Socially, at a wine tasting or dinner party, generally not to excess. (sometimes)
At home with dinner, wine or beer usually, sometimes a fine rum or JW Blue as an aperitif. (sometimes/often)
When I feel like tying one on (like a few days ago. I’m no longer welcome at Senor Frogs)(once or twice a year)
I enjoy all manners of drink, except the really cheap stuff. I haven’t met a liquor, beer or wine that I wouldn’t have a glass of in the name of exploration. I’ve got an entire kitchen cabinet dedicated to the stuff and a place of honor for the JW Blue, Ron Zacapa Centenario XO and Pyrat rums and Laphroaig 30 year. Also a big fan of good, old ports and hearty Cabernets.
It’s a vice I intend to maintain until I am no longer able, though I don’t abuse it, so that may be a very long time.
When I drink, it’s because I like to enjoy the complex interaction of many flavours. Because alcohol is so volatile, it’s a wonderful carrier of flavours to the nose. I enjoy mostly dry red wines, cabs and shirazes, and darker ales, along with the occasional single malt, Irish Whiskey, or rye & ginger too.
I started drinking wine with water when I was about 12 with my family at Sunday dinners. Dad asked me to promise him that I would have my first beer with him. Yeah, it was a way to allow him to decide when I could start, but when it happened (I was 16) it felt like a special rite of passage to manhood, and it was nice to share it with Dad. I was taught the basics of wine & booze in my family, so when I turned “legal” drinking age, it was a total no big deal.
I have never drunk “for effect” out of a general philosophical opposition to mind altering drugs, although I have “goofed-up” a few times, often with a compounding factor like Benadryl or dehydration.
My husband is pretty much exactly like you. I don’t think he’s even had a sip of alcohol, though–he can’t get beyond the smell of it. He has exactly zero desire to drink alcohol, not even wine or beer.
I definitely drink. I like wine (unoaked varieties), beer (dark and strong), vodka, and rye whiskey. Occasionally, in the summer, I like fruit ciders, although those can be too sweet for my taste.
I like the feeling of being slightly buzzed. It’s a really nice relaxed, open feeling. I enjoy the different perception you get when altering, even mildly, your state of consciousness.
Sometimes I like being really buzzed. Generally when I’m PMSing. I like putting on some music, opening up a bottle, getting slightly hammered, and doing housework. Hey, it can even make housework fun.
I hate misjudging when I’ve had enough (which is very easy to do when you get a little buzzed–you start thinking that MORE is BETTER!). If I drink too much, I do get a hangover, and they’re pretty much as horrible as you’ve probably heard. Plus, you’ve done it to yourself, and no one feels sorry for you.
I drink because I like the taste and because I like a little buzz. I won’t drink something I don’t enjoy just to get buzzed (well, in my youth I did, but no longer.)
I’m 34. I have a fruit-y drink maybe three or four times a year. When I have it, I drink maybe an inch of it. I like the taste of sweet drinks, and a slight tinge of liquor. No beer, no wine - don’t like the taste.
I don’t drink to become intoxicated; in fact, due to some weird quirk of my body chemistry, I don’t process alcohol very well and I don’t think I can get drunk - I’d be horribly ill well before meeting that point.
However, if I feel like a midori and lemonade, I go right ahead and have it. I might only have half a glass, but that’s okay - I don’t drink in pubs, so making it at home I can make a half-glass serve and nobody laughs (and no money is wasted on a half-drunk drink).
I like the taste of some alcohols, don’t like the taste of others, and if I feel like one I’ll have one. But never very much of it; I can tell before even taking a sip if this is one of those days where any alcohol will result in hours in the bathroom, or whether a glass is okay.
My friends have never made me feel like I’m no fun just because I rarely drink - even as teens, there was never any pressure.
I drink because I like the tastes. To me, beer is food, and is treated as such. I’ve brewed my own for over 30 years, and would distill my own if it wasn’t fer them danged Revenoors!
A single-malt scotch or small-batch bourbon can be a thing of beauty.
Correction: Actually, I did get drunk - once. The very first time I went out ‘drinking’. I went straight from tipsy to what I’m fairly sure was borderline alcohol poisoning with no warning whatsoever.
I vomited for six hours, went to bed, got up 2 hours later (still extremely drunk - and no, I don’t like the sensation), and had to go to lunch 4 hours after that. Needless to say, I didn’t eat. I felt horribly weird and disassociated from everything for the rest of the day.
This. I’ve only had a mild hangover once, and no memory loss; that was also the only time I’ve thrown up from drinking. I often have a single beer or glass of wine with dinner for the pleasure of the flavor and the possible health benefits.
I also enjoy homebrewing beer - it’s kind of like making liquid bread, and the experience of the improving flavor with aging is very interesting. It’s a fun hobby for me.
I don’t really drink because I don’t like the taste of it. I’d much rather drink a cherry coke any day than a ANY beer. I’ll drink wine sometimes, but that’s more for the doctors sorta reasons for health. But i’ve not really drank anything in nearly 6months, and before that occaison, I hadn’t had anything for 6months prior to that one time. So it sorta comes and goes in spurts. I do like the taste of Cider though, but again, I just never had an interest in desiring to get intoxicated or to really enjoy the taste of beers especially.
I used to drink in my last year of college, more often socially than not, but with all of those friends moving away, that’s been drastically reduced. And before that year, I hadn’t really even touched alcohol. But again, I just tend not to, due to the taste of it.
I’m 23 in less than 2 months for what its worth. I could see myself drinking wine and ciders in the future, and probably some spirits socially with company, but never Beer again. Just no desire there.
I really enjoy a glass or two of wine with a good dinner. It’s not absolutely necessary, but for me it completes the meal in a way that nothing else does.
I’ll occasionally have beer, if something I like is on tap (rather than bottled). I’ll also sometimes go drinking with friends and have mixed drinks, and in that case it’s more for the effect of the alcohol than the taste.
I do enjoy the buzz. In moderation, it’s relaxing and makes me laugh, smile, and joke a bit more readily. But it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. I have a friend who will get crabby and pissy about 1/3 of the time he drinks, occasionally to the point of being obnoxious and intolerable. He’d be far, far better off setting himself a strict limit and sticking to it, but he doesn’t.
So I understand why there are a variety of views on the topic.
I’ll have a mixed drink now and then, but I really don’t like it that much. I don’t like beer and don’t like hard liquor, either. Wine…eh. Not much experience, but not much interest, either. The alcohol taste has to be cut with something. I’ll drink something like Smirnoff Ice, but I figure at that point I might as well have a soda and not get all silly and sleepy. Unless I want to get all silly and sleepy, which only occurs maybe once a year.
Whenever I do have alcohol, it’s at dinner with other people who are having drinks. I got my boozin’ fix over in college and I don’t really care that much anymore. (Embarrassingly drunk, check. Wanna puke and then die, check. Bad hangover, check. All done with that, thanks.) I’ll pretty much only order one of these three things: a glass of plum wine, a cosmopolitan, or a strawberry daiquiri (depending on the setting). If one of those is appropriate and available, I’ll have one if I’m feeling like it. Everything else…nah. I’m also a lightweight, and I don’t know whether it’s caused by my lack of drinking or it’s the effect of my lack of drinking.
I’ve run into a couple people who are all touchy about it, but only a couple. (Curiosity can usually be settled with my cheerful “two-glasses-of-champagne-at-my-friend-Heather’s-wedding” hangover story. I didn’t deserve that hangover at all.) One was an asshole ex-boyfriend who had nothing wholesome in mind, and the other was a friend who I was irritated with for a while. The friend actually told me he thought it was “hostile” when my husband or I didn’t order alcohol, and when questioned, explained that we just really didn’t really drink. (My husband doesn’t drink at all.) He thought we owed the group more of an explanation or something, so we wouldn’t seem judgmental. Me ordering a cranberry juice is judgmental? Me saying, “I just don’t drink very often,” is judgmental? Screw that. It’s not like I’m storming the place to smash bottles of vodka in the streets while screaming about the sins of alcohol.
My drugs of choice are caffeine and cheeseburgers. People are welcome to have a salad and a glass of water while I ingest them.
I’m an anti-alcoholic. I enjoy it. Frequently. Less so now, but in the past I’d drink a couple of drinks a night, 3 or 4 nights a week.
Then I’d go for a month without touching it.
I’d get worried about the amounts I was drinking and test my desire for it and pretty much found out I could take or leave it as necessary, and wasn’t particularly getting a high tolerance for it.
Woke up this morning with a mild hangover after drinking with an internet group of pals last night (it’s less wierd than it appears. With audio and video, it’s like hanging out at the bar…without the smoke…and you can hear the other people talk…and there’s no drive home.)
Prior to last night’s bender, I’d reckon it’s been a couple of months since I got that drunk. A double Martini will still get me flying. (Gin, stirred, olive, dirty, you savages.) At 6’5" and 270 lbs, I think I’m doin’ pretty alright, especially since the frequency is dropping.
I drink mostly to be social. I like some forms of alcohol for the taste, but more often than not we’re all out at a bar and it’s nice to get a bit of a buzz on whatever’s cheap. My problem is that I’m a real lightweight, so the line between sober and smashed is very fine for me. I’ve discovered that if I do a shot first and then nurse a bottle or so of cider of the rest of night, I can maintain an optimal level of drunkenness. I think the last time I was a bit plastered was in April, for my birthday. Back when I was a student we’d get hammered at least once a week. Those were good times.
In England (I don’t know about America) there is a very strong culture of drinking to get completely and utterly wasted. I have just graduated from university and particularly in the first couple of years my housemates who i lived with would go out 6nights out of 7 just to get smashed and then lie in bed all day the next day feeling awful.
I have never really understood the appeal of that. When i have been drunk it has been awful, really awful.
It has made me feel slightly left out to a certain extent. I wonder why I haven’t gone with the social norm, but having said that it is not something that bothers me that much-not to the extent it makes me want to do it anyway.
Now I have left university things have changed anyway and lots of my friends don’t drink so much now. I think having 9-5 jobs changes things a lot.
I drink very occasionally, as I happen to like the taste of certain drinks. But since it makes me dizzy real fast, and I associate dizzy with “trip to the ER” (I have low blood pressure), I never go beyond half a glass. Heck, the last time I drank it was half a pint of cider and I was dizzy I’m told this is considered a desirable effect by those who drink, not because they enjoy the drink itself, but in order to get drunk.
Another desirable effect seems to be “growing the ability to clown about.” Since I can do this sober just fine so long as I’m not in an agressive environment (i.e., I won’t do it while some stinky breathed person is insisting upon wrapping him/herself over my shoulders uninvited claiming that I’m a spoilsport cos I’m not as drunk as s/he is), I have no need to drink.
I’m female, 40yo, from Spain and when I was growing up there was no “binge drinking culture” - there is one now.
Oh, last week one day there was a chicken in sauce for lunch. After lunch I was totally lethargic and had to drink a can of Coke to wake up; it left me with the shakes and still unable to focus, but awake… enough to discover that the damn sauce had whisky.
I drink very rarely, maybe once or twice per year. It generally makes me a little more chatty, a little less inhibited, and I’m more prone to exhibit silliness.
I don’t drink more often than that because it seems pretty pointless. Once in a while, for fun, with friends? Sure. I dislike the taste, mostly, and I simply don’t have opportunities to drink much or go out to drink much, working on the night shift.
I also have a lot of alcoholics in the family and have seen the damage it can do, and would rather not risk it.
I’m told this is considered a desirable effect by those who drink, not because they enjoy the drink itself, but in order to get drunk.