear much more sociable. It sounds like a cop-out, sure. But each to his own, I guess.

jtfairbank• 12 years ago

Depends. With friends at college I drink, this summer I was at a lake to get away and code, and drank very little. I've smoked pot everyday for periods of time, both productively and not, and have no problem stopping when I need to. Nicotine is a bit harder... you definitely get the physical addition. I'm working on kicking it though.

I've found that the busier I get, the less drugs and alcohol I consume. Or at least my drug intake changes to stimulants like coffee and nicotine. But I don't really feel bad about adjusting my habits as needed, there's nothing to "miss", I'm just choosing to do something else with my time. Also, what I do is in a large part dictated by who I am around, and what we do together socially.

I have teetotaler friends, or friends who drink but never smoke, and I've never had an issue with them not participating. Though these friends are usually down to hangout if we go to a bar or something, since we'll be having a good time anyways regardless of consumption. Do what you feel, man. :)

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

Yes, I really enjoy some iced johnny walker black on fridays after a long productive week. :)

ducuboy7• 12 years ago

Btw, Johnny Walker was a teetotaler.

“John (Johnnie) Walker (1805 – 1857) was a Scottish grocer, who originated what would become one of the world’s most famous whisky brand names,Johnnie Walker, despite the fact he was himself a teetotaler”

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Walker_(grocer)

Tloewald• 12 years ago

I drink occasionally, at most two drinks (half Vietnamese; I fall asleep if I drink more). On average maybe one drink every two weeks. I've recently gone low carb, so even less moving forward.

The most alcoholic work environment I've known was Andersen Consulting. We had a well stocked open bar made available for every after hours gathering, including training. I started drinking Scotch because I hate Scotch, no-one seems to think less of someone who asks for Scotch, and could nurse a glass for an evening without a problem.

circlefavshape2• 12 years ago

I think fear of dependency is overstated. I have sex with my wife almost every day, and when she's away I miss it like hell. Regular sex makes me happier and more emotionally stable. Could I be addicted? Should I be worried?

Just because you like something doesn't mean you're an addict

partisan• 12 years ago

I was a non-drinker during college, but learned to enjoy drinking in social situations after graduating. I got to the point where I was becoming an amateur whiskey drinker, but stopped drinking when my wife got pregnant. That lasted about 7 months and I never really got the taste back.

We drink beer now, mostly Belgian, with dinner. One beer, two or three nights a week. I can't really stomach whiskey anymore if it's not in a mixed drink, whereas I used to drink it neat or on the rocks on a frequent basis. That said, a good mojito or caipirinha would make me pretty happy when I am out with friends.

My biggest motivation for laying off the drink was that our babies needed us and we needed to be there for them. They were helpless and being in a clear state of mind was the obvious way to make sure we could care for them. Now that they are a bit older (18 months), they want to play and I want to play with them so I still don't take to drinking too much.

easyfree37• 12 years ago

Huh? Burb!!

jwynia• 12 years ago

I used to not drink, partially on the basis that my understanding was that it is healthier. Then someone showed me the mountain of evidence for the positive health benefits of moderate drinking: http://www2.potsdam.edu/alcohol/AlcoholAndHealth.html#.UlasF...

Now, I drink moderately, an option that seems left out of most conversations about this topic. That means I never drink more than 3 "standard" drinks a day, rarely fewer than 1. I never drink those 3 any faster than an hour (because I'd never drink 3 glasses of anything else that fast either). At that rate, I'm never drunk. I'm never unable to drive a vehicle. I'm never foggy-headed or otherwise impaired. Likewise, I never have a hangover.

AznHisoka• 12 years ago

Geez, I must be living under a rock. I thought 'teetotaler' meant tea drinker, and OP was asking whether you drank alcohol or tea.

Ask HN: Are you a drinker or a teetotaler?

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