Whither Small Talk
Another question not to ask?
It’s holiday season, a time of year for celebration.
So here’s a friendly reminder that “holiday” and “celebration” need not be synonyms for “drinking.”
Canadians are big drinkers, consuming 50 per cent more alcohol than the global average. Our reputation as a nation of beer drinkers is well earned. The average Canadian adult knocks back 76 litres of beer, 16 litres of wine, five litres of spirits and four litres of other alcoholic beverages annually. But averages don’t tell the whole story.
There are about 22 million Canadians who consume alcohol. Roughly 3.1 million people drink to the point of risking immediate physical harm (often binge drinking), and another 4.4 million drink to excess so routinely that they suffer chronic health problems as a result. Drinking is not always good fun.
One in four Canadian adults is a teetotaler – seven million in total – and that number is growing. The holidays can be hellish for them, given the relentless social pressure to imbibe and the constant interrogations. There are many reasons people don’t drink. None of them are any of your business.
I understand where the writer is coming from here, especially when it comes to questions like “Are you an alcoholic?” (way out of bounds) but while I don’t doubt that it’s an uncomfortable subject for some, almost anything is an uncomfortable subject for some.
Another question I’ve heard that it’s not polite to ask is if you have kids because what if they’re trying and having trouble? I can actually sympathize with that, but the world can’t stop for them any more than there is no safe space after a miscarriage. “Are you trying” is a little more personal and therefore a slightly stronger argument can be made, but I’m not sure eggshells are appropriate.
But when we meet people, we have to have stuff to talk about. There is only so much we can put out of bounds. What I guess we need is a better protocol for “I’ve answered your question can we move on now?”
Photo by Brian Lane Winfield Moore 
I am an alcoholic, which is why I don’t drink and haven’t in many years, so just to speak on the point; perhaps our northern friends do it differently but at least those that have done AA we have a prescribed method of approaching the subject to a relative stranger that would be inoffensive and unknown to the person if not initiated. Personally I am far past getting offended by people asking why I do not, or similar questions, but I can see the point.Report
@andrew-donaldson I have heard similarly about Canadian and Northeastern US circles – not that I’m a member, but I have had enough loved ones who talked freely to each other in front of me without thinking about my presence as breaking anonymity, over the years, to have picked up some things.
Perhaps because I have always had family members who were teetotalling for reasons of necessary sobriety, I still tend to get annoyed when people push on the point. Like, it’s one thing to forget or be unsure and offer someone a drink, it’s another to push and push as I see some people do.
Of course, I was raised in a hospitality culture, so find a lot of things people do outside of those constraints to be rather baffling.Report
You’ve got to figure that this topic of conversation comes up mostly in places where people are drinking, some of them drinking more than they can handle. Probably where a lot of them aren’t close family or friends, people who don’t know each other very well. I’d bet that a whole lot of the conversation starters are inappropriate on some level. People hitting on each other, getting in arguments, et cetera. So I’m not sure why this article exists in the first place.
I don’t know if I’m completing my thought. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to be better people, or that people shouldn’t be given good advice about how to avoid offending others. I’m just not sure what to do with this article.Report
@pinky It comes up at extended family dinners and reunions of people who haven’t seen each other in ten years and work events before anyone has had anything to drink and suchwise things, actually.
The pressure to drink is a big social pressure, not just drunk people being stoopid.
I think the article is trying to raise awareness / shift behavior in the group of people who (probably to their mind cheerfully, not pushily) push people to drink when not drunk or stupid, not the other group.Report