I can remember my first drink. I was four years’ old and it would have been Christmas Day, or perhaps Boxing Day, 1967. Unsurprisingly, I can’t recall exactly what particular poison it was but my money’s on a fortified wine, probably port or sherry, and I was resplendent in my first Preston North End footie kit, complete with blue & white hooped socks and black plastic boots. Me, and my marginally elder brother, Derek, were at Auntie Joan’s and following our innocent imbibing we pretended to be staggeringly incapable of walking in a straight line before throwing-up in an imaginary gutter. The final act seems strangely prescient.

As I write this, my last drink was on Tuesday 24^th September. Two pints of a lovely, citrus amber ale at The Beehive with my swimming pals after dragging my ungainly self through a mile of chlorine. And it was pure nectar.

A few weeks off the booze used to represent no more than a short-term health kick, specifically one you couldn’t wait to kick into touch. Once consigned to a temporary abstinence of a long weekend, or God forbid a Dry January or Sober for October, the new teetotal isn’t here to merely rinse out your liver, it wants to purify your very soul. For it to do its work it needs to righteous, evangelical and shouting from the pulpit. As a lifelong atheist this was never going to end well.

Rightly or wrongly I have always considered myself a relatively moderate drinker, one who thrived in social situations and never let it get out of hand. Yes, I was guilty of chasing that near-mythical ‘two-pint’ state where all is rosy with you and the world around but I prided myself on knowing when to call it a day. Usually, as it turned out, after the proverbial one too many. I wanted the second more than the first; the fourth more than the third. I could drink in moderation but, in the cold light of sobriety, often chose not to. Thankfully, being a midget meant I could never reach the giddy heights many of my fellow boozers so obviously strove for. I was more a giggly guzzler.

Alcohol has, to the best of my knowledge, always been the drug of choice for my family. Tales abound of my paternal grandmother being carted-off to the loony bin for a drying-out session following another semi-naked rampage round Preston’s town centre, ironically the birthplace of the UK temperance movement. No, really. My maternal side fared little better and the paving slabs between Wellfield Road and The Elephant appear to have been extremely well-trodden. I still recall the almost sweet beer-sweat smell of the Labour Club on a weekend afternoon after Sunday school and the sight of the public bar when the door swung open, allowing a tantalising glimpse of the forbidden world of talkative men holding court in a hazy fug. It’s fair to say my ol’ man drank robustly. Until he fell over. Often.

The definition of an alcoholic varies from bar to bar, and from the DT-shaking wino that uses a necktie to pulley the first drink of the day to their lips, to the hungover student who can’t remember how they got home the morning after the night before. Neither of these personally ring true but the definition that did for me was the one who makes rules for themselves. Uh oh. No spirits in the house, even though I never drink spirits. Drinking on fewer days than not and never on your jack-jones. No drinking on Sundays in the name of a deity I’ll never believe in. No leaving a bottle half full. Or half empty for that matter. B*gger. I genuinely have no yearning to be teetotal but I decided earlier this year to take a time-out every so often, purely for the novelty of feeling twenty-five again. 

My issue with the demon drink is that it’s just so darned attractive. As legendary louche, Kingsley Amis, put it: it’s not about being drunk, it’s about getting drunk as the journey is always more rewarding than the destination. It makes you relaxed, it makes you gregarious, it takes away your natural inhibitions and makes you socially confident. It’s the killer one liner in every too-tall-tale and it invariably picks you up when you’re feeling low. It has the ability to change me from the stood-up to the stand-up. Chemically, it’s an all-rounder of note. Or at least it is initially.

Booze mucks about with the brain’s neurotransmitters – the chemicals that enable neutrons, or brain cells, to communicate with each other. Two of the most important ones are glutamate and gammaaminobutyric, or gaba as it more colloquially known. Glutamate promotes brain activity whilst gaba inhibits it. As it transpires, and in super-simple terms, alcohol acts as a red light for the former and a green light for the latter; it enables the hinderer and hinders the enabler. It stops you over-thinking, analysing too much and simplifies your logic so you think you’re more outgoing and gregarious, when in reality you ain’t. Factor in the inevitable hit of the neurotransmitter of anticipation and excitement, dopamine, and you’re hook, line and sinkered, even if that’s a reduced and redacted version of yourself.  

Alcohol’s impact is all in the mind, both literally and metaphorically. Last January over three million of us climbed on the wagon and our local supermarkets suffered a mighty decline in booze sales to the tune of 54%. I am confident this coming January’s figures will be even higher as more of us overcome the anticipated gentle ribbing and mickey-taking. In our permanently damp society, anyone knocking back nothing stronger than a lime & soda leaves themselves open to the accusation of being pregnant (not limited to women I’ll have you know!), a secret or recovering alcoholic, or the most heinous of crimes, of being downright boring. And they’re right. This is the stigmata of sobriety.

Many FOMA (fear of missing alcohol) fears are grounded in truth and there will be repercussions. There will be awkward small talk and you’re unlikely to get all the jokes. You will get left out of certain things and at those you are invited to you’ll invariably head for your zzz’s before many others. Just try and drag it out until sunset at least. Your friends have every right to consider you to be a bit weird and to think you’ve become a total bore. And no-one will let you forget it, until they can’t remember it. Perhaps console yourself with the fact that if you are indeed boring, it’s nothing to do with the Stella, it’s because you’re boring. Rest assured, I was boring on the sauce and I’m still boring off it.

You are being judged, and why shouldn’t you be, sat up there on your high horse? By the same token it’s virtually impossible to not don the judge’s ceremonial clobber and return the favour. But do force yourself to hold back. Exactly how those tipsy tipplers and serenading sluggers, who shall remain your friends, choose to waste their weekends, poison their vital organs and flush their fresh-faced youth down the pan, is none of your goddam business. Nada. Zilch. Keep your clear-headed opinions, fresh-tasting sanctimonious sarcasm and lucid thoughts to yourself.

So, in vino veritas. With wine there is truth. Much of what the Romans ever did for us we have just cause to celebrate, but not all. In aqua sanitas. In water there lies sense!