Giving up

Since Jenny and I gave up alcohol several months ago we're surprised how little we even think about alcohol. We never have any hankering for a glass of wine, and we can easily ignore the alcohol sections at the supermarkets. We just don't miss it.

It's strange that we've abandoned alcohol so easily, since we'd been drinking regularly from before we first met. We'd been cutting back a bit from our earlier days together when we'd consume a bottle of wine or more in an evening. But it never occurred to us to stop drinking, especially when all our friends drank.

Then one day in the spring we both realised that alcohol just wasn't doing anything for us any more, so why were we still guzzling it? Why not give it up? So we did. We were expecting it to be a bit of a struggle but we were amazed at how effortless it was.

It's saving us a lot of money of course, which is an added bonus. It was expensive enough just for the two of us, but if you're buying a round in the pub the cost is crazy.

Nobody has suggested that we're missing out by giving up alcohol, that we're party-poopers or strait-laced puritans. I suppose it helps that a lot of young people have gone teetotal, either for the health benefits or to save money or because they don't like being drunk. So rejecting alcohol has become somewhat fashionable.

Cheers!

Never hooked

I've never been hooked on alcohol. It has a pleasant taste and it relaxes me a bit but I can take it or leave it. In fact I've now given up alcohol entirely and I haven't missed it for a second (Jenny has more or less given up as well).

I didn't have any alcohol until I was 23, when I was an evening student at a London college and a group of us would go round to the pub after the lesson.

Like the others, I tipped the alcohol down with gay abandon, and put up with the inevitable hangover the next morning. It was only after a hangover so appalling I was barely able to function that I decided to severely cut down my drinking.

After I left college I stopped drinking altogether and I drank no alcohol for a good decade until I met Jenny and we started socialising a lot, which led me back to alcohol.

We never drank that much, but there were evenings when we would consume a whole bottle of wine. We've been drinking less and less and a couple of months ago decided to quit alcohol altogether.

For me alcohol has never had the supposed benefits people mention. It doesn't make me more confident, or more talkative, or more vivacious, or help me to cope with a big shock. Usually it just makes me sleepy and vague and not very good company.

We're also saving a pile of money of course, especially at restaurants where a single glass of wine can set you back seven quid. Is it worth it?

Incidentally why is copious alcohol the routine way to celebrate? Couldn't we celebrate some other way?

Enough is enough

In one of the papers today, four teetotallers explain how awkward it can be when they're surrounded by drinkers all happily chucking booze down their throats.

Inevitably when they refuse any alcohol, those who enjoy it keep asking why they abstain. Wouldn't they have more fun if they had a glass or two? Is it a religious principle? Are they recovering alcoholics?

The idea that they simply don't like the taste of alcohol, or they don't like hangovers, or they enjoy themselves fine when they're sober, seems to mystify people. How can you not want to ingest as much of the stuff as possible?

I'm subject to this sort of questioning sometimes, as I drink very little and find two glasses are more than enough to blur my brain and senses in a way I find embarrassing and annoying. My tolerance for alcohol is very limited, and it does nothing at all for my sociability or my intelligence.

But there's still the general assumption that I should be drinking more, that I can't really enjoy myself without at least a bottle of wine inside me. There's even an attitude that if I don't wake up the next morning with a colossal hangover, my evening out must obviously have been a washout.

Well, sorry, but I like my alcohol in moderation, too much of it does nothing for me whatever. If others genuinely relish non-stop quantities of it, good luck to them, though when I see people lurching out of pubs, vomiting profusely and having to be taken home by others for their own safety, I do have my doubts.

Can this really be pleasure? And am I really just a miserable killjoy?
.................................................................................

The Belgian city of Ghent now has a weekly vegetarian day, to counter the impact of livestock on the environment. Nice one!