Just a splash

My taste for alcohol has always been limited. I enjoy a glass of wine, possibly two, but that's more than enough. I've never understood those vast hordes of people who like to drink as much as possible.

I watch them reeling out of pubs and then collapsing or vomiting or shrieking obscenities and I wonder for the umpteenth time what the attraction is. Especially when the next day they'll also have a crushing hangover and be struggling to function normally.

As a twenty something, I fell in with a crowd of heavy drinkers and started to drink as relentlessly as they did. But after several appalling hangovers, when I felt at death's door and ready to top myself just to end the misery, I resolved to be more sensible and limit myself to what my body could cope with rather than beating my liver to a pulp.

Of course heavy drinking is so common that the drinkers seldom see anything wrong with it. They think heavy drinking is completely normal, if anything more normal than a strait-laced, priggish refusal to keep gulping it down. I know what they're thinking - I'm a wimp, a girlie, an abstemious nerd who doesn't know how to let my hair down and have a good time. Well, each to their own, I guess, and all I can say is that their meat is my poison.

Heavy drinkers have no trouble justifying their habit. What could be more natural? They just enjoy drinking to excess. They enjoy being drunk. They need it to drown their sorrows, to escape the agonies of daily life. It loosens their inhibitions, relaxes them. It helps them to socialise. It's sexually liberating. So many good reasons for knocking it back.

I suppose my attitude is that I want to experience life as it is. If life is difficult, then I'll find ways of making it easier. I'm not looking for an escape, a way of blotting out reality so I don't have to deal with it any more. If I'm shy or nervous, I don't want some artificial Dutch courage to feign a confidence I don't have. I'd rather admit to my shyness and overcome it in my own way.

Whenever someone says "Go on, have another. It won't kill you" I just think, "But what's the point?"

Drink problem

Regular readers will know I'm baffled by people who habitually drink huge quantities of alcohol and habitually get appalling hangovers. Where's the attraction, I ask myself. Why is ten pints better than half a pint?

Keen drinkers on the other hand are equally baffled by me. Why is Nick such an abstemious tight-arse? Doesn't he know how to let his hair down and enjoy himself? Doesn't he want to lose his inhibitions and anxieties for a while?

I don't think the two factions will ever understand each other. Especially here in Ireland, where heavy drinking is regarded as absolutely normal and (13%) proof you're a paid-up member of the human race.

Alcohol comes to mind as I watch with interest England's latest attempts to curb the huge social, medical and financial costs of binge-drinking.

Boris Johnson, the new Mayor of London, has banned alcohol on the entire London Transport network. The British government has announced that young children found drunk by police will be ordered into rehab and teenagers frequently caught with alcohol will be given ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) imposing curfews and alcohol bans. Parents may be sent on parenting courses and may be prosecuted if their children are still misbehaving.

Well, these measures are a well-meaning response to an increasingly ugly problem, but they don't tackle the root cause of alcohol mayhem. Which is the increasing belief that a night out can't be properly enjoyed without a tsunami of alcohol, plenty of broken glass, pools of vomit and a mangled brain.

Somebody explain to me why a few like-minded people with sharp brains, a crazy sense of humour and some juicy gossip aren't more than enough for an entertaining evening, with or without fermented grapes.

Tipsy town

Is it insulting or flattering that a new survey finds Belfast to have the biggest boozers in the UK? Depends on your point of view, I guess, and your own partiality for the liver-eating liquid.

The survey by PCP of Luton, a company that rehabilitates hardened drinkers, found that people in Belfast spend an average of £47,568 on alcohol in their lifetime.

Leaving aside exactly how they arrived at that figure, which a trained statistician would probably rip to pieces (and actually it works out at only £2 a week more than the next booziest city, Cambridge), it certainly makes me think about Northern Ireland's astonishing capacity for boozing, on every possible occasion on the flimsiest of excuses ("Hey, I found the budgie - fancy a drink?")

That £47,000 is a hell of a sum. Just think what you could do with it instead - a hefty deposit on a house, a trip round the world, an incredible number of CDs, or a huge wardrobe of designer clothes.

Visitors from other countries are constantly dumbfounded by the British and Irish tendency for relentless drinking - not just a glass of wine to embellish a meal, but pint after pint of the stuff until they've literally taken leave of their senses.

It's not just recklessness or hedonism. Scientists say some people have a special metabolism that can digest rivers of alcohol without a serious physical reaction (apart from hangovers, that is). In other parts of the world, people simply can't process such an overload of booze so they drink very little.

Personally I take after the latter, as I've never been comfortable with more than a glass or two of alcohol, even as a wild teenager. More than that can bring an instant headache and almost complete incapacity the next day. I'm always amazed by the ability of other hangover-struck individuals to act completely normal and compus mentis.

It's ironic that with such widespread religious observance in these parts, there are so few teetotallers, or even light drinkers. Somehow people manage to square their insatiable urge for a brimming tankard with a God who teaches moderation in all things.

Is it possible that one day we'll learn to appreciate quality over quantity? I'll drink to that!