What do nondrinkers really feel about year-end parties?

On December 7, just in time for the year-end party season, the Asahi Shimbun's weekly "be between" column ran the results of an online survey on drinking alcoholic beverages. In response to the question, "Do you partake of alcoholic beverages?" 70% of the 2,584 respondents gave positive replies. 

Despite non-drinkers being in the 30% minority, 53% of all survey respondents nonetheless agreed that nominication -- a bilingual portmanteau combining nomi (to drink) and communication -- was an essential element of Japanese society. 

Still, as Weekly Playboy (Dec 30) points out, non-drinkers in Japan are known to suffer from discrimination in the form of aruhara (alcohol harassment). And others, concerned over becoming marginalized, admit they join in rather than risk being regarded as a party pooper. 

Perhaps because drinking tapered off sharply during the COVID pandemic, attitudes toward alcohol have nonetheless been shifting in non-drinkers' favor. Rather than simply conforming to the dominant drinking culture, more people now abstain from alcohol not only out of concern for their physical constitution, but also as a matter of personal preference. This has also seen the term sobaa kyuriasu (sober curious) -- derived from the eponymous title of a book published in 2019 by British journalist Ruby Warrington -- become increasingly popularized.  

To obtain a grasp of non-drinkers' attitudes, Weekly Playboy posed a series of questions to 1,000 males and females in range of 20 to 69 years of age. 

Over half the total (53.9%) responded that they lack much of a capacity for alcohol, with 27.7% admitting they cannot hold alcohol at all. Of the latter, a whopping 73% replied that they could not handle even the slightest amount. Only 13.4% of all subjects said they had a relatively strong tolerance for alcoholic beverages. 

Among the non-drinkers a variety of reasons were given for their aversion to alcohol: 52.5% said it made them feel unpleasant, with some saying they simply disliked the taste of alcoholic beverages. A man in his 40s said he refrained due to residual effects of COVID-19. Several others claimed they were allergic to alcohol. 

Overall, 45.5% of the non-drinkers said they didn't like the feeling of being inebriated; 29.5% said booze gave them headaches; 14% said drinking made them doze off; and 5% said drinking was physically painful.

Understandably, roughly three out of four of the non-drinkers said they disliked attending social events that included drinking. Another 18% said they were able to tolerate the activity, and 5% felt favorably disposed toward it. Only 3%, however, said they enjoyed such events. 

Interestingly, when non-drinkers were asked to specify what they disliked most about drinking parties, the largest objection, stated by 50.68%, was that they felt they were obliged to pay more than their fair share in cases of warikan (splitting the tab), since soft drinks are typically priced cheaper than alcohol. 

Others complained that they felt pressure on them to drink, said by 31.08%; that they had the experience of feeling coerced into drinking (18.92%); and because drinking soft drinks alone made them feel bored (16.22%).  

The magazine invited four non-drinking survey participants, two males and two females aged between 30 and 49 years, to take part in a roundtable discussion. 

"If you can't drink alcohol, people in your circle might not invite you to drinking parties out of a sense of consideration," one told the magazine. "But I want people to invite me without such a concern. When someone invites me, I'm still happy to go, even if I can't drink." 

Another non-drinker reflected similar tolerance, saying "I also want people to drink as much as they want without worrying about anything. Drinking parties are a place for communication, and deep conversations can emerge from them. I don't think of it as just being a place merely to drink, so I'd still like to participate as much as possible."

© Japan Today