Living in an alcohol-normative world
Tags: Mental Health, Society, Alcohol

Some background…I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my entire life. In fact, the mere thought of it brings me overwhelming sadness. There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t think about someone drinking, or see a picture, or an ad, or contest, or social media post mentioning it, and just destroys my mood, sometimes for hours, sometimes all day.

Drinking alcohol was never a choice for me, I didn’t actively choose to be this way. From as far back as I can remember, I’ve had this feeling. It hasn’t changed for my entire life. I turn 44 in 2021. I was born this way.

No one in my family was an alcoholic, no bad things happened to me as a child as a result of it. This is just who I have always been. I see alcohol, and I get sad. It’s not a religious belief, it wasn’t taught to me, it’s just me.

I am incapable of understanding why people would want to drink, or feel any kind of intoxication of any kind. It’s completely incomprehensible to me. I’ve talked to friends and strangers, read articles on why people drink, I’ve been to bars, I’ve seen friends and strangers drunk, interacted with them. I’ve had in depth discussions on the topic, and it still, 4 decades later, eludes me.

The first time I ever even saw alcohol in person, I was 10 or 11 years old, my family had an argument one evening, and my grandma pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels from the pantry. I had no clue we even owned any. She sat it on the coffee table, didn’t even open it, just sat it there to show my mom and dad how stressed she was because of the fight. I saw that bottle and absolutely lost my mind, in my world, she’d just put a gun on the table and threatened to shoot herself. I cried, hysterically, screamed, begged her not to touch it. I would have done anything! In the end, she never opened it, and life resumed. Even at that age, I knew.

I was not born to live in an alcohol-normative world.

In our society, alcohol is just a given. Not doing it is seen as odd or unusual. People ask “why?”. People do it everywhere, it’s in grocery stores, in movies and on TV, sporting events, you name it. With zero consideration to those like me, assuming there is anyone else like me. I live in a society that considers me an oddity and does not care how these acts impact me as a person. I see people post stories showing negative images with trigger warnings, but immediately thereafter, post a pic of them holding a beer, or drinking some wine, with no regard that it might cause someone distress.

This is an alcohol-normative world, one in which those that don’t consume alcohol are seen as others, unusual, and not worthy of consideration.

I’ve been to therapy, spent years trying to work on my reactions, some of it has helped a bit, but I shouldn’t have to spend years working on myself, because no one can be bothered to care how I feel. I do have friends that don’t drink around me, and I love them more than I can express, but they still drink, and I’m still sad knowing that.

I wasn’t cut out to live in this world, I don’t belong here, and I truly wish more people cared, or even understood. I don’t write this for sympathy, or to condemn peoples actions. I, honestly, don’t know why I wrote it, to be honest. I had to get my feelings out of my head, somehow.

If anyone reads this and it impacts them somehow, I hope it’s a positive one. If no one does, than at least I expressed it into the universe.

Be well, alcohol-normative world. Try to remember some of us don’t like living here.