Definition of "abstainer"

abstainer

/æbˈsteɪ.nɚ/

noun
plural abstainers
1. Agent noun of abstain; one who abstains; especially, one who abstains from something, such as the use of alcohol or drugs, or one who abstains for religious reasons; one who practices self-denial.
  Quotations
  To one of my very nervous patients, who was an abstainer, whose fancy was fixed on his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs accompanied by his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation would be less harmful to him than enforced abstinence.
  1920, Sigmund Freud, chapter V, in M. D. Eder, transl., Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners‎, New York: The James A. McCann Company
  He was a total abstainer and a nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty.
  1949, George Orwell, chapter 4, in Nineteen Eighty-Four‎
  'Never himself touches a drop of the stuff, you understand. Having been an abstainer since the age of seven or something. A clerky figure even as a child.'
  1990, William Trevor, “Family Sins”, in The Collected Stories, New York: Viking, published 1992, page 1105