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
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.