Finishing up high school and heading into college, I felt like sort of social oddball. Even my most conservative friends who had steered clear of drinking previously were trying out a night of drinking -- people wanted to learn their tolerance, figure out their levels, and be ready for alcohol-based socializing in college. Not me. I knew I wasn't interested in drinking until 21; my concern was figuring out how to find my anchor points and make friends when I was so uninterested in the main ways people would likely be doing that.
First of all, this process taught me one of the clearest ways to figure out social plans in a way that worked for me, one that I still largely use into my adult life and my 30s:
It wasn’t that people who mainly preferred going to parties would have been bad friends; it’s that the point of going to these parties was mostly or mainly to get drunk. I learned that a good way to test a social situation for me was to ask: What are they really doing? If a group was playing drinking games and calling it a competition, or booming loud bass music and calling it dancing, it just felt like a thinly veiled excuse to get hammered or worse. When my more low-key friends were sitting around, even if someone was sipping a beer or two, we were just hanging out. Maaaaaaybe someone was drinking, but no one was getting drunk. This sort of situation where drinking wasn’t the thing we were doing was my preference. These friends had that approach, and I wanted this kind of friend to be “my people.”
Secondly, I learned how to make friends and then sprinkle in social drinking second. I think other people's approach probably worked fine and yielded plenty of friendships and social opportunities. For me, my sort of backwards approach gave me something that feels more sustainable and positive.
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