Many of you know I won't touch alcohol. I think by the time you get to 24 there's something to be said for that, though I wonder how many people have been satisfied with my explaination as to why I don't drink. Well, here it is:

If you'd have asked me that question when I was 15, I would have said that I didn't want to drink until I was old enough. The fact that many of my peers were drinking at that point didn't encourage me at all, quite the reverse actually when I found out what they'd been up to as a result. One person had smashed up a car at the age of 14, for example. And he wasn't one of the better people I knew at school (bearing in mind this was about 10 years ago, I met this same guy a few years back and he's got himself sorted out now so fair play to him.) So I guess drinking was something I came to associate with the wrong sort of people and the wrong sort of behaviour; I was quite well behaved and most of the time I didn't give a shit what those people thought of me, as their opinion counted for very little. So I certainly never felt the need to drink to 'fit in.' It was all I could do to make sure I kept out of it!

By the time I got to be 18, I'd seen enough. I'd seen alcohol bring out the very worst in the very best of people. I'd hear tales around school and 6th form about what people had done when they'd been drinking and the mess they had got in to afterwards, and I remember thinking 'You're actually proud of this!?' When I finally go around to seeing in person what happens, I was actually fearing for the safety of some people I was around at the time, they were that far out of it. So the idea of watching people get drunk was after that point something I tried to keep out of as well. It wasn't a conscious descision never to drink, but that's near enough the reason I've never had any desire to do so.

And here we come to the part that might not go down too well with some people, 'cause I've been holding this back for a while. Naturally some of my friends got caught up in all this as well, and spent a large percentage of the year we were all 18/19 getting hammered as a competetive sport. But, as I've already explained, this didn't sit well with me. I'd quite frequently get invited to a night out up town, and I almost always turned it down. I did try, once, and I didn't enjoy it at all; because I make a point of keeping away from alcohol I find drunk people very difficult to deal with. Standing around the civic hall amongst a hell of a lot of people I didn't know, and the few people I did know being that out of it I probably wouldn't have recognised them if I hadn't been blessed with eyesight, was not in the slightest bit enjoyable, and I've never done it since. Oh, I made up every excuse not to come out, the fact that I work on Sundays being my usual choice, because at the end of the day how do you turn round to your best friends and say 'I've got a real problem with what you're doing?' If you can manage that, I would suggest you have a strength of character that we don't share. Sometimes I would still go out with them, birthday meals are the usual reason, but I would always bail out before things would get too bad. Who else would leave a party at 9pm?

That was 5 years ago, and they've calmed down a bit now thank heavens. I'm 24 now, and with the exception of the one time I tried a drink, (the guy offered to let me try some of his to see if I'd like it, I thought that was fair,) I've never drunk alcohol. And with that fact, I have for a long time carried a small quiet pride. True, I've never really enjoyed a night out, but nor have I stood outside a pub being sick all over the floor, as I had the pleasure of witnessing one night in Dudley a couple of months ago. Nor have I had to withstand the shame of my behaviour being described to me the following day, and that is very important to me because the last thing I need is to create more things in my life I need to be ashamed of. My friends know me well enough by now to avoid pressing the matter, they just let me get on with it and I am very grateful for that. There are a few people who don't know me very well at all who think that I can be 'ersuaded' into drinking, well I fucking can't. I'll stick to my principles to the point of being offended if the matter can't be dropped; if anyone tries to force me to drink all I will do is fuck off home.

Am I afraid of it? Yes, I suppose I am, and I hope it's for the right reasons. As I say, I've seen what alcohol does. I've also seen the horror stories on the news and documentaries, (thankfully I've never seen anything that bad in person.) And I also know what I'm like. If you know how much chocolate I eat and how much coke I drink you'll probably have some idea as well. It does not take me long to succumb to addiction. And I haven't got the most stable personality in the world; I'm certainly capable of being a complete tit without alcohol, as I have proved many times to a great many people. I prefer not to think about what drinking will make me in to. That is a question to which I never want to hear the answer.

So I continue to avoid drinking, and every day, every year I don't drink is another year I will feel more proud of doing so, and another year I'll feel safe in the knowlege that I've never been all that bad.

That's why.

matt486