I was mostly dry until the age of 30, when someone poured me a 2005 Chateauneuf-du-Pape, at which point the vintners of London gained a reliable new revenue stream. Owing to this late start, I can enter into the mind of a non-drinking adult to an extent that most evangelists for alcohol can’t. I was well placed to write a column that would win over this growing mass of refuseniks. In the end, almost none of the arguments stood up.
How, in good conscience, could I advise a dry 21-year-old to start drinking? The medical case against it — as far as a layman can judge these things — has strengthened with time. “Risks start from the first drop” is how the World Health Organization now frames its advice. Let me anticipate one response: the public health crowd are zealots. They are. But even if their stress on zero-risk is weird, the advisable maximum of alcohol intake is far, far lower than folk wisdom was touting a while ago. Let me anticipate another: there is no safe amount of walking, talking to a stranger, crossing the road or living in a home with a gas source either. But we have to do those things to live a functional life. Drinking is avoidable, which is how much of humankind avoids it.
Incidentally, there in itself is an advantage of abstemiousness in the 21st century. In a world where the Gulf, India, China and Indonesia count ever more, being able to socialise without alcohol — or just to fathom a culture where it is present but not central — is an edge. (Tantamount to a language skill.) The biggest drinkers in the world are western and Russian. The middle tier includes China and India, whose annual intake of four-ish litres of pure alcohol per person aged over 15 is about half of America’s. The number falls to near zero in many Muslim countries, with exceptions such as the UAE, where the strenuous work of the British diaspora brings it up to two litres.