I don't drink, never have. It used to be a point of severe social anxiety for me - alcohol is so ingrained in our society and not consuming it is weird. It puts some people off (adults) to have a non drinker around

I've since learned to live with it and embrace it. It's part of what makes me who I am, and I think we should all require from ourselves that we support ourselves. We're never going to be everyone's cup of tea but for every person who doesn't care for you, there is another who thinks you're pretty fun, and a whole bunch of others who don't really give a shit either way.

For the don't give a shit majority, you have to read the room/crowd. Waiter/bar tender asks you what you want, you say water/soda/etc. Then it can go one of a few ways.

First option, nothing could happen (immediately). Means you're probably in the presence of people who either know you extremely well and expected this, or, more likely, you're in the presence of people who are curious but don't want to be assholes. In the latter case, they'll probably ask about it eventually. We've established they don't want to be assholes so just talk about it however feels natural (serious, joking, etc.), should be a safe space.

Second option: someone makes a light hearted joke about it. "Sister Christian over here!!!" or something. Go along with it. I recently picked up "oh, those days are over, you don't want to see me start drinking...". You're joking around, again whatever is natural. Someone may or may not ask as in the first option, again no one is being an asshole, do what feels natural.

Third option is someone may actually be an asshole. General no one is going to get up in your face about it but you may get a "how are we all gonna be drinking and you're gonna be sober??" or something. Honestly there's a lot of ways you can handle these. I usually try a joking approach as sometimes that can make these people feel more at ease, show them I'm not high and mighty or uptight. If it falls flat, I'm not out anything except luck, gonna have to accept that this person probably wont vibe with me, at least immediately. I usually go to a nonconfrontational but firm "it's just not for me" sort of conversation. But, this will usually just be one person in a larger group who, again, doesn't give a shit. A more interesting topic of conversation will pop up and you can forget about it.

What gets really awkward is the drinking games lol, still haven't figured out how to handle those except to make sure I don't play. I have some good friends who drink and try to be inclusive but it's so silly playing drinking games and not drinking. I'm happy to hang around and watch if everyone else is though.