Choice

A Short List of Reasons Not to Drink That Are Nobody's Business

Differ* 3 min read

We wrote about what to say when someone asks why you're not drinking. This is the other half of it: the reasons themselves, and the fact that you are not required to hand any of them over.

Because the reason is almost never the point. Somebody asks, you give an answer, and the answer becomes a topic — which is precisely what you were trying to avoid when you decided to keep it short.

Here's a partial list. Not to arm you with better excuses. To make the point that the list is long, most of it is private, and the person asking hasn't earned any of it.

Reasons that are nobody's business

  1. You're driving. The only one everyone accepts instantly, which is interesting, because it's the one about other people's safety rather than yours.
  2. You're on medication. Extremely common, entirely private, and not something anyone should have to disclose at a bar to justify a soda.
  3. You're pregnant, or trying, or neither, and you'd rather not be discussing it in a room full of people.
  4. You don't like it. Underrated. Some people simply don't enjoy the taste, and are then made to explain this as though it were a policy position.
  5. It's a Tuesday. No further detail available.
  6. You've got something early. Work, a flight, a parent arriving, a run you'll probably skip.
  7. Religion. Roughly a quarter of the planet, and a large share of this country. Also the one people are most likely to interrogate, which is a poor showing.
  8. You're the one getting everyone home.
  9. It doesn't agree with you. Sleep, headaches, your stomach, the day after. Your body, your data.
  10. Money. Drinks are expensive and nobody wants to say so out loud at a table where the bill is being split.
  11. You had a lot last week. Self-regulating without announcing it is normal behaviour, not a confession.
  12. Someone in your family has a problem with it. The most common private reason there is, and the last one anybody should be asked to say at a party.
  13. You're in recovery. Not a talking point. Not a story anyone is owed. Not a cue for questions.
  14. You want to remember tonight.
  15. No reason. The strongest one, and the one people find hardest to accept — which says more about the question than the answer.

Notice what that list is doing

Read it again and the shape becomes obvious.

Several of those are medical. Several are family. One is faith. One is money. A few are just preference, which ought to be enough on its own and somehow isn't.

So when someone asks why you're not drinking, they're opening a door onto a list where most of the entries are health, religion, finances or family trauma — four things nobody would dream of asking about directly. The question only feels casual because it's arrived attached to a glass.

This is the actual argument for the short answer. Not evasion. It's that any specific answer, true or not, tells the room which shelf your reason came off.

The numbers, briefly

It also helps to know you are not the outlier the room implies you are.

India's National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019–21) found roughly 22% of men and 1% of women reported consuming alcohol. Most of this country does not drink, most of the time.

Globally the direction is the same. The IWSR reported no- and low-alcohol volumes up 13% across ten major markets in 2024, and — the part that gets left out of trend pieces — most of that growth comes from people who also drink alcohol, switching within an evening rather than picking a team.

Not a movement. Just a lot of people, on a lot of nights, having something else.

If you're the one asking

Short version: don't.

If you need something to say, "can I get you anything?" does the entire job of hospitality with none of the interrogation. It's an offer rather than an audit, and it doesn't require anyone to open the list.

Pushing past it — even warmly, even as a joke — is asking somebody to disclose something in public that you wouldn't ask about in private. Though most of the pressure isn't social so much as structural: a shelf with one real option on it is what turns a preference into a question you have to answer. Differ* is five, which fixes nobody, because nobody here is broken.

Your mood. Your move.

Sources

Differ*