I come from a small yuppie town where there wasn't much to do other than drinking and doing drugs for teens and as you got older, closer to drinking age, the less you had to hide so the more you could drink. At a very young age I made the choice to not participate in any of that, I tried it, and decided it wasn't for me. I didn't have any bad or embarrassing moments that made me stop, it just didn't fuzzle my knickles as much as it did other people. So you can only imagine what people thought of me when they found out I didn't drink, at first I thought the same as you, they looked down upon me because I didn't do what everyone else was doing. Or they looked down on me because they thought I choose to not drink and smoke because I thought I was better than they were and they would say I wasn't better than anyone because of my choices. I didn't argue with anyone because I understood it was their choice to drink and my choice not to, there is no arguing about that, and who am I to try to change them? But as I grew older the more I realized that people were more afraid of me than anything, either afraid of me because I was different from them and I consciously made a choice that separated me from them or afraid they were just going to embarrass themselves in front of me and I will remember and they wont. But when it came down to it the people who didn't care were the people who were my friends. The wittiest reply to someone who asks why you don't drink is you made a choice to not drink, if people have a problem with that then that's their problem, not yours. I quit drinking at the age of 14, quite smoking at the age of 16, I am 28 now, I have been made fun of for my choices, I have been beat up for my choices, I have felt all of the ridicule, and you will too, but if you feel strong about your choices then no one can hurt you.