Mind the difference

Moving........stop...drink Drinking.........stop

I remembered to lock my car, so now I remember locking my car.

She stopped drinking - right then & there. Still had half a glass of wine & stopped cold turkey.

I think the most common use of “stopped drinking” probably refers to abstaining from alcohol.

I don't get the difference🥲

For a some verbs, like start, "She started to drink" and "She started drinking" mean the same thing (at least normally), but with stop they have opposite meanings as the first is interpreted as "She stopped \[doing something in order\] to drink". I'm fairly certain that this is just showing that distinction with humorously selected images. There isn't really enough to connect this definitively to drinking alcohol, in my opinion, though it depends a lot on where this image was first posted.

r/antimeme

Well I do at least understand the difference though. She stopped to drink first, as i fluent English speaker if feels like it refrains to when drinking alcohol as well, it’s different if you’re talking about an alcoholic drink though in my opinion.

She stopped to drink means that she stopped doing something in order to drink. For example "I was jogging, but then I stopped to drink". "She stopped drinking" means that she was drinking and then she stopped doing it, so she's no longer drinking. I'm not a native speaker, but I think that's how it works.

When you follow a verb with another verb you either use the infinitive or -ing on the second verb. There are only 7 verbs that change meaning if we use inf or -ing. Here is a handy list of all the verbs and the special verbs https://www.engvid.com/english-resource/verbs-followed-by-gerunds-and-infinitives/

I never understood how it can be confusing and why it needed to be brought up in our English lesson, but as I was trying to write this comment I think I finally got why this can be confusing. It's because if you say start to drink or continue to drink, those would mean the same as start drinking or continue drinking, innit? But it isn't the same with stop.