Alcohol

Theese last nine months, I have been drinking a lot less than I have before (a lot because my BF does not drink at all, and I am thankful to him for that) and it makes me upset how this fact is treated in the group of friends I used to hang around in. The last two times when I have been there with them on a saturday night I have gotten the questions: "Why don´t you drink more?" "You used to drink a lot more?" and I have almost been forced to drink, by getting a glass of alcohol in my hand and constantly beeing watched with statements like: "alcohol is not that dangerous, drink it up!" "why is your drink not disappearing?" "there is a lot of alcohol, don´t let it go to waste!" All of theese accusations and questions has the understatement of: " "you are a partykiller, you should not even be here if you are not going to drink".
I have been there myself, thinking that you are a nerd if you are not drinking, and thinking that this person must have a stick up his/her ass because of not drinking alcohol. The first time when I remember thinking this was when I was maybe 9 years old and we were on a vacation with my parents. They met this single woman who was travelling with her kid, and they invited her over for a chat, which was nice of course. But my parents always drank a lot of drinks in the evenings, usually until my mum was talking with a drunken slur. This woman told them that she did not like to drink a lot, and when she started feeling just a bit tipsy, she said she did not want anymore. My parents kept forcing her to drink more, and I was there with them. I was a 9 year old kid thinking: "is she a nerd or something, why does she not drink more?" And I thought it was a good thing my parents forced her to drink more, they were cool, as they could drink so much alcohol. When I was a teenager I was like my parents, I was the worst on forcing other people to drink, and now I can understand better how uncomfortable I must have made theese people.
When we were travelling in Italy and we were walking around the city on a saturday night, we saw a lot of people sitting in the ice cream bars late at night just socializing. Why does that never happen here in the nordic countries? Why does alcohol always have to be the thing that makes us social in the weekends up here?
It is not long ago when I was still thinking that it was odd that some people don´t drink a lot of alcohol. They go trough their weekends and holidays without drinking a lot, without getting drunk and without even reflecting on the fact that they are not drinking alcohol. I have started to understand them a lot more, and I am becoming them, and it feels good. It feels like a relief, like I don´t HAVE to drink a lot of alcohol to be normal. But I also need to point out, that I do enjoy a glass or two of wine every now and then, and I do get tipsy. I am still drinking alcohol, maybe just not the same amount and as often as before.
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alkohol, fylla, grogg, Norden