i can’t get no satisfaction
With the shocking news that legendary hard-living, hard-drinking stalwart, Keith Richards, has finally quit the booze, is it time for many of us to take a sober look at ourselves and join him on the wagon? In his infamously understated, laconic and usually slurred manner, Richards explained that “It was time to quit, I just got fed up with it” and his morning kick-starter-for-ten Jack Daniel’s and Smirnoff has been given the elbow.
There’s no denying that the ol’ demon drink has provided a near vital role in lubricating social relations from time immemorial and research has shown that even before we eventually settled down to our grape and grain agricultural life, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were getting together to get out of their heads! One specific Sumerian proverb from the 4th millennium BC proudly espoused “To not know beer is not normal.”
Not everyone can be social gadabouts, the veritable life and soul of the party, and alcohol has done a sterling job of coaxing the shy from their shadowy corners of comfort. But, as our NHS now routinely sets aside £300,000.00 to fund city-centre ‘drunk-tanks’, where the over-indulged can be checked-over and allowed to sleep-it-off without taking it out on the better-things-to-do nurses and paramedics, shouldn’t we take a slightly more cold-lit, hard-livered view of today’s excesses? During the recent festive period, which invariably now starts on the 1st of the month as opposed to politely waiting for the 24th, as many as seven out of ten patients in A&E were merely intoxicated and incapable.
Irrespective of our own personal definition of an alcoholic (sweet sherry with your sugarpuffs, scarf round the neck to get the first spirit sip to your DT-trembling lips, drinking only on days ending in y) there’s no denying that booze has soaked into the fabric of our lives. Some go further and argue it is now the very warp and weft of our way of life. Wine o’clock. Prosecco made me do it. That’s not alcoholism, that’s a Wednesday! Don’t talk to me before Pinot Grigio. Friday Fizz. Drink red, it’s one of your five-a-day. Cocktail shaker-and-mover. Bring gin or you ain’t coming in. Vodka’s not a carb. If you believe the t-shirts, tote bags, chef’s aprons, welcome mats and fridge magnets it’s nothing short of a miracle our economy’s still here to underperform.
Can you see where this is going yet? In the UK, one pound in every ten spent in the supermarket goes on booze yet last January it fell below fifty pence. No, the life of a Rolling Stone is not yet for me but yes, a ‘dry January’ is definitely on the cards and to this I’ll raise my glass. Cheers, Keith, wish me luck!
