Why I’ve decided to stay on the wagon

AT THE beginning of October I decided to give up alcohol for a month. I am not a heavy drinker — once alcohol hits my brain I have an hour of uninhibited fun before I feel tired and sleepy.

Nonetheless I was almost certainly drinking more than the current gui del i nes, which advise limiting alcohol intake to 14 units a week for men and women.

This is the equivalent of no more than six pints of beer or seven medium-sized glasses of wine. So, like millions of others, I decided to try ‘Sober October’. I was partly encouraged to do this by broadcaster Jeremy Vine, who told me he goes alcohol-free for at least a month every year, and also because of an experiment I was involved with a few years ago, carried out with the help of scientists from University College London and The Royal Free Hospital. We recruited a group of volunteers, some of whom were quite heavy drinkers, while others claimed to drink within the guidelines.

We gave them a health check and they then steered clear of alcohol for a month. When we repeated our tests, we found that their overall health had indeed improved.

They’d lost an average of 6lb, most were sleeping better and the level of fat in their livers fell by an average of 15 per cent. Not surprisingly it was the heavy drinkers who saw the biggest improvements. I feared that I would struggle with a full month’s abstinence but I didn’t find it too hard. I did have a couple of lapses but they were minor. By the end of October I’d lost a couple of pounds and my blood pressure, which had begun creeping upwards, was back in the healthy range.

In fact I felt so much better that I’ve decided to continue. That doesn’t mean I won’t have a few drinks over Christmas, but it does mean that I expect to be drinking far less during 2021. We shall see.