Already done this. As stated upthread, drinking does not mean Drunk, Drunk does not mean falling down pissing yourself. I’ve been to a lot of parties where there was no alcohol, no big deal, I just won’t sing Karoke.
To propose this are you willing to take the other side of the coin and go to a party and have a few drinks?
Since I started taking warfarin, I hardly drink at all. So: been there, done that.
I think the problem is not with your friends’ choice in beverages but with your choice in friends. I have a great time with mine, regardless of who’s been drinking and how much. (Including when everyone else has had quite a bit more than I have.) Certainly, I’ve shared the experience you describe, but only with people who aren’t that interesting to begin with.
Personally, I think a lot of beers and wines are delicious. I would happily continue to enjoy them even if they were magically non-intoxicating–more so, in fact, since I could drink as much as I wanted. Perhaps you just haven’t been exposed to enough to find one you’d enjoy, or perhaps our tastes simply differ. For example, there’s a good chance you like peanut butter, which I find disgusting. However, I’m willing to admit there’s at least a possibility that you’re not a complete moron for enjoying it. 
ETA: It is my impression of you that you have made a personal choice based on taste, taken some flak for it, and therefore scuffed up some moral high ground for youself so that when dedicated drinkers sneer at you you can sneer right back.
You could repeat this experiment with any number of activities. If I am at a party and everyone starts watching a football game, socializing with them becomes much less enjoyable. If I am at a party and the majority of people are gamers and wander off to do something game related, socializing with them becomes much less enjoyable. In other words: if you are the odd man out, you are likely to have less fun with the group. We drinkers really are having as good a time as we think we are in this case - that we’re annoying to you, as a sober person, is beside the point. Either pick up a drink, get to where you can play along sober, or go find a group that is more to your liking. Just as I would at the football party.
What makes you think I HAVEN’T been around booze and drinkers my whole life? What makes you think I HAVEN’T spent many an hour in bars? To the extent that drinking is about camaraderie, well, I’ve shared that camaraderie hundreds of times, while drinking nothing stronger than Coke.
I come from a very Irish family. Believe me, I’ve hung around with drinkers my whole life. I’m not the least bit judgmental about alcohol- frequently, I’ve had an absolute blast being around drinkers (it’s often interesting being the only sober person in a group; it can be fun to guess ahead of time who’s going to be a weepy drunk, who’s going to be an angry drunk, who’s going to be hilarious, who’s going to be the life of the party, who’s going to pass out quickly, who’s going to get aggressively horny…).
I don’t drink because I’ve never found an alcoholic beverage I liked. ALL beer tastes like swill to me. All wine tastes like sour grape juice to me. Cognac is repulsive to me, as is Scotch.
Perhaps that just means I have an unrefined palate. Regardless, there’s no point in trying to tell me “You just haven’t had the right experience.” People have TRIED countless times to prove to me that, if I don’t like beer, it’s just because I haven’t had GOOD beer. (I hate to tell you, but Keystone Light and microbrewed German beers BOTH taste lousy to me). People have tried to convince me that, if I don’t like wine, it’s just because I haven’t tasted the GOOD stuff (sorry, but vintage French cabernet sauvignons don’t taste any better to me than Boone’s Farm).
I’ve never cast ANY aspersions against my friends and relatives who drink. THEY, on the other hand, have often felt compelled to show me the error of my ways,
and find me some kind of alcoholic drink that I can enjoy. It hasn’t worked yet. A screwdriver is a waste of good orange juice, to me. A daiquiri isn’t bad, but I’d just as soon have a smoothie without the rum.
I’ve never tried to get a drinker on the wagon, but drinkers have often shown a missionarly-like zeal in trying to get me to drink.
In any case, why did I down those Scotches? Because this was an experiment. nothing more. My brothers wanted me to experience getting drunk, and I went with something that would do it fast. I HATED the taste, and tried to get the whole thing over with in a hurry.
Moral high ground? I don’t see any moral anything in my post; I’m trying to explain why I don’t see a value to the social lubrication that I might experience were I to take up drinking. If I were pathologically shy, or something, I might feel differently, but as it is it’s an “enhancement” that I would rather not have.
And I’ve tried a sip of a number of alcoholic beverages, and as I said, I don’t like the taste of any of them because regardless of other flavors they all taste like alcohol. Which tastes nasty.
Actually no, that is the point; acting in a way that I find annoying in my normal state because it is fun in some other altered state isn’t an idea that appeals to me.
Heh. I’m glad that the White Merlot I’ve been so enjoying lately gets me tipsy after the second glass (or third, depending on how fast I down it)! Otherwise, I might consume thousands of calories worth of delicious wines per night, put on 50 pounds without realizing it, then have to go “on the wagon”, like I do with Reese’s Cups! 
The tipsiness keeps me from downing them like swill!
Of course, that’s just me.
Wow. Those sound like the kinds of people who would be assholes under all kinds of circumstances! Listen: I’m a theist. I don’t shove my belief in a loving God down anyone’s throat. I’m an omnivore, but I don’t shove my love of a good bacon cheeseburger down a vegetarian’s throat (lol!). I drink alcohol, but if someone else chooses not to, I won’t be pushing them to “try just this one drink”.
If I do any of those things, I’m acting like an asshole. I don’t like to act like an asshole.
I think you’ve totally missed the point of my post. I’m talking about alteration in social behavior that comes well before “falling down pissing yourself”.
That would make you worthless!
Your father being a jerk doesn’t make all drinkers jerks.
That’s not really fair, though. You’re saying the reason you don’t drink is b/c you don’t like the taste. In that case, there’s nothing wrong with someone trying to find something you’ll like to drink. Based on this post, you’re saying the effects of alcohol aren’t the problem.
Hey, different strokes for different folks. Me, hyped up at a music event, would annoy me, trying to read a book quietly, even if I were sober in both states.
But I think we’re talking past each other. What I was saying was that sometimes I find myself with a group that is happily engaged in an activity that I find boring. It is up to me to either find some fun in it or remove myself from the situation. I don’t suggest to the football fans that they refrain from watching football because I think their enthusiasm makes them look foolish.
Reading through this thread, I noticed something interesting about myself. People who don’t drink don’t bother me. People who think alcohol is the devil are either twits or have spent too much time with twits. People who say they don’t like the taste are a challenge.
I have no idea why this is though. It doesn’t bother me that people don’t like the taste of specific drinks. But I really want to take those who don’t the taste of any booze, and sit them down, find out about what they like to eat, taste, texture, environment, all that, and what they like to drink, how they precieve differing flavors and textures and tempatures, and find them something to drink that they’d like. It’s really bugging me; if I don’t care that you drink in the first place, why does it bug me that you don’t like the taste?
Waitaminnit…
I’ve never eaten a fast-food hamburger, or bought or eaten anything from Taco Bell.
I seem to have non-addictive body chemistry. I smoked cigarettes semi-regularly for a while because I get a hell of a buzz from tobacco, but I never felt addicted and had no trouble quitting. Quitting isn’t even the right word, really. I stopped because my tobacco disappeared (I suspect my dad found it and threw it out). I still smoke occasionally (as in, once or twice a month). Similarly, although I’ve had periods where I over-indulged in alcohol, I’ve never felt a “need” to drink.
Not necessarily true. I started smoking pot with friends in college, but I got bupkis the first… shit, it must’ve been at least a dozen times, maybe even twenty. I’ve heard similar stories from friends of mine. Apparently, some people need to smoke several times before they feel the effects. No idea why.
Agreed, except for the mouth-punching. Can’t we just roll our eyes at them? This “people who don’t drink are boring prudes” / “getting drunk makes you stupid and/or mean” stuff is tiresome and annoying. I drink, some of my friends don’t, it’s never been an issue.
For me, I don’t need alcohol to enjoy a party, as long the guests are already friends of mine. If I’m socializing with people I don’t know, I’m awkward, overly self-conscious, and have a hard time making conversation. If I have a drink or two, my shyness and awkwardness fade away and I’m better able to socialize and enjoy myself.
Well, yes, and I don’t like to hang around people who are drinking past the point of silliness if I can gracefully remove myself. But, to take your example, the enthusiasm of people watching football (a sport I despise) is at least something I can relate to in general; I can’t get worked up about last-minute touchdowns but I can think of other things that would generate the same response from me. Drinking not so much; I can’t see a state where I would be happy to look back on “tipsy and acting like an idjit” and see that as situationally appropriate behavior.
More to the point, there is a cultural expectation that “having fun=drinking” that does not exist around football or gaming or other recreational choices. I’ve never got the “prude” “socially dysfunctional” “useless” reactions for saying I don’t like football that are being directed at the people who don’t like alcohol in this thread. In my everyday life I get along quite well socially while not drinking. But then I don’t exactly hang out with a wild party crowd.
Oh, man, you’re lucky. As a straight, youngish man in a major college football town, the idea that I don’t have any interest in the sport - no, not in any team at all, neither live nor on tv or even in a video game - has definitely earned me some flack. And some “What, so you think you’re too good to watch sports?” BS from others. So, when my friends gather to watch a game, I do something else.
I noticed you left off my last point about stopping people driving home afterwords. Deliberately?
In any case: Drinking = I have no problem with people doing so. Drunk = I don’t want to be around them. I hang out with people who don’t drink, or do so moderately. Many of those people used to drink to the point of getting drunk. None do so anymore that I know of.
One of the reasons I didn’t drink was because I was worried that I’d act like my father. The reason that I don’t drink now is that I can’t stand the smell of alcohol. It just smells nasty. Bad enough that I wouldn’t want to stick it in my mouth. And the one time I got a virgin ceasar mixed up with a real one, even with the smell of clamato blocking the alcohol, the thing tasted ‘wrong’ as in I need to spit this out now wrong.
A few years ago when I was 37 I found out I was adopted. Since then I’ve met my biological father. Keep in mind that we’ve never met before this time and I had no knowledge of his existence. Our lives have had many amazing parallels, not the least of which that neither of us drink. He can’t stand the taste of the stuff. So, I wonder if there is a biological component here as taste and smell are closely related.
Wrong again. Seriously, why do people who don’t drink or go to bars think they’re the authority on drunk behavior? Sometimes people behave stupidly while drunk. Sometimes people behave stupidly during a heated debate. To say that drinking will eventually make you act like an “idjit” is a pure, steaming pile of you-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-you’re-talking-about bullshit. Where do you even get this from? Those frat boys you saw puking on the lawn? You do realize on any given night, you’re interacting with people who have had a few, don’t you? Of course not, because according to you, people who have been drinking will inevitably behave stupidly, so if someone is carrying on like anyone else, clearly sobriety is afoot.
Meh, I like the sauce. Sue me.
I see. Maybe my mistake is I’m hanging out with grown ups. Yes, I’ve been the undrunk person before, and I’ve found the people I don’t like sober, I don’t like drunk. Everyone else is cool.
Stop making sense. Else I’ll report you to the mods!
Hey! What’d I say about that?!
Yes, deliberately. You want me to sing the praises of driving while drunk? I’m not disagreeing that drunk people shouldn’t drive home. My point was being drunk does not equal throwing up, or whatever else nonsense you describe. It can, but for most reasonable adults, it shouldn’t. This isn’t freshman year, people. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a beer. Just because we’re getting drunk doesn’t mean we have to turn this into a chugging competition. Drink your beer, talk about the news, then call a cab home. Nobody has to throw up.
Have you thought that what I’m calling drunk is having so much alcohol that you act in the way I’ve described? What you consider to be drunk may be what I consider nothing to write home about.
Okay, so you define being drunk as being a drunk asshole. I define it as being drunk. We’ll have to just disagree then, which is fair enough.
Drunk driving is never right, but sometimes the kids need to get to school.