The socially distanced drinker

Alcohol is associated with 2.8 million premature deaths every year, or rather more than the total death toll from Covid-19, according to an excellent new book called Drink? The New Science of Alcohol +

Your Health by David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

While alcohol is a killer, the dangers posed by truly moderate drinking are difficult to detect, according to Nutt, and this is the real message in his book. Your lifetime chances of dying from an alcohol-related condition are less than 1pc if you drink no more than 11 Irish units of alcohol every week, with at least two dry days.

Nutt (who not only drinks, but owns a wine bar) was sacked as the British government’s chief drug advisor when he called alcohol Britain’s most harmful drug, but he does not push for abstinence. Instead, he calls for making drinking a positive, active pleasure and avoiding drinking to relieve stress or from habit.

The professor also has some interesting tips to help people to drink moderately, which I like. The first is to aim to go third if you are buying rounds, so that you can have two alcoholic drinks before you buy yourself a non-alcoholic one, thus slowing down without the inevitable peer pressure.

Other tips are to drink a pint of beer when you know you are going to drink wine, to fill yourself up, and to avoid Champagne, because the bubbles go to your head.

His final tip is an oldie but worth repeating; avoid salty snacks while drinking because all they do is make you thirsty. Good advice for those of us who will continue drinking, sensibly, as lockdown ends.