Why do folks who drink alcohol feel the need to harass others who choose not to?

Same mentality for people who get defensive when they find out there's a vegetarian/vegan at the table even if they have to drag the fact out of the individual. They suddenly have to confront their own consumption and an outlier makes them feel uncomfortable.
- ah yeah, i can see that
- Agree here, like a blend of the attempt to shame you into being "normal", perceived insult at the assumption you view them as lesser, and their indignance at being internally promoted to confront their own morals.
- From experience, they usually don't need help making it known.
  
  After 20~ years I don't really need to hear the same stale jokes or questions about where I get my protein I keep it pretty close to the chest.

Ok that person is just an asshole.
- Hard agree.
  What sort of person are you if you must resort to crude remarks about someones percieved sexuality because they dont want a fucking lone star lite
  
  resort to crude remarks about someones percieved sexuality
  It's worse than that. A slur doesn't just denigrate you as the immediate target, it is a word used as a tool of oppression against an entire marginalized group. If she had just said "are you a loser?" or something like that, she'd be an asshole sure, but whatever. "Are you a [f-slur]?" makes her not just an asshole but far worse, a bigot.

I've experienced it both ways, when I'm not drinking I've had people try to pressure me into drinking and people act like they're morally superior because they don't drink. It's just pressure to conform to the social norms are in whatever environment.
- Yes this 100 percent
- i was in a social situation where friend of friend i just met offered to buy me a drink and i said "i'm good for now" which is my default response to halt further questioning and they looked at me like i insulted their entire family lineage.. i wonder if they thought i was judging them for drinking based off my tone or something but i just didn't want to give off any vibe that i was open for interrogation
  
  In that situation I can see how they could take "I'm good for now" to mean more that you do drink and you're specifically turning down having a drink with them.

I started getting migraines like half the time when I drink, even if it's only half a beer.
People seem to think you're judging them for drinking. You even get it if you drink, but less.
Sorry you got slurred at
- This is why i do not go to places that serve alcohol. Its why ive mostly stopped going to shows/concerts; i invariably spend most of my night justifying to the increasingly inebriated people i interact w explaining why i dont drink.
  I got shit on by the bartender at a Reverend Horton Heat show because i was the DD for some friends a few months ago, when i asked for a Coke to drink. I had to explain that i hadnt asked for a shot w a Coke chaser, but just a Coke. She actually asked me if my AA sponsor knew i was here. Im not in AA nor am i a problem drinker, im just not a fuckin drinker anymore.
  
  Pretty sure this is the exact reason they invented "Liquid Death" (canned water with a cool label). I have yet to be hassled while holding a can of that.

conformists really hate it when you don't conform
- what man isnt going to accept a beer from a couple women on the beach, are you a f-slur?'
  Really underlined by this one.

Alcohol has always seemed like a shit drug to me. Short acting, highly toxic, maybe 5 minutes of euphoria, and a crash that basically just knocks you out. Only ubiquitous because of it's long history and dominance as a "western" substance. If I could engineer a replacement it would be something between GHB, kava, and phenibut with a built in antagonist to prevent blackouts and hangovers in high doses. Basically what I imagine synthahol in Star Trek to be based on the little bit of lore associated with it.
Like everything in the U.S., the "culture" makes bad things worse. I binged when I was a teen, mostly to self medicate social anxiety at parties, but as soon as I turned 21 I basically never drank again and chose other stuff (some neutral, some horrific).
And those women are ambassadors to that "culture" that i swear should get the real "Made In America" tag (and this includes other drug subcultures too i'm not letting them off the hook)
- There are some pretty fancy non alcoholic beers, thanks Islam
- IVE BEEN SAYING THAT, MFS doing daterapes and drugging ppl ruined public persepective, but without alcohol in the mix its safer, just flavorless, but add fake sourness like they add color to flames.
  
  Id randomly bring this up at bars, ppl would be like wtf did he say ghb, then id explain it was basically the same effect minus the damage and everyone would be like wtf why are we drinking this shit, so I do think ppl could be convinced but no way they ban alcohol. You can never mix it thats where all the negative abuse is from.
- prob not an original thought and alcohol lobbies against them or something

I don't think this is the only reason, but I think a lot of people are just obsessed with forcing people into behaving like them, because then if everyone is doing that, if it's "normal", then they feel good and proper and normal for doing it.
They want you to drink (the normal amount), dress normal, mow your lawn, watch sports, be cishet, and a million other things. And like, obviously some of those things are okay to do if you want to (like I drink, I think it's fine to enjoy sports, etc.), but all the social pressure giving sucks.
- And like, obviously some of those things are okay to do if you want to
  Being cishet not among them
  
  Exactly

In this case it's less about the alcohol and more about these women trying to police masculinity. The questions that need to be asked is why drinking beer is associated with masculinity in this case, and why these women felt they had the right to try police you sexuality wise for refusing their offer.

I had a job once working as the babysitter for a country bar and that experience destroyed any illusions I still had about any perceived glamor, interest or chill among the sauced.
some people are just losers and they will move heaven and earth to let you know.
- Yeah my first night out as a non drinker really opened my eyes to folks who're smashed and their behaviors. I had a couple moments of wondering how often i acted that way, and frankly how ashamed id be for my tweenagers to see me like that.

I haven't gotten in a situation that awful, but being straight edge has led me to the whole, "not even a little bit?" conversation multiple times, and I fucking hate it.
If I say, "I do not consume alcohol or recreational drugs," I mean that I do not consume alcohol or recreational drugs. Period. I added no caveats there.
I don't know what part of that is equivocal.
I didn't say "I don't usually consume alcohol, but maybe on some occasions I will!" or "I limit my alcohol consumption very heavily." I said "I do not."
I think it has to do with people constantly projecting their own preferences in life onto other people. To me, "some people enjoy certain things differently than you" doesn't seem like some elevated galaxy-brain take that's incredibly difficult to grasp or understand, but interacting with many people in society has easily taught me that this isn't the case for a whole lot of others.
- I do consume thc, but only evenings or weekends. Because of this ive been called a hypocrite or worse, because i dont drink alcohol but consume thc. Frankly this is why the fat lot of my friends are either sxe or juat non drinkers.
  
  That's not hypocritical — there's even a term "California sober" for this
  
  "I personally enjoy cauliflower, but not broccoli."
  "Hypocrite!"

I would have yelled at them for calling me a slur, especially THAT one, and doubly especially after you were kind enough to help them out.
- I wanted to hook their car back up to the tow strap and deposit it back in the sandy hole from whence it came but i decided just leaving was the lesser complicated of the two.
  
  Would have been totally justified in doing so! Words have meaning and especially words like goddamned slurs.

Some weoman tend to really attack men for not being in touch with their feelings, being aggresive, etc. but then anytime you do anything like that they'll turn it on you and call you homophobic slurs or act like you're trying to be the "woman". These are not the same woman as those that want to beeka gender norms, these are the tradwife conservative types that are just genuinely lazy and dont want to work or have a breeding fetish (suprisingly common and accepted by religious ppl)
Basically its not all folks who drink alcohol, its conservative tradwife woman, they are usually easily identifiable.

one of the strangest things I've seen was one time when some woman refused to join in a toast because I was drinking water

Fear that they are not the best person they could be. They see someone who just decided not to do a social norm or changed something about themselves. Same as the hate that theists have towards atheists, or drivers have towards cyclists, or carnists towards vegans.

There's a clip from Innuendo studios about this cognitive dissonance: It's not necessarily that they disagree with you, they're getting defensive because if you do X and they do Y. Then if you're right.....they must be wrong.
- fun clip, thanks for sharing!
- I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

Ugh, i cannot imagine taking that beyond "thanks, want a beer?" "No" "You sure? I've got extras" (in case it's just awkwardness about taking a gift)
I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Nobody should be trying to shame someone into a vice.
- The recurring thought i had was 'shouldnt have stopped'. Honestly ill think twice next time if presented a similar sitch.
  
  While totally understandable, that just plays into the atomization feedback loop. It was good that you stopped to help people, especially strangers. I wish more people were willing to do that in this ever worsening individualist-diseased society. Next time the people who need help when you're in a position to give it may be fully deserving of it and appreciative. I hope you don't let this bigot be what keeps you from helping others who might need it. Don't let her reprehensibility erode your kindness.

I stopped drinking like a few years ago just because I don't really enjoy it anymore.
It's made socializing more difficult. My friends aren't even heavy drinkers, but it seems like the only thing adults actually do recreationally is "go to a bar" or "have a drink"
- We also smoke weed and do ketamine nowadays
- I quit originally because when my daughter was born her first few months of life were hectic. She spent a month in the hospital, had two surgeries, etc etc and i decided that she needed my attention more than i needed a beer. It always seemed like the days i had a couple beers were the days she had the worst problems. Easiest way to make rhat not happen aas just not drinking anymore. I do not regret it in the slightest.
  Ive been tempted once in a while, dont get me wrong. A particularly hard day, or a celebratory event, what have you. But at this point i just dont have an interest in it beyond thinking about it for thirty seconds or so. Im more interested in seeing how high i can make the number of days w no booze go up.
  It really does seem like the only thing adults do is 'lets go get a beer' after work
  
  Drug use in social rituals is almost ubiquitous. In Australia before sunset we get a coffee if catching up, some people chew khat and chat, in the Pacific islands they have kava rituals after work, tobacco smoking is a very common activity to bond over.
  It just really sucks that alcohol is the social drug of large gatherings and intimate moments in a lot of cultures. I gave up taking it last year after internalising how out of line my beliefs about risk and side effect aware drug taking was with alcohol (organ damage, sleep impact, GI health, addictive potential due to mu opiod receptor activation etc) and spent a lot of my twenties not drinking earlier in life.
  I'm not terribly judgy about it, getting high is fun and life is hard. I get it. But it's such a messy drug that people on it are kinda boreish to be around if you aren't, it tends to escalate bad situations, and it destroys bodies and minds over time. It can end up isolating because like yeah I'd love to hang out, no I don't want to go to the place where everything is expensive, people talk too loud, and you get increasingly less coherent and more repetitive.

Internalized shame, they think you think you’re better than them for not drinking and take it out on you

Fucking annoying. Multiple times when a person tries to fight me because I don't drink. Its some variation of "you think you're better than me" or "why are you here then". That doesn't include the ones trying to fight because of some problem they had with me because they got liquid courage or the usual alcoholic nonsense. Usually with weapon

I honestly thought this attitude was dropped by 2020. I know I used to get it a lot.
Some folks just consider drug use a personality trait.

This situation...bigoted bat shit crazy. What a mind boggling, wild way to respond to being helped! I am so sorry you had that experience. And, thank you for stopping and taking time out of your day to help a complete stranger- full on Comrade behavior right there! I just wanna offer the idea to try and forget for one moment about how that experience ended and instead focus on how awesome your behavior was!

This is also true about meat

Damn that's aggressive. I'll cop to sometimes ribbing a bit too hard when I've had a few, but I'd never drop slurs
- Well yeah... i mean, i shit talk and so does 95% of the planets population to some degree but that was just fucking jarring

There's a saying that behind every f-slur there's an h-slur.
Obviously these ladies f-slur less otherwise they know. Pity them. Anyways sounds like a couple a jerks who are not fun to be around. Dogged a few bullets there . Always respect people's decision not to.
- Sorry, what's the H-slur?

why do people who dont vape harass the ppl who do, looking back the ppl who always harassed me about it (not an issue as an adult much, my friends see just well adjusted now) were alcoholics (which felt hypocrtical and why this post reminded me of it) and were the reason I vaped so much around them. Like I needed to calm down, relax and kind of escape when I was around them.

- no it's pretty common shithead behavior. kind of like being unnecessarily dismissive of the experiences of others. just as a random example.