Most of us, I suspect, have aspects of our character which we feel mark us out as different from the majority. Individual traits which, while perhaps not defining us as people, nevertheless distinguish us. Quirks, if you will.

I have a few. I don't like hot, sunny weather (this, though unusual, is actually more common that you'd imagine). I don't know how to drive (and don't want to - it frightens me). I listen to jazz. I don't own a mobile phone. However, none of these comes close to making me feel as estranged from my fellow man as not drinking alcohol.

Which makes this article quite interesting from my perspective. While some of it absolutely mirrors my experience, some of it absolutely doesn't. Each of the case studies makes an observation that I could have made myself (the first one is mystified by beer drinkers above all else; the second could tell you when a fruit salad is on the turn; the third doesn't understand the culture of excessive drinking; the fourth never grew out of finding it as unpleasant as when she was 14), and yet the overall picture doesn't reflect my experience of not drinking.

I've never had even the slightest suggestion that anyone thought I wasn't drinking because I was a recovering alcoholic. The man who says that that's the first question he gets asked can only be adhering to the stereotype of what journalists expect the teetotaller's experience to be. Either that or he mixes in some very odd company. (Seriously, can you imagine saying that to someone if they told you they didn't drink? Then following it up with asking if they were religious? Cobblers.) Nor do I believe for a moment that "drinkers envy the self-discipline and confidence required to abstain in our booze-soaked culture". Pity yes, envy no. For the most part people just don't know how to react, and that can show itself in lots of ways - generally men can't hide that they think it's plain weird, to the point that a lot of them are quite unnerved by it. Sometimes I get the reaction I imagine men must get when they tell other men they're gay. A woman I work with responded with "How sad", which annoyed me so much that I told her that was one point of view, as was thinking it was sad that some people aren't able to have a good time without having to drink. Which is not a view I really hold, but adopted in that instance.

What drinkers can't understand, looking as they do from the inside out, is that there is a culture of alcohol in this country that is overwhelming. It's not just the binge-drinking, vomit-rivering laddish element to which I'm referring, it's the all-encompassing association of alcohol with enjoyment that runs throughout every facet of our society. That's what makes people who don't drink feel so like outsiders, the assertion (conscious or otherwise) that it is simply impossible to have a good time or function as a fully rounded member of society without having a drink.

I don't drink for the very simple reason that I don't like the taste. The by-products of not drinking - not losing control of my senses through over-indulging, not being hung over the following day, not running the risk of becoming part of the 43% of violent crime attributable to alcohol - are just a bonus. I'm not one to proselytize about the benefits of teetotalism, but don't anybody try and tell me I'm missing out.