Peridyd's Progress

I just got back from a very brief trip to Seattle. Met with some very cool people; went out to dinner and had some great Thai food in Bothell at Pen. Had a wonderful garlic chicken dish, 4/5 spicy, and boy do they ever mean that it's spicy. Despite my heavy consumption of beverages due to the piquancy of the dish, I'd highly recommend it.

An interesting thing arises when I socialize with people for the first time. Someone will inevitably notice that I don't drink. Nonplussed by my abstemiousness (is that a word?), the individual typically gives me the once-over, waiting for me to provide the "why" behind this curious anomaly. "Am I an alcoholic?" Well, no. "Then why don't you drink?" Hmm.

Those who know me know that the pat answer is "Because I'm a meditator." Yet, truthfully, I think I could quit meditating, and I still wouldn't drink. Intoxication just flat-out doesn't appeal to me any more. It once did. Now it doesn't. Being high, even just a little bit, sucks.

My point is not to proselytize tea-tottling. Nor am I interested in bragging about the fact that I don't drink. I just find it interesting to live in a culture in which the only normal reason for not drinking is alcoholism. Other non-normative, but acceptable, answers are, "I'm a Mormon," or "I'm Muslim." (Interesting how neither of those communities is fully trusted or fully vested in white Americana.) Drinking isn't just acceptable, it's a marker of normative behavior. Performing a simple substitution of pot for a drink points to how strange this is. Or better still in terms of the danger of the intoxicant to the user/abuser, substitute cocaine for booze, and it gets to the heart of the problem. Imagine asking someone when there's an eight ball of coke or crystal lined on the coffee table, "I don't understand. Why is it that you don't you want any?"

Given the fact that it's somehow unthinkable to many that I wouldn't drink, isn't it obvious why I don't?