And if a friend said the same about a meal without cheese or a meal without the option of a cup of tea afterwards or chips without a sauce, would you think the same? If someone said they wouldn't be bothered having Sunday lunch if there was no gravy, would that mean they have 'an unhealthy relationship with gravy'?
Yes, if a friend couldn’t eat a meal without cheese then I’d probably think they had some disordered eating habits, a very restricted diet, or some kind of sensory issues.
I see your other examples (gravy and sauce with chips) as a bit different, but that’s because I personally don’t believe alcohol genuinely makes food taste better (there’s a whole chapter of This Naked Mind about this which completely transformed my thinking on this) and I think that’s one of the many lines we’ve been fed as a society to make us feel good about drinking. But I realise that’s a controversial view and most won’t agree with me.
And yes, everything @LolaSmiles said.
There’s a huge shift in perspective when you stop drinking and start socialising with other sober people, and it starts to feel really strange to think about how essential alcohol used to be in your life.
It’s very surreal for me now to walk into a greeting card shop, for example, and see wall after wall of cards with jokes about falling down blind drunk or alcohol being one of your five-a-day or whatever, knowing that I used to find them funny but now I genuinely just cannot think why. Because I’m so removed from that mindset now. Not saying anyone else is wrong but just that when you don’t drink in this country you often feel very much like you’re on the outside looking in to a whole other world!