I also went without alcohol for 25 months and my expererience couldn't be more different. I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being wi

I also went without alcohol for 25 months and my expererience couldn't be more different. I never stopped going out for drinks. I always kept enjoying being with other people, it has never been about the alcohol going out. When going out for drinks, in the first couple of months I would simply order non alcoholic beverages. After a while I realized that it was unnecessarily expensive and I simply stopped ordering drinks. On this the author is right, this led to huge savings. I just got out for the fun of being with other people. As the author himself explains, the drinks are just an excuse to go out and do stuff. Unless of course someone has a problem with alcohol. I think that the only thing that I can really relate in the article is the difficulty of explaining why I was not drinking. But even that I think is something I did very differently from the author. After a few months in which I tried to explain myself, which got the kind of arguments the author mentions, I started saying that I just didn't like to drink. That's a pretty short answer and mostly no one investigates that. So in the end in my experience my social life was not affected in any negative way by not drinking. To be honest, if anything, I think it increased my social skills, as I was more focused and "awake" by not drinking. And this is a experience that still has positive impacts on my personality. The only reason I started to drink again is because I actually like the taste of most alcoholic beverages (wine, beer etc), so I was missing a good glass of wine with my dinner. On the contrary, the experience of the author reminds me of someone that has made alcohol a requirement of his/her social life. Which is looking troublesome because it denotes a poor relationship with alcohol. The author should focus on what's funny in going out without alcohol, which is what matters. Alcohol should not be what makes going out funny. I would suggest to everyone to go at least 1 year without alcohol while still going out and having a very active social life in a context where everyone else is drinking. This is a great way to better know yourself.