I hate teetotallers. The pitying looks they give you with their cold, unclouded eyes. Those patronising, bored smiles they smile, as though they are indulgently listening to the table-talk of children. Their uncouth early departures from the dinner table and tactless talk of early starts. Teetotallers are as bad as people who insist on whipping out their phones to film fellow guests when they’re dancing. They’re buzz-killing squares who should learn to live a little.
And yet … I have, despite my worse judgment, recently mounted the wagon. In my heart, I remain a devoted drinker. In my mind, I continue to see myself as the Falstaffian life of the party. But deep in my vitals – as Sir John might put it – a rebellion has erupted and swept to victory over the whole. The truth is that my body can no longer cope with a daily tsunami of neurotoxic Chianti and liver-inflating rye whiskey. A shutter has rattled down on my life that will never be reopened. I have become an exile from my own past.
There were, in all honesty, certain signs and portents that all was not going well. Late at night I would loudly abuse noisy (fellow) drunks in the street through a giant brass bullhorn from our terrace. This escalated to throwing down powerful bangers and finally opening fire on strangers at five in the morning from my new (happily, blank-firing) Beretta 92. My wife, appearing naked in the darkness like an avenging angel to disarm me, took a dim view. I drunkenly fell down the stairs inside our apartment. I flung myself into bed and missed. Evidence was accumulating that my relationship with alcohol might be becoming dysfunctional.
Certain of my friends who have forsworn the demon drink claim that it was Alcoholics Anonymous that saved their lives. Good for them, but not for me. Famously, there is nothing more boring that listening to other people talk about their diets, their pets or their dreams. To this list I would add tales of other people’s sober journeys. To me, joining AA would be like being cursed to perform in a Sartre play that continues for eternity. Relying on the approval of a group of strangers seems as empty to me as the belief that an invisible being in the sky is taking a close interest in my worldly misbehaviours.
Late at night I would loudly abuse noisy (fellow) drunks in the street through a giant brass bullhorn from our terrace
In the end going sober was made very easy by a simple but fundamental mental shift. Forswearing booze was not a choice but a realisation that I simply can’t take it any more. The logic was simple: some years ago, I pranged my knee and understood that I would never be able to ride again. In exactly the same way, it became devastatingly obvious that 20 units of booze a night have come close to pranging my body. Likewise, for 15 years I lived on an idyllic car-free island in the Sea of Marmara but moved to Oxfordshire in order to turn my boys (very expensively) into little English gentlemen. I loved my life on Prinkipo but left for a good reason and have no desire to return. I miss it as one might miss university or one’s youth. But the river has flowed on and you will never step into it again. In short, I realised that I had no choice but to emigrate from the land of the drunk. Living there had been fun, for a while. But by the end it gave me no joy and was making me miserable every day. That’s no way to live your life.
One principal practical obstacle to my leave-taking from Booze Island remained – I am a person of no willpower. I also suffer from an infantile inability to deny myself instant gratification. In this regard, pharmaceuticals helped. There is a well-known pill that’s been around since the 1950s (which I won’t name as they are not paying me) which suppresses the liver’s production of the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase. This prevents the body from breaking down alcohol properly. If you take the magic tablet and try to drink you’re immediately 13-years-old again – your face goes red, your head spins and you feel immediately, unpleasantly drunk. In other words, you can’t drink even if you want to.
The effect wears off after three days or so and you may, if you choose, go back to your wicked, wicked ways. But in my case three days of chemically-enforced sobriety proved not, as I had expected, purgatorial but on the contrary highly enjoyable. So I have continued. The University of YouTube was also a great comfort. Not the videos posted by irritatingly healthy-looking and smug middle-aged men talking about their fulfilled sober lives while walking dogs on rainy moors, but the more sensible shows by actual doctors talking about all the magical ways in which your liver, gut and brain are busily regenerating themselves. I find it deeply restful to learn that unlike yoga, fitness or weight loss, this particular healthy practice requires no effort at all other than simply not drinking. Though it must be noted that a gratifying side effect has been losing five kilos in weight and six inches off my belly. The days of Ramsay’s adage “undo not thy belt, lest thy guts fall about thy knees!” are behind me.
Parties would be hard, or so I thought. For weeks I avoided them. In truth, Hemingway was absolutely right when he said that he drank to make other people interesting. But why would you waste your time talking to boring people?
So yes, it’s happened. There are moments when I find myself looking upon boring dinner-table drunks with pity and contempt. But at the same time, I cling to the thought that I have not become a confirmed teetotaller. In time, some wine should be fine. It just the getting slaughtered every night part that’s boring and unconscionable. Constant boozing is a thief of time, a destroyer of one’s life force. Deep down, I remain a committed hedonist. But if one’s life is to be truly devoted to joy and gratification, booze is not a friend but your enemy.
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