Hitting the Bottle …

An acquaintance popped round earlier on this week, bearing as a gift, a bottle of plonk, which has rather inspired the musings for this post.

Contrary to its title, this post is less about drinking and more about abstinence, for I personally am not a big drinker. To those who knew me at University, this may trigger a moment or two of hilarity but it is nonetheless the truth. I don’t have a personal problem with alcohol, the drinking of it doesn’t upset me and I’m happy enough to have a glass if one is plonked in front of me, but truthfully, I’d probably rather have a cup of tea.

During my formative years, as we have all done, I experimented with alcohol, found my limits and occasionally exceeded them with less than desirable results. Somehow, over the years, it just stopped being a part of my life. I’m not a solitary drinker so I have always tended to keep the drink for presents or when I have guests and as someone who lives alone (well to all intents and purposes until I get my new lodger) I simply got into a habit of drinking fruit juice, tea or whatever else when I fancied something to drink, rather than reaching for the plonk.

That has its upsides. Drinking, for me, doesn’t have the associations it has for many of my age group – of relaxation and recreation, or of solace after a hard day and so I tend to enjoy what I do drink, however occasionally, on its own merits.

I find the current culture of drinking for the end result (getting drunk) rather than for the taste and experience of what you’re drinking completely alien. If you’ve ever been the sober one amongst a seething mass of drunks, it really can alter your perceptions of the human race, or indeed a few episodes of Booze Britain tends to have the same effect. I have no problems with the occasionally tipsy, particularly the slightly shambling but always amenable type, but what I can’t fathom is how from it being acceptable to be occasionally tipsy but always civil, it has become the norm to be loud, lairy, falling all over the place, vomiting copiously and generally creating an unpleasant effect on those around you.

As I was pondering, I thought I’d have a meander through some articles on binge drinking and a thread of comments particularly caught my eye. After some discussion about the weekly limits for men and women, somebody commented that as a woman, that meant that you could only safely drink one standard (175ml) glass of wine a night and that was ridiculous. It particularly caught my attention because my initial reaction was to question why exactly it was ridiculous.

I have quite often found, if going out to dinner with friends (and most of my friends are not antisocial or big drinkers) or colleagues, I am by far and away the slowest drinker amongst them. I rarely accept a top up (because I’m that much slower a drinker) and upon occasion I get a gentle ribbing for ‘nursing’ a drink all night, and I always have a couple of glasses of water with it. It’s all in good humour and luckily for me, my friends know me and would never be the sort of people to pressure me into drinking more. They know my limits as well as I do and accept them as much as they accept me. It’s not a requirement for a good time.

That said even I, at times, feel a pressure to be more like other people and perhaps stretch to that extra glass. I felt ever so slightly guilty for being a bit of a stick in the mud but when you think about it, there’s nothing to feel guilty about. I drink in moderation, know and stick to my limits and enjoy what I drink. That doesn’t seem in the least ridiculous to me.