I

STOPPED drinking alcohol in January this year. I’m not asking for a medal, though if you do happen to be minting some, I’d appreciate at least being considered for one.

It’s only been four months, but what you quickly find is that time operates very differently in Soberville. It’s a kind of reverse Narnia. “I have so much more time,” is a common thing you’ll hear new teetotallers say. They may say it in a slightly ambiguous tone. Time is often considered a precious commodity, particularly among presidents hanging on to power, new parents, or the terminally ill, so I’m conscious that what I’m about to say may sound a tweetch ungrateful.

The thing about time, though, is that you have to fill it. If you have become accustomed to spending most of your leisure hours either consuming alcohol or being ravaged by its after-effects, this can be a shock to the system. Back in my heaviest drinking days, my friends and I used to speculate — entirely hypothetically — about whether there existed any recreational activities which would not be improved by the injection of alcohol.

Maybe . . . hiking, we mused. Most sports. Sex, perhaps. After that we pretty much drew a blank. As a drinker, I used to marvel at people who actually had things to put in the “Hobbies & Interests” section of a CV. If you are a big social drinker, you never have to invest much thought into what fills your idle hours, because it is essentially the same: alcohol. Where you drink, what you drink and who you drink with may vary, but your Friday night plans are effectively sorted for eternity, or at least until the onset of cirrhosis of the liver.

Until you stop drinking, you may not notice the degree to which our society