Why is *not* drinking taboo?

Let's talk it out.

I’ve been reassessing my relationship with alcohol on and off over the last five-ish years. So I want to use this essay to kick off a conversation about alcohol, sobriety, and socializing. We’ve discussed sobriety in Diem a number of times, led by sober author Sarah Levy, and I know it can still feel super uncomfortable to talk about drinking/not drinking with friends, especially in social situations where people often, well, drink.

To get the conversation rolling, I’ll share my own experience! My parents were always very forthcoming with letting my sister and I try alcohol at a young age, which I think normalized it for me early on. I never felt like I needed to secretly drink or drink to excess as a form of rebellion. My mum also stopped drinking when I was about 16 (~13 years ago, a pioneer!) as it made her feel terrible, so perhaps she also normalized the idea of not drinking if you don’t like it. My mum has told me that she got a lot of weird comments when she quit drinking in social settings. At the same time, I grew up in the UK, and for those of you who are unfamiliar, there’s huge binge-drinking culture there. Alcohol is deeply ingrained in British culture and rejecting it can feel like a rejection of the culture itself (it’s almost unpatriotic!). I started drinking at parties around 14-15 years old (who remembers Smirnoff Ice and WKDs??), and as I’ve written about before, I went through a “Club Emma” phase where I drank excessively. At that time, it was ‘cool’ to be drunk all of the time. Nowadays, I do enjoy a nice glass of wine or cocktail, but I’ve still noticed a lot of weirdness from friends when I do choose to drink less.

Upon reflection, I think I’ve always had a low level of shame around the fact that I don’t love drinking, and I also don’t really enjoy taking drugs (apart from the occasional joint/weed gummy!). My lack of interest stems from a combination of having a truly terrible level of tolerance for both drugs and alcohol—I’ve been known to be hungover for three days after three drinks (I wish I was joking!). My anxiety also goes through the roof after weekends when I drink (to the point of a hangover), and when you’re running a company, you’re already living with permanent baseline anxiety.

Over the past few years, a lot of my friends have started to explore not drinking for various reasons, from wanting to improve mental health to simply acknowledging that alcohol is “bad” overall. I’ve also noticed in social settings that, when someone says they’re not drinking, people are…weird about it! I’ve observed that a lot of people associate “not drinking” with “not fun,” which feels off to me. When I asked Diemers about their relationship to alcohol, many expressed similar feelings within their social circles when they opt to not drink.

A few interesting tangents I want to bring up that are related to this conversation:

1. The first is “Mommy Wine Culture.” There are so many Facebook groups with names like “Mommy Needs Wine” and drinking is so prolific in motherhood culture that wine is even called “mom’s juice” online. Interestingly, while wine moms definitely existed pre-social internet, it was internet meme culture that provided a real moment of relatability for mothers everywhere. The phrase “wine mom” was popularized in the mid-2010s, when it became normal for moms to joke in groups that they couldn’t survive motherhood without a drink. According to Noreen Farrell, a gender justice expert with The Equal Rights Advocates, wine may be increasingly marketed to (and consumed) by moms because they carry disproportionate levels of parenting stress. She said this results from decades’ worth of discriminatory hiring practices, gender pay inequalities, and persistent sexist familial caregiving expectations. Lisa Jacobson, an associate history professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who researches families as well as food and drink culture, told The Atlantic that she recognized instantly why “wine mom” humor resonates with mothers. It “allows women to embrace their identity as mothers, while also refusing to be solely defined by that role.” She sees wine mom culture as “a vaguely feminist rejection of the vision of the traditional self-sacrificing ‘homemaker’ mom that’s been memorialized in the 1950s sitcoms.” At the same time, Jacobsen acknowledges that perhaps the culture is a reflection of the fact modern parenting has become more consuming and isolating than it was historically.

2. I also stumbled upon this exploration into the sexist history of access to drinking in public spaces. As with everything, drinking was a male-only activity in centuries prior, back when women were confined to the home while men could frequent bars, which were public places where women weren’t initially welcome. When women were allowed to drink publicly, geographer Claire Herrick writes that women were expected to drink a half pint or “fortified wines.” Things started to change in the sixties when wine was available to buy in the grocery store. Dr Amanda Atkinson, a senior researcher with the Public Health Institute, has argued that "as women became more liberated and economically independent, they began to participate in drinking, but were morally judged for doing so by transcending traditional notions of femininity. For example, they [could] be labeled as lacking femininity, as being sexually promiscuous, as being 'out of control' when intoxicated and neglectful of traditional roles (e.g. mothers, wives and carers, passive, domestic)." There appears to be a common thread between women’s liberation and drinking, as drinking was a vice to reject femininity, enabling women to become drunk and “unladylike.” Initially, being drunk was literally seen as a feminist statement by many. Fascinating!

But now I want to hear from you, what’s your relationship to alcohol? How has it changed over time? Do you get weird vibes from friends when you don’t drink? When you do drink? Are you a “wine mom”? I’d love to hear anything this topic brings up for you, here.

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PSA! Keep your eyes peeled for next week. We’re inviting you to join something very cool! Refer a friend to give them first access too <3

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What we’re reading…

A step towards a contraceptive pill for men? (The Economist)

TikTok’s ‘Scar Girl’ is a sign the Internet is broken (The Atlantic)

Feeling unsatisfied? Blame Romantic Consumerism (The Cut)

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Till next week,

Emma

co-founder, Diem

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