Do you remember the days when people would chuckle about how much alcohol they were buying in for Christmas and how legless they’d get over the festive period?
No longer. These days, many drinkers are drinking ‘Christmas amounts’ every day of the year in the same way they’re stuffing in Christmas Day feasts of treat food every day.
But I’ll no longer be tipping back my usual nine units of champagne and wine per day this Christmas. I don’t drink any more – on any day of the year.
I’m not in recovery from alcoholism. Nor will I be exerting willpower to resist the blissful nectar of dull opiates. In fact, almost like magic, I simply went off alcohol three years ago.
It happened after a dose of Campylobacter and a course of antibiotics. Could that antibiotic have triggered some sort of hormonal aversion to alcohol? Or did the Campylobacter just knock so much stuffing out of me that I could no longer process the toxins?
All I know – and many women who have had the same feeling while pregnant will remember this – is that my body instinctively just does not want alcohol any more. It recoils, even at the idea and at the most fragrant of bouquets.
I’m a born drinker – I’m Irish and a writer. Eighty per cent of my friends still drink at least six units a day. How can my social life continue?
Bu hikaye The Oldie Magazine dergisinin January 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The Oldie Magazine dergisinin January 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Travel: Retreat From The World
For his new book, Nat Segnit visited Britain’s quietest monasteries and islands to talk to monks, hermits and recluses
What is... a nail house?
Don’t confuse a nail house with a nail parlour. A nail house is an old house that survives as new building development goes on all around it.
Kent's stairway to heaven
Walter Barton May’s Hadlow Castle is the ultimate Gothic folly
Pursuits
Pursuits
The book that changed the world
On Marcel Proust’s 150th anniversary, A N Wilson praises his masterpiece, an exquisite comedy with no parallel
RIP the playboys of the western world
Charlie Methven mourns his dashing former father-in-law, Luis ‘the Bounder’ Basualdo, last of a dying breed
Arts
Arts
My film family's greatest hits
Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandmother, a silent-movie star
Books
Books
A lifetime of pin-ups
Barry Humphries still has nightmares about going on stage. He’s always admired the stars who kept battling on