Abstainer is someone who does not consume alcoholic beverages.
A teetotaler (from Latin abstemius ) is someone who does not drink alcoholic liquids , such as wine or liquor . The concept is linked to those who choose abstinence (the voluntary renunciation of satisfying an appetite or pleasing a desire ).
Abstinence, in general, can be linked to various types of renunciations, such as having sexual relations or eating certain foods. This decision may arise from personal convictions (someone who abstains from eating foods of animal origin, as occurs with veganism ) or for religious or cultural reasons (sexual abstinence in the case of the Catholic Church).
What is it to be abstemious?
The term teetotaler, however, usually refers to someone who does not consume alcoholic beverages . There are various reasons that can lead a person to become abstemious: considering that alcohol is a sin or a path to it, fearing that drinking will lead to addiction ( alcoholism ), or observing the damage that alcohol causes in a person. loved one, are some of the reasons that explain why such a decision was made.
In a strict sense, there are those who consider that teetotalers are those who have never drunk alcohol in their entire lives. From this point of view, subjects who have decided to stop drinking at a certain point or recovered alcoholics are not abstainers.
The social consideration of teetotalers is diverse, although it must always be recognized that it is a personal decision. Some believe that teetotalers are fearful people who do not believe they can control themselves when faced with a stimulus such as alcohol , while others praise the strength to take such a position and not submit to the pressure of society.
Various reasons can lead an individual to choose to be teetotal.
social pressure
Those who make the decision to stop drinking alcohol, whether they have never done so or want to change their tastes, must face a difficult reality: society encourages us to drink. Beer, for example, is a symbol of group fun, happy moments with friends, celebration and adulthood, and its reach is global.
A normal person does not usually consider the possibility that the adults around them do not drink alcohol. This does not mean that teetotalers only encounter hostility; The problem is that there is no well-defined and respected space for them in the social structure to which we belong. In other words: not drinking alcohol is synonymous with being weird.
A similar phenomenon occurs with non-smokers, although their case is somewhat different. Firstly, tobacco contributes to environmental pollution in a very particular and direct way, and its consumption has been prohibited in bars and stores in many parts of the world, something that does not happen with alcohol, since it is not harmful unless that is ingested in enormous quantities.
The look at the teetotaler
To further accentuate the degree of exclusion that being a teetotaler entails in today's society, when the media tries to paint a picture of loneliness, they show a person drinking in the dark or illuminated by a sad lamp. The system does not allow teetotalers to be part of fashion trends, or enjoy going out with friends, but it also does not give them the right to be alone, to have no one to care about them or to worry about; because the system does not want them to exist.
And just a little over a decade ago, in 2010, the revenue of the five most important alcoholic beverage companies in the world was around 230 million dollars. As in the case of tobacco, economic interests are stronger than the harm that these products can cause to the population, and when a person decides, for whatever reason, to step aside, they declare war on the industry .