Maybe it’s time to break that lifelong love affair with booze
Over the holidays, usually while enjoying my third or fourth glass of Shiraz, I’ve been contemplating whether I need to give up liquor. My drinking is sort of under control, but I do worry about how much I enjoy it and how much I look forward to it at the end of the day.
It’s not a good idea to stand between me and my bottle of Shiraz when I get through the door.
Holidays are always a bit different because what would they be without a few extra drinks at the end of the day.
The ugly question to confront is whether I’m heading down the road to alcohol dependency and perhaps worse.
Now I could be exaggerating the problem here. Many of my relatives and friends would guzzle a bottle of wine plus a few beers a day and think nothing of it.
I never used to be a big drinker or even a pub-goer. It just seemed like a big waste of money and I grew up in an abstinence sort of culture where boozing was regarded as a low down activity.
The first question in considering alcohol remediation is whether to give up altogether or just cut down.
The trouble with the latter option is that one is never enough. One glass inevitably leads to another and once the bottle is half empty you might as well finish it. So that even if you decide to have alcohol-free days, you make up for it on the other days.
So it might actually be easier to give up altogether.
But that brings up another awkward question. What is left in life?
I’m not just joking there. The question that arises is what to drink. At the end of the day I feel like I deserve a reward and it’s hard to think of anything better than a nice glass of something.
A cup of tea just doesn’t cut the mustard.
And an even more searching question is what to drink at the pub or social occasions.
There is, of course, no reason why you shouldn’t go to the pub and have a lime and soda while everyone else is chugging back the beers. But you’re always going to be the odd one out.
You should be proud of giving up booze and be given a pat on the back and lots of encouragement. Instead you feel like a social outcast and like you have let the side down.
We have learned to be tolerant and inclusive of all sorts of behaviours and inclinations that in the past have been considered abhorrent. But tee-totalling is still beyond the pale.
It’s just not very cool. We also feel that tee-totallers are looking down on us. Because they shun our activity, they obviously see something wrong in it.
We are all into live and let live. But live and live like the rest of us.
Parties can be a nightmare without booze. Your fruit juice and soft drinks always seem like a sad excuse and you have to endure the whole party completely sober.
The rewards of giving up can sometimes seem negligible. I had an alcohol-free week recently and still felt terrible in the morning.
Like a lot of countries with British roots, we have an unfortunate booze culture. I know it’s easy to make these generalisations but ask yourself what we praise and what we punish.
Excessive drinking among the young for instance is regarded almost as a healthy social activity and a rite of passage. This attitude is class blind. Gang members condone heavy drinking and drunkenness in the same way as elite rugby teams and student groups.
In surveys a couple of years ago a greater proportion of young people agreed with the statements, ‘‘It’s OK to get drunk as long as it’s not every day’’ and ‘‘Drunkenness is acceptable in some situations’’, compared with those aged 25 years and over.
We are inclined to feel better disposed to someone who got wasted over the weekend than someone who helped out at the city mission. We like people who know how to enjoy themselves and let their hair down.
The worst thing about our booze culture is all the bluster that goes with it.
Many drinkers just love to regale us with their drunken exploits and their ability to drink copious amounts of liquor.
If they were talking about heroin usage we would likely be appalled. But alcohol is our sanctioned substance abuse.
A lot of social banter is devoted to skiting about booze experiences. ‘‘I was so hammered.’’ That sort of thing. Being able to hold your liquor is a praiseworthy attribute.
How do you change a culture, particularly such an open one? You change a culture by condemnation, shame and fear, as we have seen with the Weinstein revelations. It will be hard.
We are still a long way from regarding boozers as losers and at the moment I’m feeling thirsty.