teetotaler

Teetotaler (from Latin abstemius) Who is does not drink alcoholic liquids, What wine or liqueur. The concept is linked to who opts for the abstinence (the voluntary renunciation of satisfying an appetite or indulging a wish).

Abstinence, in general, can be linked to various types of renunciations, such as having sex or eating certain foods. This decision can arise from personal convictions (someone who abstains from eating food of animal origin, as occurs with veganism) or for religious or cultural reasons (sexual abstinence in the case of the Catholic Church).

The term abstemious, however, usually refers to who does not consume alcoholic beverages. There are a number of reasons that can lead to a person to become a teetotaler: consider that alcohol is a sin or a path towards it, fear that the act of drinking will lead to a addiction (alcoholism) or observing the damage that alcohol causes in a loved one, are some of the reasons that explain the reason for such a decision.

In a strict sense, there are those who consider that abstainers 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.

Social consideration of abstainers is diverse, although it must always be recognized that it is a personal decision. Some believe that abstainers are fearful people who do not believe they can control themselves when faced with a stimulus such as alcohol, while others congratulate the strength to take such a position and not submit to pressure from society.

Be abstemious

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 contemplate the possibility that the adults around him do not drink alcohol. This does not mean that abstainers only encounter hostility; the problem is that there is no well-defined and respected space for them in the structure social to which we belong. In other words: not drinking alcohol is synonymous with being weird.

A phenomenon The same is true for non-smokers, although their case is somewhat different. In the first place, tobacco contributes to environmental pollution in a very particular and direct way, and its consumption has been banned in bars and shops in many parts of the world, something that does not happen with alcohol, since it is not harmful unless that is ingested in huge quantities.

To further accentuate the degree of exclusion that being a teetotaler supposes in today's society, when the media tries to paint a picture of loneliness, they show a person drinking in the dark or lit by a sad lamp. The system it does not allow abstainers to be part of the fashion trends, nor to enjoy outings with friends, but neither does it give them the right to be alone, to have no one to care about them or to worry about; because the system doesn't want them to exist.

And it is that just a few years ago, in 2010, the collection of the five most important alcoholic beverage companies in the world was around 230 million dollars. As in the case of tobacco, the economic interests are stronger than the damages that these products can cause in the population, and when a person decides, for whatever reason, to stand aside, he declares war on the industry.