I started working out again and that doesn't go with alcohol very well.

Having a drink will take away a week of progress in the gym. And I prefer to continously progress.

It also helps as an excuse, if someone needs it and you don't feel comfortable revealing past problems.

From beer on tap in startups, to encouraging going out and getting plastered as 'team building', alcohol is very prevalent.

Although I've never had an alcohol problem, I've always been hyper-aware of alcohol culture issues, probably because several of my family members have had drinking problems.

You can always tell when folks have put in the little effort to make organizations and events comfortable for everyone, whether or not you drink. It's a matter of empathy that goes a long way. It really sucks when not drinking is a socially awkward thing to do because of the environment.

Thanks for sharing.
Unfortunately, the same story with smoking. We used to use the smoking area as a social bonding opportunity, and smoke together. There we'd discuss the problems we were having and, for some reason, everyone would be much more helpful!
Once I stopped smoking, I was less involved, and my colleagues would ask me if I was "down" or something whereas all I was trying to do was to avoid being in that situation. Unfortunately, I went back to smoking and didn't stop until I completely moved away from there about 1 year later.

So as an ex-smoker, I really understand what it means to try to stop a bad habit and then being seen as a downer, but at the same time, I am really happy that you've managed to stay strong and haven't made an excuse like I did back then :-)

I know this wasn't supposed to be my takeaway from this, but I have a question.

The company "splurges" on the good beer, and you get a canned coca-cola. Maybe also "splurge" on the fancy sodas, or have a fancy mocktail, or something else at your event.

What are fancy pops out there for this? I never considered that there was a parallel of "good" craft beer and local pop or something like that. A Mountain Dew is just as quenchy to me as something from the local cider house, so this makes me wonder if I'm missing out on some pop culture options (edit: pop as in soda pop not 'pop culture').

RE: the actual post, I try to be mindful with non-alcohol drinking members of the team (1 due to being very open about his previous history with wine and 1 due to religious observation). I pick places for after work get-togethers with good food as well as good drinks, and call it "Fuck this release" or "Not Work" in the meeting invites instead of happy hour, but idk if this seems too forced to include the others or if it hits a good balance.

I also plan it out weeks in advance so the people with families can try to plan to join via spouse or babysitters. We have plenty of spouses who tag along too, so awesome! The events are meant to unwind without the bureaucracy of work, so the more the merrier. Drinking alcohol or no, coworker or no, it shouldn't matter.

Water should be available, too - not just the flavored fizzy sort, but ordinary water. Some people avoid soda and other sugary, fizzy drinks, and not just beer.

That said, I understand where you're coming from. Being stationed in Korea for 3 years taught me many things, including something I've told people over and over again. In my case, I don't drink - not for religious purposes, health concerns, or prior alcoholism. After 3 years of having to drink fairly heavily in Korea in order to avoid offending Koreans (it's really a form of diplomacy), I had the same two choices as anyone else who has gone to Korea for an extended period of time: Come back as a raging alcoholic or never touch the stuff again.

I'm one of the rare sort that took the second option, but I know it's all too easy (and common) for people to take the first option. Congrats on 2 years. I know it's been hard at times.

Yeah, there's been a few times I almost fell off, but then was like, "I'm not gonna do that, that would be silly." That works for me it seems, the ol' "play the tape forward". The bro culture is fine kind of, in a camaraderie sense, but is exclusionary and also like you say, can be uncomfortable for the sober and other types of people. Sorry to hear you've lost people. If this causes even one company to be more mindful of their culture, then this post is a success though!

On the company not changing, I feel that sometimes you have to reaLLLLY out your foot down for some things or the company will never do them. Like accessibility. Sometimes you have to throw that tantrum, because its important enough even if they don't see the value in doing it. But those details really show how the company is, and those groups are some of the easiest loyalties to buy, because they know that you care about them. It works for employees and events too. Get stuff for the other groups even if it goes to waste and it will be remembered!

Hey my best friend does too and we work in the same office, it doesn't bother me, and I get the desire. Just be sure not to force it on any co-workers! :D

Thank you for sharing. Your experience is so similar to mine, although I thankfully managed to quit drinking before I started my career. Looking back on it, I was an alcoholic. I was addicted. I had to quit all together, zero drinking. I couldn't just drink socially, and still probably can't. I've worked at many different places in my career so far, with many different kinds of culture, but most if not all places I've worked have a strong connection with drinking in some way. Whether it be the beer cart on friday arvo, or after-work pub crawls, or an entire fridge stocked with nothing but alcoholic beverages.

Without fail, I always get asked the same question time after time: "Why aren't you drinking?"

Seriously, if someone is not drinking, please don't ask why. Not only does it add to the pressure to conform, but the reasons are often quite personal. Imagine how uncomfortable it would be if I came up to someone who was holding a beer and asked them "so why are you drinking?"

Thanks again for sharing your experience. It takes an enormous amount of courage, serious courage, to share something like that with the world.

Congrats on two years sober. That's awesome.

As someone who doesn't drink for religious reasons, I love to see stuff like this. Thanks for posting.

What is developer culture anyway? Does that exist? If so, please write something about that.

First of all, congrats on the 2 year mark.

For my part, I'm a seventh-day adventist (I know that makes me unpopular on some forums) and we don't use any kinds of drugs or alcohol. I've known people getting their lifes destroyed by alcohol abuse and I guess we can do better with our lifes. My cup is allways filled with tea (when cold) or orange/lemon juice, but ultimately I believe the beverage won't make you a better developer (so it seems like a joke when reading some posts by a developer being "drunk" while coding).

I am sober for 3 months already (and stopped with beer for 1.5 year already) and my to-go drink is Kombucha, I even make my own and drink every day in the morning mainly for its probiotics properties.

But what I do sometimes is to bring my own kombucha when I want to mingle with people that are drinking, and it works fine for me.

Like you just said I recently came to realize the effects of the collective pressure on consuming alcohol at the tech industry of today. I would like to recommend this great podcast episode for those which would like to learn more about this:

dev.to/hanselminutes/alcohol-and-t...

Great post Scott and congrats on your sobriety! I personally love the idea of companies providing alcoholic drinks (I'm a craft beer girl), but there should definitely be some viable and equally unique alternatives for those who choose to stay sober. If it's not automatically implemented, then the company has an inclusion problem.

Furthermore, I have to add a few things from my feminine perspective:

First off, "going out and getting plastered as 'team building'" can become very uncomfortable very quickly since some people don't act appropriately while drunk. I can't imagine wanting to work for a company that encourages this type of 'team building'.

Secondly, in addition to employees who are in recovery, have religious reasons, or have health concerns, as reasons to stay sober, there's also pregnant women or women trying to conceive to consider. (#womenintech)

And personally, my code is shit after two beers. Though, sometimes it's shit without any beers. :D

I am a person in long-term recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, myself. I’ve been clean for over six years. I do the 12-step thing, and there is an expression in the rooms which I feel is appropriate in this discussion:

“We are not responsible for our disease, but we are responsible for our recovery”

While I agree with you that the lack of nonalcoholic options can be a drag at conferences and networking events, I would caution that making our disease the concern of others abdicates the responsibility we have as persons in recovery. People like to party, developers and everybody else, when in groups. It is no more right for us to directly or indirectly shame them for drinking then it is for us to be ostracized by lack of nonalcoholic beverages.

I, for one, would like to be able to identify those “in the club“ at said conferences, kind of like yellow balloons at Phish shows denotes the Phellowship (sober Phish fans). I’d get a whole lot more out of that than 4 kinds of seltzer.

I hope this doesn’t come off as critical, because on the whole I agree with you. I simply brought it up because I have a lot of sympathy for conference/event organizers that already have to consider so many separate populations when hosting an event. Why add another special interest group to the list when we can be responsible for ourselves?

Thank you for sharing your experience, Scott!

I don't drink. I'm Muslim, but I also don't drink because I personally don't want to support social norms that drinking is "cool" until someone has a problem with it, and everyone just throws that person away.

But I definitely understand the awkwardness of events being at bars and not drinking. Once we even had a "drinking party day" at a startup I was at. Ended up just people watching that day. Now, I haven't been through your experiences, but for me, I've found that if someone asks if I want a drink, I just say, "Nah, personal reasons" and they don't ask again.

I think of it as a self-discipline thing. I've decided that I want to live a life without drinking and I'm not afraid I won't be cool because of it. I've read about people who carry soda or water to look like they're drinking to fit in, but screw that. It's a life choice I've made in the same way that I choose to wear bright color shirts most of the time.

Not sure where I'm going with this, but I liked your post and wanted to share my experience with similar feelings.

Thank you for bringing up this super important topic!

I've been the person who didn't drink at work events. I've also been the person so wasted (even at work parties, if my life stress was high) people didn't know if I got home safely.

Switching to working for myself was a huge relief to me, because I no longer felt beholden to whatever the culture is anywhere else. And I didn't exactly realize how prevalent of a culture it is until I was outside of it.

In my place of business now, however, there is a definite meme and 420 culture. 😂

I have seen this drinking culture before at various tech jobs I've had. I do agree that people blindly embrace drinking enough to lose control even in a semi-professional setting.

I believe as our Western culture becomes increasingly secular and less Christian, this will continue. Drinking alcohol is a sin(if you read the Bible carefully, Jesus drank juice)and that's why it was frowned-upon in our culture for so long in the past.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm sorry to hear you returned from korea with a bad habit. I still drink but I don't like a culture of forced drinking. I have made a habit not to participate in Korean drinking culture even with my wife's family. It's stressful but one can order a green tea and appear to be drinking mekju.

First, congratulations for your efforts.

Regarding devs drinking habits... I don't think that drinking in "dev culture" is that much different from drinking among ... I dunno construction workers? I don't want to pick any group.

Some people drink, some drink too much, and some don't. If people are promoted because they don't drink, that sounds bad.

But you can interpret it in different ways. If someone doesn't drink, because he cannot stop and instead of learning to drink just one or two drinks (or whatever), he goes to the other extreme, what does it show?

As I said, you can interpret it in many different ways. Here are two:

• This guy is cool, he knows that he cannot stop before hitting his limits, so doesn't drink at all. Very good, what a smart guy!
• We cannot even have a beer, because he cannot stop. This grown-up cannot find the golden mean. Either he is drunk or doesn't drink anything. Only black-n-white, just the extremes! Do I want that approach in other circumstances?

It's hard to argue that not drinking at all is better than getting drunk all the time, but the second interpretation is not so flattering. I don't even say that I agree with one or another, don't get me wrong, I just see different ways of interpretation.

What I've seen so far - not in development though - that the person who didn't drink at all had harder times to get socially accepted than the rest who went out drinking. But is that strange? If you want to get accepted by a group of people who plays football, while you play basketball, you'll have harder times...

I read an interesting article on how drinking contributed to humanity's history.

Hey Scott! Thanks for sharing your story.

As an event and meetup organizer my main concern is always making sure everyone is having a great experience. It might be little bit cultural difference between Finland and what I assume to be US in terms of peer-pressure but I was hoping you could provide some ideas from your point of view.

We have a lot of developers who enjoy drinking a beer or two in our meetups but we always make sure we have sodas and mineral water available for people who don't want to (or can't) drink alcohol.

For you, especially in the beginning (as you mentioned it was harder back then), is it more about the availability of alcohol and other people drinking it that makes it difficult, is it the lack of non-alcoholic options, or other people actively pressuring you to drink?

As a Muslim, who's never had alcohol in his entire life. I've worked in an agency where they would drink often in and out of the office. I was always shocked that these same people would usually just drive home after work (down the motorway) . Are people underestimating how much they've drank?
To show people that I am "sociable" I've always had to come down and have a coke. The last place you want to talk about religion or tell people you're "Muslim" is in the pub, you'll get tons of horrible stares and weird questions.
I'm glad you wrote this article 👍🏽

Congrats to you and all the other ex-drinkers/alcoholics on your sobriety!

Necromancy post: because alcohol is a timeless problem.

I have 1 or 2 beers a night but I struggle to go without it. I just had a a baby and there are some frustions at work, nasty comutes and money worries. Am I on the road to trouble?

"Will I be seen as an uncool prude if I don't go out and drink? Will people judge me?"

"Will I be seen cool and proud 20 years from now, when everyone else will be on their death bed, weak, unable to walk, unable to feel the fresh air?"

Plain water is healthiest drink, and it has no harm in anyway. Any canned drink, be it soda, cola, orange juice, everything is filled with too mush sugar, preservatives and extremely unhealthy for programmers who are required to sit for 40 or more hours a week.

Take him to the hospital if it happens again. Hopefully he is alright!

I anonymously congratulate you on your successes and wish you to stay sober longer. I am close to the culture of Korea, but even more so to Japan. I graduated from a language school in that country and lived there for over six years. Of course, I was surprised when I found out that the Japanese drink and put alcohol in their food every day. It was a shock to me. When I returned home to my parents, I noticed I was adding alcohol to my diet, and I couldn't give it up. I had to go to theluckiestclub.com/join-community though I was sure I could cope with it myself. I was wrong. So I understand you like no one else and support you.