Sobriety is so miserable, it’s enough to drive you to drink!

GIVEN that I gave up alcohol in January, I should be feeling smug this morning, rather like a homeless person sleeping under a tabloid with the news that mortgage interest rates have shot up. Shouty headlines on Friday morning proclaimed: ‘Couple of glasses a night shortens life by two years! Much more than four bottles a week can lop off five years!’

By that count, I should have died four years ago. ‘The key message of this research for public health is that if you already drink alcohol, drinking less may help you live longer,’ said Angela Wood, of Cambridge University, who led the study.

I might be sober, but I’m not remotely smug. I’m angry.

Get lost, Ange. I imagine you’re a barrel of laughs to go out to dinner with, beadily eyeing your companion’s glass as it’s topped up, doing little sums at the end of the night, calculating not just your share of the bill (‘Well, I only had tap water, and no third course as my next study will be about how choosing a starter over a dessert makes your marriage last longer as you’ll be a bit thinner’) but the age at which your companion will die.

‘Hmm. Well, it’s £14.99 for me and £119.50 for you, and you will die next Wednesday afternoon, just before Pointless. Sorry.’

I have always wondered about the veracity of these scare stories, thinking, well, what if your wine glasses are really small?

And I cannot help wondering why everyone wants to prolong a life that will inevitably be joyless, as if this were our only ambition.

Having kicked my addiction to Cremant or, when I was feeling flush, a bottle of perfectly decent champagne from Lidl for £10.99, I have to admit my physical wellbeing has improved. I sleep better. I no longer get headaches. I have more money to spend on solids. I am less volatile. But I’ve discovered that a life without alcohol is simply not worth living (I’m sure I’ve become diluted from quaffing far too much San Pellegrino).

There’s nothing to look forward to at the end of the day. No point sitting on a terrace with a beautiful view as, with no stem in your hand, all that’s left to do is fiddle with your phone. No reason to crave the interval during a play; I tend to slope off home at half-time, the prospect of Act Two too tedious without bubbles.

There’s no point winning an award or getting married or getting out of bed on Christmas morning. I’m generally asleep by nine, as there’s nothing to do. Nothing to dull the loss of a parent or child. Nothing to hold.

AND dates with men! Dear God, without booze, no sane woman would ever be reeled in. I only managed to crawl down the aisle as my maid of honour and I had quaffed a magnum in my suite beforehand.

And here’s the proof of the pudding (I’m eating a lot more puddings): I went on my first date without alcohol a couple of weeks ago. A man I’d once fancied more than any other in the world seen without wine goggles became boring, old and cantankerous.

Drink makes us tolerant, which is why all those young women in short skirts staggering outside bars in Newcastle don’t feel the cold, or the despair of having no future (I’m not advocating becoming paralytic, just mellow).

I suppose without it we make better choices – an excuse of a ‘very hungry cat’ so we can ask for the bill and go home alone – but shouldn’t the most important lifestyle choice be to be able to relax, enjoy a full stop at the end of a gruelling week? I wonder how people face the horror that is life without liquor: the rudeness of the French in St Tropez, say, or an unopened brown envelope on the mat.

I have a couple of sanctimonious ‘friends’ who don’t drink, or drink very little. Even though they smoke, rarely exercise, snort coke, eat ready meals and supermarket sliced bread, still they would raise their brows as I recycled the Christmas empties. ‘Hmm, six bottles from, what, four days?’ ‘The dog knocked a glass over.’ ‘How on earth do you afford it?’ ‘I never had children.’

Can you imagine: nine months of growing varicose veins and stretch marks and the prospect of no sleep for 25 years, unable to even sip something bubbly with your feet up. I wonder anyone gets born at all.