I am in the UK and what you say is so true!! If you don't drink, you are automatically boring, or people look at you like you have 2 heads!! People go to the pub straight after work before going home, i know of someone that is in a carpool and is dropped at the pub every night after work. He eats his dinner there and stays until closing, every single weeknight and has done this for years, he is in his 30's . Nobody has concern for him, all his workmates grumbles about how lucky he is that he can do that, I see a full blown alcoholic with no family to go home to. To everyone else, its just their mate that likes a drink, he does funny stuff and has a million great drunk stories to tell.
I lived in the USA and Canada for a time and not drinking there, was so much easier, not every activity involved it, and was frowned upon to be drunk in public as an adult. People see that stuff, and automatically whisper there is a problem (at least in conversations I overheard). I went to parties and the men stood with a beer together, not many, a couple each, when I asked for a beer instead of lemonade, wow did people stare!! When a normal drinker say they are going for a drink, they go for A single drink. Not stay out for 3 hours and come home hammered as we Brits have a tendency to do in our binge drink culture.
It was when I moved back to the UK I began to spiral rapidly, as the temptation and the normalness of drinking allowed me to not seem like I was doing anything wrong. There is always someone that drinks more than you. The advertising here is shocking, the price of alcohol is so cheap, everything here is laced with an alcohol link. Its everywhere! I have told people I don't drink now, I will have to tell many more, and I imagine I will begin to see the invites to places decline and see who my real friends are. I feel grateful my husband isn't much of a drinker at all, not many of us non drinkers on this little island! We are literally slowly killing ourselves and our young people here