I quit drinking once for three years. Usually, your friends will ask you in the beginning to just have one drink or to just drink moderately. After about a year of no drinking, most of your closest friends and family will stop asking you entirely; even better is they'll answer other people that maybe don't know you as well aka "he doesn't drink".

After that, for fun, I basically would go to all the same places, bars, parties etc with the same friends and I'd just drink water; they'd be drinking booze. That's what I did for three years.

After about three years, I traveled abroad and I wanted to take in the full experience so I started drinking again.

Absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to stop drinking for a bit; it's a fun experiment.