Quote:
Originally Posted by snowy
My family has had to deal with this recently, as one of my husband's uncles had to abstain from drinking over the holidays due to a medication he was on. Despite his insistence that he would be fine with other people drinking at holiday affairs, my mother-in-law, her mother, and her sister-in-law (the uncle's wife) all abstained from drinking too, trying to be "considerate." The problem with this was that they made the people who did choose to drink feel out of place and bad about the whole thing.
If there are non-drinkers present at a function, should people who do drink abstain from drinking? These questions are posed with the frame of American culture, by the way--I understand that other cultures have other views about drinking, i.e. the Muslim culture represented by the brother in the dilemma posted above. I welcome other responses with the frames of other cultures, but be aware my response is set in the culture I live in.
Personally, I don't think so. It might be the European in me, but I think too often Americans think that drinking is "bad". Drinking in moderation is fine. By trying to sweep drinking under the rug in our culture, so to speak, I think we encourage irresponsible behavior when it comes to drinking.
So what do you think?
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My feeling is that I separate out drinking in front of alcoholics from drinking in front of everyone else. If I am having people to dinner, and I know one of them is in recovery, I will ask ahead of time if it would be easier for them if no alcohol were served. Most of the time they tell me to go ahead and serve whatever I want to, as long as they know I know they won't be drinking. But occasionally, they will thank me and say it would be easier, and they're having a hard time right now for whatever reason, and it helps not to see alcohol.
But if I'm at someone else's dinner, I will drink even if I know one of the other guests is an alcoholic, because I figure that either the host cleared it with them, or they knew what they were getting into. And that goes triple for big parties, where it is simply unreasonable for anyone to think that alcohol would not be served, or that people should refrain from drinking because of the presence of one individual.
That's as far as I go, and I won't go even that far for Muslims or temperate Christians or any other abstainers I happen to be with, because that is their choice. No one should attempt to force alcohol on them, of course, but they've made their choices, and they need to be okay with others having different decisions. After all, I have been to many a non-Jew's dinner or gathering where much non-kosher food is served, and I simply avoid it. It would never occur to me to expect non-Jews to keep kosher, so why should they do it just because they've invited me? If I really thought that there would be absolutely nothing I could eat, and it would be sheer unpleasantness to be around people enjoying their dinner or snacks when I was hungry, I would politely decline the invitation. If I chose not to do so, then any inconvenience I end up feeling is my own responsibility.