In defence of alcohol
The UK’s curious relationship with it and habit vs. desire
Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.
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So many eloquent words have been written on Substack in recent weeks about quitting alcohol, that it feels a bit radical to admit that *whispers* I enjoy the occasional glass of wine or cocktail (have I mentioned I make my own wine?).
The topic of alcohol has been swirling around my head, wanting to be written about for a while. But I’ve felt hesitant venturing there simply because it is a hugely emotive and sensitive subject for so many.
Then a couple of weeks ago, my Dad wrote the following unexpected message in our family WhatsApp group – it was the sign I had been waiting for:
“I am announcing a New Year’s resolution of a dry month from the 14th Feb (after your Mum’s birthday party) until 14th March, where I will not consume any alcohol at all. The plan is that I hope to extend it to a further month thereafter. Who knows, I may even give up entirely 😂 Perhaps sticking to single evening indulgences and special occasions only.”
My Dad drinks on the weekends only — 2-3 beers and some whisky and always with food. So when I questioned him as to why he wanted to do a dry month when he doesn’t drink that much in the first place, he responded with, “I drink just because it’s the weekend, without fancying it at all really. I fancy it much less these days. That’s why I think I will stick to at least one dry month each year.”
And then I understood. He had come to the realization he was consuming the alcohol not because he craved or desired a smoky whisky or an ice cold beer, but because he was doing it out of habit.
Britain’s all or nothing relationship with alcohol
I am British in that I was born here. But being half Mediterranean (my Dad is Turkish Cypriot) — a part of the world where small tipples with food are integral to the culture — I find the relationship many Brits have with alcohol to be a peculiar thing I have observed with much curiosity since the onset of fully fledged adulthood.
It seems to me that a lot of the drinking that takes place in the UK is not enjoyed in and of itself, but as a means to an end – the end usually being, to get some level of drunk.
And few things encompass this unique all or nothing mentality than Dry January.
Before this WhatsApp conversation, I had always considered Dry January with some disdain (my opinion has changed, more on this later). I do still, a bit. It’s the feast or famine mindset that doesn’t sit well with me.
We are given a festive social pass to overindulge the booze to such extremes (alcohol with breakfast, anyone?) that by the end of the month, we become so disgusted with the bloated, blotchy-faced messes peering back at us in the mirror, that we seek salvation in the form of self-flagellation by starving ourselves of any of the pleasures that accompany moderate alcohol consumption for the duration of the coldest and greyest month of the year.
My MasterChef colleague Grace Dent paints these scenes well with what December used to look like for her, before getting sober:
“I was never an alcoholic before I went sober two and a half years ago. Rather, I was a classic British drinker and never more so than at Christmas . . . If I drank four glasses of cotes du rhone after a carol service, followed by mulled wine with colleagues the next night, then champagne after shopping with friends and cocktails after ice skating, that was fine, too. I was just being festive. Traditionally, by the week before Christmas, I’d be feeling rather un-ho-ho-ho, with bloated, grey skin, a bit depressed and overwhelmed by the to-do list waiting for me.”
I’m not sure other European countries do festive celebrations to quite the same extremes as we do. I found this reader comment under that Guardian piece to be telling:
“Here in Spain, there is a very different vibe to adult social drinking - basically the intention (of most) is not to get bladdered. In the north we tend to accompany a drink with a “pintxo”, which helps to balance the alcohol, and we may finish off a special get-together with a long, slow, gin and tonic, for example. You might find a bit more Cava being drunk, but drinking at Christmas is pretty much the same as during the rest of the year in my experience.”
Alcohol with food, or lack thereof
A few months ago I got my hair cut by a Japanese woman who had recently moved to the UK to marry a British man. I asked her what the biggest cultural shock had been for her since living here. She responded, without hesitation:
“The strangest thing for me that I still do not understand is that my husband goes directly to the pub most days after work and has beers… without eating?! This is crazy! We would never do this in Japan! There is always food when we are drinking!”
I responded with a highly pitched, “OH MY GOD – RIGHT?!”
Because slugging sauce without the presence of adequate sustenance has been a particular and unique British drinking quirk that I too, have simply never managed to get my head around.
And a packet of dry-roasted peanuts does not suffice.
Why do we drink to excess?
Let me be clear that I am not remotely venturing into the realms of serious addictions or substance abuse. I would never attempt to even dip my toe into waters I am forever grateful to have no experience of and know nothing about.
I also understand that whilst people might not have full blown addictions, many do become dependent on alcohol. I have been told by friends who have experienced this that it can start with alcohol being used as a crutch – perhaps as a way to relax after a hard day, or when you feel a bit stressed. Then it doesn’t take much for dependency to set in.
By which point your options are limited. To choose between struggling through the rest of your life trying to drink moderately, often failing and feeling terrible about the ‘failure’. Or just removing it from the equation altogether, which is often the easier path.
All power to those who have found themselves in this place and managed to quit entirely.
Because slugging sauce without the presence of adequate sustenance has been a particular and unique British drinking quirk that I too, have simply never managed to get my head around.
The people I have in mind are those who are not addicted and not dependent, but consume alcohol mostly out of habit and often with little pleasure or enjoyment involved.
The habit of I’m in a social environment and so could do with the lubrication. The habit of it’s 7pm and I’m eating dinner. The habit of I’m in a restaurant. The habit of we’re out out which means we’re going to get smashed.
Early lessons of excessive drinking
I think a lot of people in the UK equate consuming any amount of alcohol with feeling, in some way, less than on top form the next day. That there will always be a light grogginess at best or full blown fetal position hangover at worst.
This is unsurprising, considering the association is often cemented through direct experience during our impressionable, formative years.
The first message that 1) the sole purpose of consuming alcohol is to get legless and 2) it’s socially acceptable to do so, is received loud and clear by teenagers across the UK when many both pass the threshold of the legal drinking age of 18 and – in serendipitous unison – also happen to leave home and start university at exactly the same time.
Which is where they encounter Freshers Week. It’s a perfect, ugly storm.
For a lot of us, all hell breaks loose during Freshers Week. It did for me. Ask any alumni for a story from theirs and it will likely feature alcohol overconsumption, puking episodes and various other unpleasantries.
Any alumni that is except my husband, who is the only adult I know who — despite not being religious, allergic, nor borne from a family of alcoholics — has never allowed a drop of alcohol to pass his lips in his entire life. Not once.
And so the formula is etched into our subconscious from early adulthood:
Consuming alcohol =
necessary on a night out +
for getting drunk only +
feeling like death the next day
The stop button
I have since managed to unlearn this equation (along with every other equation I encountered during that Astrophysics degree).
It is very feasible to enjoy a small glass of wine one evening and go for a run the following day in fine fettle. It doesn’t have to be a black and white choice between wasted mornings and complete sobriety.
That is of course, if you have a stop button.
I appreciate many people do not have this critical stop button, or it can’t be located, or the manual for how to operate it has been lost — I have a close friend who has ended up in rehab because of his missing button. It’s this absent capacity for self-regulation that can often lead to dependency or addiction.
But why so many “classic British drinkers” do not have a stop button compared to other countries — where one glass of wine is more often than not, enough — is a question I often ponder and am in no way qualified to answer. I don’t know the reason. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing.
I raised this with a friend of Irish descent and his theory was that it linked back to the Vikings.
“Think about it – their main activities were raping, pillaging and drinking - boozing to excess must be hardwired into our Northern European DNA.”
Perhaps. But there’s probably more to it.
Whilst the rest of Europe still has its fair share of alcoholic related problems, it seems our specific UK brand of it is more fraught compared to many other places.
Let’s take France as an example
In France, serving wine to children in school canteens was only banned in 1956, a move denounced at the time as “a crime against French culture”.
Nowadays, eau rougie – water stained with red wine – will often accompany the evening meal of very young children at the French dinner table. The concentration of wine in the water gradually increases over the years, until the child is often enjoying a small undiluted glass with their dinner by the time they are a teenager.
As author and France resident Jonathan Miller states in this article:
“This relaxed approach teaches children to drink responsibly and in moderation. It demystifies alcohol, meaning that, when children inevitably get to the age where they want to start going out with friends, they don’t feel the need to drink to excess and develop the binge-drinking behaviours that could lead to alcoholism.”
Alcohol, and particularly wine, has a proud and long history in France. But that doesn’t mean the country doesn’t have its alcohol-related problems. France is Europe's fourth largest consumer of alcohol and the stuff is responsible for more than 40,000 French deaths every year.
But despite this, the French Government does not promote Dry January and politicians are reluctant to get onboard. Marc Fesneau, the agriculture minister, said just this month that the overall decline in French alcohol consumption — down 70% in the last half century and down 7-10% last year alone — made the Dry January campaign irrelevant and intrusive.
"I don't think the French need to be given lessons by anyone. People are fed up with being told what to eat, what to drink, how to travel,” he said.
“There's a way of life that also deserves respect.”
Is alcohol bad for us?
Would we all be better off being completely teetotal?