What’s wrong with teetotallers, eh? Always looking down their noses at the
rest of us. Why can’t they just relax, have a few drinks, enjoy themselves,
lighten up? A version of this monologue flits through many a bon viveur’s
mind when confronted at a party with that most mystifying of beasts, the
non-drinker. We may fake an interested smile and make a weak joke about
saving on taxis but really we are thinking: “Wouldn’t you rather be at home
straightening your towels?” At no point will we think: “Why does it matter
to me so much? What the hell is wrong with me?”
Teetotallers put us drinkers on the back foot. Fact. They don’t mean to, but
deep down we are a defensive bunch. On one level, drinkers envy the
self-discipline and confidence required to abstain in our booze-soaked
culture. But there’s also a faint distrust. The drinker eyes the teetotaller
the way a fat person eyes skinny, calorie-counting neurotics. We’ll look at
them and probably assume that they’re a recovering alcoholic (alcoholics are
forgiven, by the way; it’s not that they don’t want to
drink, it’s that they can’t. So, like pregnant women, they’re excused). But
if the telltale purple nose isn’t present we’ll ponder other explanations:
are you a Mormon or a Methodist or one of those scary people whose body is a
temple which has hosted no dairy, caffeine or decent sex since 1973? Then we
may make our excuses and leave to talk to someone with a glass of something
stronger than orange juice in their hand.
Yes, teetotallers get under our skin. The question is, why? When we were 10
years old, after all, we were all teetotal (give or take the odd Vicky
Pollard). Back then, Jaffa Cakes provided buzz enough to get through
birthday parties, yet some time in the next eight years most of us signed up
to the belief that we can’t function at a function without alcohol. Sure, we
can survive social occasions without drinking, but it’s a damn sight easier
with it. Bores can be borne, ditto loud music. Plus it’s relaxing, it tastes
nice (to us), it makes square people dance and, fleetingly, takes your
worries away. Besides, without it, how would people ever cop off?
If we were offered a pill to make them never desire alcohol again I don’t
believe most drinkers would take it. The truth is that some of the best,
most memorable, funniest moments of your life probably happened while under
the influence. Despite the fact that it’s supposed to kill you, drinking in
good company is one of the ultimate pleasures. Yet imagine how it must feel
to read those endless newspaper stories that one thimble of wine a day gives
you cancer of the everything and not feel fear. To never have the nervy wait
after a blood test that your GP is going to announce that your liver’s the
size of a rugby ball and made of fatty scar tissue? Or never to have a
weepy, drunken row?
Quite nice, I should think. As Nancy Astor once said: “One reason I don’t
drink is that I want to know when I’m having a good time.”
Carol Midgley
I shouldn’t have to give in to peer pressure
James Stunt, 27, is a man of independent means and a fixture in London’s
swankiest nightclubs, most notably Tramp. At these nightclubs, he is often
an enthusiastic combatant in “champagne wars”, in which moneyed clubbers
compete to order increasingly extravagant rounds. When a large order is
taken, the management cuts the sound-system and plays whatever the customer
chooses — out of patriotism Stunt opts for the National Anthem. Yet while
his fellow cavorters knock back the Cristal, he is always in a fit state to
drive his Lamborghini. “I may need to convalesce from open-wallet surgery
the next day,” he says, “but I’m never hungover.” Predictably, people
frequently try to persuade him to give up his abstemious habit. “They can’t
understand how I could get into that spirit when I’m sober,” he says. “If
you tell people that you don’t smoke it is impressive. But tell them you
don’t drink, and they ask a million questions, ‘Aren’t you bored?’ ‘How do
you keep up?’ And I think: ‘Very well, thank you — and without a hangover’.”
Sometimes, revellers don’t want to take no for an answer. Stunt admits that he
has been “a little bit rude — you have to respect other people’s choices,
and not drinking happens to be my choice. So if someone does try to force me
it will make me angry. I shouldn’t have to give in to peer pressure — and I
never have”.
He finds beer-drinkers particularly mystifying: “As well as the taste, which I
hate, I can’t understand how people can enjoy drinking eight pints of any
liquid. It’s unnatural.” Stunt has another pastime that — for a teetotaller
— seems slightly eccentric. He is an enthusiastic collector of Château
Petrus wine, with a complete set of bottles from every year between 1945 and
2006 (except for the three years when the château did not produce) and a
near complete set of magnums. He admits that he’s a bit of a bore about it:
“If I open a bottle, people tend to get interested, but if I don’t, they’re
less excited.”
James was 14 when he pilfered and then guzzled two bottles of vintage Dom
Perignon from his father’s collection. The consequences were salutary: “It
was a horrible experience: I was very sick for about 48 hours and that
definitely put me off. And I’ve never liked the taste, either. Sometimes,
very rarely, I can feel just a little left out — but that’s just how it is.”
I seem to provoke an in-built guilt in drinkers“
Are you an alcoholic? That’s the first question people ask you,” says Stafford
Bell, a 43-year-old architect and farmer from Builth Wells in Wales. “Then
the next thing is, ‘Oh, are you religious?’ You have to go through the list
of questions.” He has concluded that his teetotalism provokes “an almost
inbuilt guilt” in those that are drinking. “When you tell people that you
don’t drink, they start looking at themselves,” he says. “They either start
trying to justify drinking, or say ‘I really must give it up’. Or they’ll
tell you a story about how they stopped drinking for four months two years
ago and it felt fantastic. For people who drink, it’s a big deal not
drinking, and you think, ‘Actually, this person makes me feel like I am very
unusual’.”
Bell, who has always loathed the taste of alcohol (“Give me a fruit salad that
was on the turn and I’d be able to tell you at once”), says that the biggest
disadvantage of his sobriety as a student was when it came to splitting the
restaurant bill. The worst thing about it now is that it can ruin the mood
on dates. “Often if you take a girl to dinner and they want to order wine,
they start getting all funny because I’m not drinking. I’ve always laughed
that the reason I am single is that I don’t drink, whereas everybody else
who got absolutely pissed went in and made the lunge.”
His friends, though, are delighted that he doesn’t drink, as he is frequently
the designated driver come chucking-out time. Yet even that has its
drawbacks. “I get breathalysed all the time. I tell the police that I don’t
drink and the coppers say, ‘If we believed that we’d never catch anybody’.”
The one male ritual where alcohol is almost impossible to avoid is the stag
do. Once, Bell was coerced into drinking a pint of lager “with a shot of
Bailey’s in it — and a pair of edible cherry knickers”. It was, he says,
“the only time I’ve been nearly sick through alcohol”.
I get intoxicated in a perty atmosphere, anyway
Britain’s apparently unslakeable thirst perplexes 32-year-old Carolyn Asome,
the deputy fashion editor of The Times. “Nowhere else that I’ve lived
do people drink so enthusiastically with the sole purpose of getting wasted.
It’s not like that in Europe, Hong Kong or the US. And I don’t really
understand the culture of excessive drinking here — it can be pretty
terrifying. Although I’ve got no argument with anybody who chooses to drink,
I do think that drinking just to get bladdered is a strange concept.”
Fashion is a world well-lubricated by alcohol but at the shows, as many of her
colleagues sip from their champagne flutes, Carolyn opts for Evian or mint
tea. “Not drinking is never a problem when we’re working, and it tends to be
so busy that it’s handy not to have a hangover.” Carolyn is no stranger to
unhealthy excess: before becoming pregnant she smoked 20 cigarettes a day. A
large, empty box of Rococo chocolates rests next to her keyboard. Alcohol,
though, has never appealed.
“As I’ve got a little older I’ve become thankful that I don’t drink. It’s
off-putting being surrounded by rambling drunk people at a party, and I’m
not tempted to join them. I’ve never liked the taste of alcohol, and when I
do drink it disagrees with me — it might be that Chinese intolerance for
alcohol — but I’ve never felt like a social pariah. I’ve never been drunk,
so I don’t know what it’s like. So there’s nothing for me to miss. And my
husband says that I get intoxicated vicariously in a party atmosphere,
anyway: I’ve done lots of embarrassing, uninhibited things when I’ve been
sober. I don’t need it as a social crutch — that’s just deluding yourself.”
It’s like being asked to drink vinegar. No thanks
“I don’t want to be perceived as some crazy loser woman who doesn’t drink,”
says Kathryn Faulkner, warily. The 33-year-old NHS manager from Cambridge
adds, “I don’t understand how anyone enjoys drinking. Most people don’t like
it when they first try alcohol as teenagers, but then that changes. For me,
it still tastes exactly as it did when I was 14: unpleasant. How can you
possibly not prefer Coke? It’s so much more delicious.”
Faulkner, who stopped drinking alcohol in her early 20s, recognises that a
life largely untouched by booze has left her financially better off, but
says that she does, sometimes mourn it.
“There is something so nice about people going out for couple of glasses of
wine,” she says. “I go along, too, but I think I would be part of the
psychological experience more if I felt I wanted a drink too.” Another
reason that Kathryn occasionally contemplates hitting the bottle is health.
“You hear about these studies saying a moderate amount of wine a week is
something healthy, and I think, oh, I wonder if I can bring myself to
stomach it? But I can’t.”
Does she not miss the loss of inhibition that comes with inebriation? “I found
that much more attractive when I was a teenager, when I did drink a bit. But
since I’ve become a little older and more confident in myself I don’t really
care about that any more. I feel perfectly happy without getting pissed.”
Faulkner, says that if she’s ever in a situation where someone pours her a
drink, she’s not militant about refusing it. “I don’t say ‘No, I don’t
drink’ like someone might say ‘No, I’m a vegetarian’. I just say, ‘Oh, no
thank you, I’d prefer water tonight’. It’s not a moral position. For me it’s
like someone asking me if I’d like to drink a glass of vinegar. No, thanks,
I wouldn’t.”
Nonetheless, there are some circumstances in which Faulkner will lift a glass
to her lips, “I do weddings . . . I will have a glass of champagne. When I
do have that glass, it’s to make other people’s lives easier. It’s about the
symbolism of it, it is a symbol of celebration. But I will take only one,
maybe two sips and leave it at that.”
They’re the odd ones out
Britain is a nation of drinkers. Alchohol consoles us, disinhibits us,
emboldens us and gives us joy. As Alan Johnson, the Health Minister, said
recently: “The drinking culture is endemic in almost every aspect of British
life — in the home, to mark good news or achievement in the workplace.”
Yet this British love affair with booze is deeply dysfunctional: some 2.9
million people in the UK are dependent on it and, officially, the number of
alchohol-induced deaths is around 8,000 a year. Last month Professor Ian
Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, told the all-party
Commons Health Select Committee that he believed the true figure could be as
much as five times that amount. Campaigners point to a series of “enablers”:
24-hour drinking laws, inexpensive alcohol in supermarkets, and come-hither
promotional offers in pubs.
None of that, though, obliges anybody to drink; it simply makes it easier and
cheaper to do so.
Just because it’s there doesn’t mean that we have to drink it. Yet only a very
few people choose not to drink unless they are motivated by religious
beliefs or are recovering alcoholics.
In his speech, Johnson said: “Non-drinkers are often subjected to the same
disdain that non-smokers were 30 or 40 years ago — they are the odd ones out
at the office party, watching the football in the pub, at the family
celebration.
“The question that we must ask, not so much as a Government but as a society,
is why, unlike smoking, it is the abstainers who draw people’s attention,
not those who regularly drink their weekly limit in a day.”
