[redthrowaway]

People who don't drink tend to view quasi-mandatory drinking as exclusionary and indicative of strange priorities. Imagine you were a non-smoker and your team regularly got together to smoke, then questioned your commitment when you didn't join them. It would heavily colour your opinion of the team dynamic and why it seemed broken to you.

[prawn]

Bit of a difference between passive smoking and drinking water around colleagues who are having a few drinks.

[aestra]

Not really. Imagine if you had a serious alcohol control problem, alcohol was a huge trigger for you, you had a family alcohol related death, you were arrested for drinking and driving, you grew up with alcoholic parents, you were removed from your parents as a child because they couldn't care for your because of their alcohol problem, etc.