I have genuinely never had a sip of alcohol in my life. It’s just amazing how people still almost constantly try to get me to start. They seem offended as if I personally attacked them when I refuse. Could you imagine someone getting offended because you didn’t want to do heroin with them?
Almost everyone in my family is some form of an addict, and they all say they could definitely quit anytime they want to, even the one who mixes alcohol with coffee in the mornings and who gets drunk almost every night. The societal level of denial when it comes to alcohol is amazing, people treat addiction like it’s just a snack-eating habit and not drinking literal poison. A lot of my family basically just treats it as a snack that they “munch” on throughout the day. The physical and cognitive decline over the decades is readily apparent.
I clearly remember the amount of pressure I was under to start drinking myself to death the second I turned 21. I said no. One of the best decisions I ever made. But how is a 21 year old kid supposed to make a clear-minded decision when drinking is almost universally normalized and encouraged, so much so that they’ve probably already gotten dangerously drunk several times over by the time they’re 16? (at least, that was the norm where I grew up)