‘Good for you. Amazing. I should do the same.’ ‘You must feel great. Lucky you.’ This is what I hear when I tell people I haven’t touched alcohol for a year or more. Behind their bland words, I detect an air of pity and bafflement, even a hint of contempt. I know what they’re thinking because I used to feel the same way. The teetotaller hasn’t escaped a disease, but contracted one. Perhaps they’re right and the ill-effects of alcohol are wildly exaggerated. Plenty of all-day boozers lived to a ripe old age. Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Joan Crawford. Then there are the rock stars in their eighties who drink Jack Daniel’s for breakfast with no problems.
I was sorely tempted to join AA because the second ‘A’ sounds so exciting
Sobriety remains stubbornly unpopular despite all the advantages cited in its favour. Within a mile of my house there are two temperance societies that are open for just an hour a week. Clearly there’s no demand. The same patch boasts 20 pubs that sell booze every day from noon to midnight. But if alcohol were a deadly poison, these bars would have no customers. And I haven’t felt any physical benefits since giving up. I weigh the same. I feel the same. Insomnia is still my nightly companion. I’m often awake at 4 a.m. eating slabs of Lidl chocolate and trying to get to sleep by reading Solzhenitsyn.
When I’m asked why I quit, I realise I’m not being canvassed for health tips. People want a rattling good yarn. A rock bottom moment. For me, it was a gradual process. My son turned 17 last year and I began to think about myself at that age, in 1980, when I was too young to buy a drink. I had a great year.
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