The real reason I stopped drinking

It’s been thirty years this month since I last touched alcohol and I still can’t face the prospect of a social event without drinking.

Other people drinking, that is. I’m terrified by the thought of going back on the sauce again, but that doesn’t mean I want to hang around with teetotalers who’ve never had to apologize after a party or suffered an apocalyptic hangover.

That’s what keeps me away from drinking: the biological penalty

One of the leitmotifs of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time is that you can’t trust teetotalers. They’re control freaks who love seeing other people make fools of themselves. They spend the whole evening gathering ammunition. The slimy Kenneth Widmerpool barely drinks, of course.

Or they’re sex-obsessed. I can think of one populist politician and one middle-ranking celeb who never turn down a party invitation but just “don’t like the taste of alcohol.” That’s because they prefer the taste of something else. God forbid they should miss the opportunity to corner the teenage intern because they’re draining a glass.

I make an exception for the non-drinkers called Pioneers, though it’s been decades since I ran into one. They’re Catholics who abstain from alcohol as a gesture of their devotion to the Sacred Heart. Or something like that. I remember them as pious but gregarious Irishmen, a vanishing breed in today’s prickly, sanctimonious West.

One of the teaching brothers at my school was a Pioneer. Brother Athanasius, known as “Beef,” was always invited to sixth-form parties. Never having tasted whisky, he had no idea how strong it was and dispensed it like holy water. At Christmas he’d reach into one of the layers of his black habit and produce a bottle of poitín, an illegally brewed Irish potato spirit that we called “potcheen” in the days when Anglicized spellings were permitted. Wikipedia describes its flavor as “burning, grainy, oily, toffee.” I don’t remember the toffee. Apparently one of the Irish words for hangover is poít. Those I do remember. 

That’s what keeps me away from drinking: the biological penalty. My poíts were savage, starting with an explosion of nausea and then stretching out like a nuclear winter. Apparently they get worse with age. Can that be possible?

But God forbid that my fellow diners should hold back from drinking on my account. If they don’t know me very well, or haven’t seen me for a bit, then there’s this sweet ritual where they offer to abstain in solidarity. It happened last week, when lovely Charles Owen — a virtuoso concert pianist and raconteur — told me that he’d be content with mineral water. He was quite taken aback when I leapt up and started pouring claret down his throat.

What he didn’t notice, and I really shouldn’t be telling you this, is that I sneakily covered my water glass with my hand while I dropped an effervescent white tablet into it. Don’t give me a hard time. I didn’t make the law that — to the astonishment of foreigners — allows chemists to sell a mood-elevating painkiller over the counter.

But only if they choose to. That’s why I have a love-hate relationship with pharmacists. I’m a very big fan of the ones who hand over this (legal!) medication with no questions asked. Others enquire what it’s for and I reply “back pain” and try to look frail and law-abiding. It’s rarely a problem. The bored assistants are my favorites; they couldn’t care less.

But the other day I was in a hurry. I popped into an unfamiliar chemists — on the other side of the counter there was this hard-faced woman surrounded by framed diplomas. This was no assistant. As soon as she heard “back pain” she raised an eyebrow that I knew implied “junkie.”

As soon as she heard ‘back pain’ she raised an eyebrow that I knew implied ‘junkie’

She wanted to know how long I’d had this back pain. I swear I could hear the inverted commas. My nonchalance evaporated and in my panic I said “three months … sorry, I mean years.” She gave me a thin-lipped smile and asked for the name and address of my general practitioner.

The battle was lost; there would be no effervescence that night and I wanted revenge. At which point, alas, I remembered a tip from my Australian friend Tony, veteran of many a losing run-in with disobliging pharmacists. “Tell them it’s not your fault they didn’t get into medical school. They go bananas.”

So I took his stupid advice on my way out, ears pricked for a gratifying splutter of indignation. Instead, I heard a noise that still haunts me after three decades: the sadistic chuckle of the landlord who’s just refused to pull you a drink at one minute past closing time. And serve me right.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.