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Photo: Christian Ohde / imago images / Christian Ohde
A classic New Year's resolution is: less alcohol.
This is often a nice try.
An attempt to become a better or at least a healthier person, a person without memory gaps or beer belly, whatever, it usually doesn't work.
It would be better to make realistic resolutions that you can actually keep, for example: Keep drinking - but without penetrating other people with the question of why they are not drinking.
Margarete Stokowski, arrow to the right
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Rosanna Graf
Born in 1986, was born in Poland and grew up in Berlin.
She studied philosophy and social sciences and has been working as a freelance writer since 2009.
Her feminist bestseller "Bottom Rum Free" was published in 2016 by Rowohlt Verlag.
In 2018, »The Last Days of Patriarchy« followed, a collection of columns from SPIEGEL and »taz«.
There are supposedly harmless questions that are very unsuitable for small talk, or shall we say: for small talk that is pleasant for both sides.
For the question "Where do you
really come from
?", This is slowly trickling into the collective consciousness of non-white people, for the question "Why are you a woman over 30 and have no children?" By a long way, and for the question "Why don't you drink alcohol?"
To put it straight away, the question is okay between seriously friendly people.
The problem is that people also put them in contexts in which one usually does not talk about personal abysses, intestinal diseases or trauma.
If you don't want to drink, you don't have to justify it
Among my friends who don't drink, I know one who still takes a glass of champagne at champagne receptions and then just holds it in his hand, and one who brings juice spritzers for himself to her at parties but often something alcoholic has simply been poured in so that she can "try it out".
Why?
You don't force people to pull on a joint, although it would probably be good for many.
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You don't have to be a fountain overflowing with empathy to understand that the question of why someone wants to stay sober can be overbearing in many contexts.
Of course there are people who simply don't drink alcohol because they don't like it or because they have to drive a car later.
That is cleared up relatively quickly.
But it can also be that the person you ask is taking medication, for example psychotropic drugs, painkillers or sleeping pills, that are incompatible with alcohol.
It could be that she has an illness that she doesn't want to talk about, or at least not at that already stupid standing reception that you are currently on.
She may also be breastfeeding.
Or is pregnant and not sure if she wants to have an abortion.
Or pregnant, but still in the first weeks of pregnancy, when many still hold back from reporting to third parties.
It may be that she just wants to live healthy.
She may be on a diet for whatever reason.
It may be that she does not tolerate alcohol.
That she recently had bad alcohol poisoning.
Or that she wants to save money, but doesn't want to be invited by annoying guys either.
So many good reasons for abstinence
It could be that she is a dry alcoholic and doesn't feel like telling this.
Or it may be that someone around you has drunk himself to death and she doesn't want to experience that too.
It may be that she is afraid of losing control because something very unpleasant has happened to her under the influence of alcohol, and not just embarrassing photos, but an accident or rape.
Last but not least, there can be religious reasons.
That might be rather weird for Christian people because they worship someone who is said to have conjured water to wine.
People who are read as Muslim and say they don't drink know the skeptical reaction of the other person who wonders whether this is a religious fundamentalist, but honestly one has to say that not drinking alcohol is about the most harmless Is a quality of religious people that one can imagine.
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There are at least as many reasons for not drinking as there are for drinking.
There is, in certain circles, this very unpleasant mixture of anger and envy of people who do something objectively healthy without harming anyone, be it yoga or a healthy diet or abstinence from alcohol.
If someone doesn't smoke, very few ask why exactly.
It's not the case with alcohol, but you would make partying much more pleasant for people who don't drink alcohol if you didn't interview them all the time.
Even people who compulsively flirt with their alcohol consumption as a distinguishing feature and are accordingly horrified when someone else does not drink, would benefit if the question about the reason for not drinking would cease: They would not have to sit on thin ice with argument as to why it would be so much better if the person opposite had a gin and tonic in the glass now.
They could just drink their own gin and tonic and talk about something they come across as more personable.
On the contrary, it would often be much more appropriate to ask men in particular why they drink, although we know that "men and alcohol" is often a difficult combination, keyword: aggressive behavior.
Sober people at parties, contrary to all clichés, are rarely a brake on fun, whereas drunk people can end the fun for everyone else pretty quickly.
And with that a happy new year and cheers, no matter what.
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