In defence of booze

Once upon a time, well within living memory, a free-born Britisher could drink as much as he or she liked and smoke with a carefree abandon – all within working hours, and even without leaving their desk. You may remember elevenses – immortalised in those moments when M briefs Bond in the 007 films and the decanter comes out. That’s how people did a business meeting once, before Starbucks and 15 types of coffee.

And then there was lunch. This could begin with a pint of beer or a steep gin and tonic, before some wine, and then perhaps a glass of port or brandy. Water? Kah! That’s for rinsing the glasses, not going in them.

Nowadays, if you suggest having a glass of wine at a work lunch people will look at you like you’ve just offered their toddler a line of cocaine. Even in the gaps between ‘Sober October’, ‘Dry January’ and whatever gets invented next, drinking at lunch in corporate Britain is no longer considered acceptable. And having conquered elevenses and lunch, no doubt the next logical step for the joyless New Puritans is to stop dinnertime and even evening drinking.

It wasn’t until 1984 that the government got involved in telling us how much to knock back. In 1987 men were instructed to limit their consumption to 21 units a week and women to 14. In 2016, this was updated, reducing the maximum amount men should drink weekly to 14 units, bringing them into line with women. For anyone who’s brave enough to have tried this, you’ll know that it's a bit like having to do 20mph on the M4. It feels incredibly unnatural.

The salient point, of course, is that it’s materially a nonsense: the idea that a 6ft 10in rugby player weighing the same as an expectant Giant Panda can healthily consume only the same number of alcoholic units in a week as a spindly widow in Godalming is so irretrievably bogus as to make me query the sanity of whomever dreamed up the idea. Perhaps they were drunk when they wrote the guidelines?

Might it be prudent (as the government guidelines recommend) for this rugby player to have a few days off the sauce to allow affected parts of the body to recover? Of course. Go for it. But 14 units a week? For ever? Come on, that’s like being taught to ski to and told you have to stick to green runs. Or is the 14 units intended to be regarded like the speed limit on the motorway – in other words you’re expected to disregard it, perhaps by as much as 10 per cent?

Alas those beating the drums in the war on booze are deadly serious. And why? Because the grim fact is that the data shows that drinking too much is bad news – particularly in respect of certain cancers, as Alcohol Change UK makes clear. (I can tell you, after a few minutes perusing this organisation’s website, you’ll definitely need a drink.)

Yet it’s a drumbeat that ignores reality and the tacit societal benefits of drinking. For a start, there’s a very good chance that without the loosening effects of booze you wouldn’t be here. That’s because either you, or your parents – or one of their parents – would not have plucked up the courage to cross the dancefloor without the benefits of the sauce. When you consider how much more inhibited our forebears were – back in the days when piano legs had to be covered up and swimming costumes were like ballgowns – there’s no chance of us all existing.

So think on that, Puritans, and on this. Without booze – for the same reasons – it’s perfectly possible that the human race could have bred out all introverts. That’s right. If you think that introversion might have any genetic basis, then arguably, without a little Dutch courage to aid replication, the gene could have perished. Where would that leave the IT industry and the future of AI?

And we have hardly even scratched the surface of the reasons we should be grateful for booze. It’s almost certainly one of the reasons we don’t speak French, alcohol being no small part of what kept the Royal Navy going during the Napoleonic wars. Sailors enjoyed a daily tot of rum (71ml – so what we’d now call a triple in the pub) mixed with water to make grog, plus a gallon of beer – eight pints – daily. In other words, their daily beer allowance was more than the Department of Health now thinks it’s safe for us to drink in week. The daily tot of rum was only discontinued by the Navy in 1970.

In the same vein, we’d probably be speaking German without the comfort of booze. If you’d popped into the King’s Head in the North Weald during the war, you’d have found the likes of Douglas Bader at the bar. Imagine telling the Few how few they can have.

And that’s the Jager-bomb in the pint-pot of the anti-booze brigade’s argument: they are ignoring the simple fact that for hundreds, thousands of years, the human race has been merrily self-medicating with this stuff. From the Andes to ancient Mesopotamia, from the Xia dynasty in China 4,000 years ago to medieval monks merrily binge-drinking on mead in Malvern, booze has helped mankind endure and celebrate the human condition since the dawn of time.

Not only is denying that wrong-headed but we are being frightened into giving up booze without the offer of an effective substitute. With religion as we once knew it more or less dead – certainly if one looks at active participation – we can’t even rely on the ‘opium of the masses’ to get us through the day. And don’t forget that at the same time we have a war being waged on sugar and junk food – so people can’t even drown their sorrows in Doritos or Milky Bars.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that we are living through the age of rage. Godless, sugarless, fatless, meatless and increasingly boozeless, all as we confront a decade of grave uncertainty with pandemics, war, economic woes, climate change and even a hostile bond market. As crazy as it sounds, might what people need be a drink? Perhaps more drink, something to soothe the mind and reassure them that everything will be right in the end? One thing is certain: purging society of booze ignores the social cost of taking away a lubricant that has got us through thick and thin more than once.

This is why I believe it’s time to call time on the war on booze. By all means do as the doctors’ advise and have a day or two off the sauce each week. It’s good to let the liver have a break. Don’t forget to go for run or a brisk walk too. Do stand on one leg while you brush your teeth to preserve your balance, because falls are one of the main way old people cark it. Eat butter. Eat margarine. Eat plant-based spreads. Eat your greens. Donate money to the wonderful people at Macmillan Cancer Support in lieu of observing their Sober October initiative, too. But don’t feel obliged to give up booze for the sake of it.

And, right now, I urge you. Whatever time of day it is where you are, reach for a little of what you like. The sun is over the yard-arm somewhere. Go on. Pour yourself a dram or snifter or a splash, and raise your glass to the wonders of booze. It is a demon, but it has helped the human race immeasurably and we should not forget that in our haste to eradicate all risk. You can’t see it, but like gravity, the law of unintended consequences is real and it doesn’t do half measures.