[Coda]

No, I'm not. Not at all. Also, I didn't use Wikipedia for that except to make sure that I wasn't misremembering anything, because I'm a scholar of history and these are things that I know for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to argue about booze or get into fights on the Internet. (In truth, the reason I know it is because I participate in a medieval interest group and one of my friends in that group is a brewer, and I spent quite a bit of time learning about the historical context of the drinks and their use in the various social classes.)

I'm also not arguing in bad faith despite what you may believe; don't attribute an argument to bad faith just because you don't agree with it. The fact that you suggest it indicates that you don't even understand the point I was trying to make, and the rest of your response corroborates that. (However, I will admit some level of culpability here, as upon review of my post I realize that I forgot to actually tie it together, which I admit muddies my point.)

My point was that the idea of forcing yourself to do something you don't like just for the sake of the social experience is unhealthy. My point was that you really ought to drink because you enjoy the drink itself. I will amend that point here, however, in that there are historically other contexts in which the point of consuming alcohol was not to enjoy the drink. In particular, I pointed out the hygienic use, but historically people made sure they enjoyed those drinks by adding flavors and watering it down until it was something they could enjoy. There were also religious reasons to do so, and it appears that at some point during the editing of my post I removed the part I had included about its use for mourning and stress relief (though there's still a slight allusion to it). And in those cases, it's fine if you don't like what you're drinking, and some cultures even had explicit exceptions to the usual social norms and found it acceptable to be drunk while mourning.

The entire purpose of my historical infodump was to counter your claim that my point is historically unsupported. The fact that there have existed cultures across the entirety of human history since the discovery of alcohol that recognize the pros and cons of alcohol consumption and developed cultures that created and/or modified drinks to taste good specifically for the purpose of tasting good (including, as you yourself brought up, wine tastings) suggests that yes, there IS a historical precedent to suggest that you should drink things you like drinking.

Be sure that you don't misconstrue my argument. I thought I was being pretty clear when I said that I was talking about drinking something you don't like for the specific purpose of establishing a social circle. Drinking things you do like while building a social circle? Not a problem. Drinking things you don't like for religious reasons? Sure. Drinking things you don't like as a way to, for example, honor a particular person? Still doesn't run afoul of my point. But to keep drinking something you don't like for no reason but the social experience of drinking? That's a 20th-century thing.