Idk if “little experience” means something in English, but what I meant is non-life changing/threatening. Things that would otherwise go unnoticed.
For me, it was when I stopped drinking acoholic beverages because… I ended up finding it boring, I guess.
I started noticing how low key hostile my environment is towards people who dont drink. People started thinking I was sick, depressed, converted to islam, being snob, etc.
Bartenders started to openly mock me when I asked for a lemonade (they still do) : “We dont do that here”, “Go to a physician if you need that”, “you’re in a bar you know ?”.
I started realizing how hostile my country/region/groups can be to people who dont drink. Never realized that before.
Edit : typo
France (north). I’m now deserting bars too, yes. There’s just some times I can’t avoid them, i.e. meeting people during a train stop, at the bar near the train station. If it’s not too late, I’m ordering coffee now.
I’m from France too and always disliked the taste of alcohol. Being young in France, it was frustrating the amount of time I had to fend off people who were trying to make me drink. And like you, sometimes they’d make stupid guesses about why, sometimes getting intentionally insulting.
Eventually, I got used to telling people that I was “trying to stop drinking”, implying that I was struggling to, because that people were actually respectful of and they’d leave me alone.
Eventually I went to live a year abroad (see my other comment), and realized people never reacted even once when I’d tell them I didn’t drink. French culture is great in a lot of ways, but there’s really something wrong with this.
I still live abroad today, and no one bothers me about it. Obviously it’s not the reason I live where I live, but damn I don’t miss the snarky booze-related remarks.
The peer pressure is pretty similar here in germany: “You can have a beer and still drive” - Yeah, but I don’t want to “Beer is not even ‘real’ alcohol”, “You can have a Radler it only has 2% alcohol”, “real germans don’t drink non-alcoholic beer”.
I have to say that I did not always dislike alcohol. It was actually the other way around and I consumed far too much. Not that I needed it to survive throughout the day, but I had hangovers pretty much every weekend. So, by now I only drink 2-3 times a year, because also it does interfere with my sports activity a lot. But it hate it if peole are pulling up answers and excuses like the above.
But what I also noticed when I was in france is, that for many people wine is also like a normal drink and it’s perfectly fine to have 1-2 glasses of red wine for lunch. Also something, thats the same in germany, especially bavaria, but with another drink. If you have a glass of wine for lunch you’re considered an alcoholic, if you have a beer it’s normal since you’re in germany.
head shaking
Yeah, I heard those replies too.
I was especially shocked it took my closest friends a long time to understand it didn’t mean I was distancing from them. Even 4 years later, from time to time, I still hear those.