Anyway, the festive season. Actually, these thoughts apply all year round, but they are heightened during the winter party months. And the summer ones. And spring and autumn.

So, as you’ve probably worked out, I don’t drink. Neither do quite a few other people, for varying reasons. Just to ram the point home, I don’t drink alcohol, like, ever. And yet I, and others like me, are sometimes, when out for the evening, still sometimes expected to chip in for the drinks part of the bill.

I’ve lost count of the number of events that ‘throw in’ a glass or two of horrible wine as a justification for bumping up the entrance fee. I don’t want this, thanks. Mind you, when an event is unusually overpriced, and there’s free ‘champagne’ offered as part of the deal, you know the evening is going to be rubbish, so it’s quite a useful indicator.

But the non-drinker’s tolerance is far more heavily tested when they go for a group meal in a restaurant. The odd beer slipping through the net is one thing. A booze bill that doubles the cost of the meal is another. A while back I went to a posh book launch and then about 15 of us went for dinner. The wine flowed. Then the bill came. £40 a head. I looked at it and said, ‘I’ll give you £20 as I haven’t drunk anything.’ The host looked bemused and disturbed. ‘But I’ll have to recalculate the bill!’ he said. ‘You’ll have to recalculate the bill,’ I replied.

One friend who invited a group of us to a restaurant last year cracked it by running two tabs, one for the alcohol and one for the food. Perfect, and I wish people would think a bit and offer to do this more, when there is clearly a number of sober people at the table. Of course, even this wise and reasonable course of action can still be thrown by the one non-drinker at the table who will loudly show up the rest of us sober types, in our killjoyish meanness and poverty, by theatrically insisting on paying a full share.

The thing I hate the most is having to ask permission not to pay for alcohol in advance of an organised event, when I know the bill for the meal is going to be large. The potential humiliation (ohh no, the host might think I’m poor!) might be enough to silence you and get you to reach into your pocket and subsidise the drinkers. But we are in a recession and I have no shame on this. If someone’s going to get stroppy about it or act like they’re doing me a special favour, it’s a friendship that might just be over.

Of course, sometimes over the years I’ve swallowed it and paid up. Context is all. But can you tell this pisses me off a bit?

Update
I’ve been reminded that the situation is the same for people who aren’t drinking because they happen to be driving, and people who only ever have one drink. Also, and I remember this from long ago boozy restaurant days, it’s often the people who have ordered the most, whether brandies/champagne, or just food (the fanciest starter and the biggest steak), who demand equality over the bill, and call ‘spoilsport’ the loudest.

But I am reading endless judgement both from those that have no idea about addiction, and those who claim to ‘know’. Actually, addicts get an even worse write-up than the merely mentally ill. People with depression get enough abuse from people who call it ‘self indulgent’ without the layer of intoxication on top causing an extra layer of us-and-them superiority from those who think they are a million miles from the average junkie.

Someone at work said earlier, ‘Hopefully Amy’s death will send a message to young people about drugs,’ but this kind of death never does. Even among the filthy fingernails and missed toilet bowls, if you’re open to it, there is glamour. When you’ve got a drug head on you, there is nothing more marvellous and wonderful than taking possession of a small packet of whatever chemicals, and opening it among the scattered mess of the previous session.

Coffee tables, mottled with sticky rings from hours of wineglasses, overflowing ashtrays full of dog ends, some broken open and resmoked, smeared mirrors, rolled notes, tinfoil. All against a backdrop of music and shouting, cackling, doorbells going and doors slamming. It’s a constantly self-replenishing last supper whose landscape only changes with the light, going from night to morning and back again, the earth’s slow sleeping breath behind the spinning heads. There are days when oblivion can’t come fast enough. Getting comatose is common and welcome. When you find a drug you like, it’s like a miracle.

These are well-documented states of mind. But still no one knows what to do with addiction. It isn’t just a disease. It’s more complex than that. It begins with a behaviour. And if it is an illness, is it physical or mental? No one’s quite there yet, although neuroscience is on its way.

Many of us have made poor choices in life. When I first got intoxicated I was reaching out for something. Could a living human being have walked into that role? Perhaps, but sometimes the people we need the most just don’t manifest for us. You can’t expect another person to save you. And when we’re on a downward spiral, we tend to repel the good people who are all around us if we could only see them. For years I was certainly a magnet for people who mirrored my worst traits. Drugs are more reliable than people.

The death of anyone at 27 is tragic. But look again. If it was diabetes, Crohn’s or say, a heart condition that was making her behave that way, for example, at the almost unwatchable gig in Belgrade in June, Amy would have been rushed to hospital. And similarly, if she had previously been diagnosed ‘merely’ bipolar or schizophrenic, and carried on like that on stage, she might even have been sectioned and it might even have saved her. For a while anyway.

I say again. No one knows what to do with addiction. There is a strong puritanical streak running through our society. Lots of people think they are different to, and better than, junkies, that they lie on the opposite end of a spectrum of indulgence. And yet these same people might drink, smoke, be unable to go without coffee for more than an hour, (and talk about it all the time), or constantly fall in love with people who abuse or neglect them, and this is seen as acceptable.

Twitter has been on fire with ranting about the selfishness of addicts. In fact, the word ‘selfish’ means something different to everyone, to the point where it becomes meaningless. And ‘tortured artist’, said sarcastically or not, is a cliché; lots of people are tortured who don’t have a creative outlet. Close up, addiction is an ugly thing, but it’s really, really time to stop referring to ‘abuse’ of drugs.

Could anyone have helped Amy? I don’t know. Perhaps an infinitely patient and self-sacrificing partner who gave her unconditional love. But perhaps even that wouldn’t have been enough.

Here’s an interview with me by Bridget Freer in the Sunday Telegraph about guess what – how I gave up drinking. I think it works pretty well – you’re always going to wince a bit on seeing words attributed to yourself in print. But next time a pro comes to take my picture, I’m getting a stylist in.

And remembering the faintly disquieting #whatstigma hashtag business on Twitter, I’m still not totally happy with the d-word being attributed to me, despite its clear prevalence in so many peoples’ lives.

Which is partly why I hesitated to link to the piece here. I put it up on Facebook and got lots of lovely likes and comments. But I remember the words of various mentor figures in the last couple of years, about all the things about myself that I should hide if I want to get work as a freelance copywriter. Oh well – too late. Perhaps I’ll do a post and mention all of them!

I have almost forgotten that me not drinking is even an issue, actually. Occasionally, though, I’m delighted to meet another confirmed non-drinker (I’ve met a couple in recent months) and, whether they’re a wagon jumper like me, or have never drunk at all, I feel a conspiratorial bond with them. In this sodden society, we’re superheroes in plain sight. We can cope with all sorts of stuff, exciting or terrifying, without needing to wear satin tights and a mask.

For the last few years, my not drinking has taken on the nature of a vow. That and the fact that if I hit the booze again, I will be 15 stone within a very few months, stops me falling off the wagon. Don’t knock vanity. Anyway, even when you don’t drink, you can still do foolish things. You can still say things that you probably shouldn’t have said, and send ill-advised emails late in the evening. It’s not so different, really.

After Cleaning Up, are there any more stories to tell? I’ve been asked if I’d do a book about the non-drinking life. I joked that it would be 300 pages of mindnumbing boredom, and then felt guilty about all the people who are really struggling with giving up. But do I have a duty to be incredibly po-faced and solemn about it all? Sorry, I can’t. I just know I’m lucky to be alive.

Here’s the audio.

Here’s the Radio Four page.

This was on the back of health secretary Alan Johnson’s remarks about teetotallers being pariahs.

Stop press – I got 121 comments in all. Not bad really.

It’s a positive review, but also contains the words: ‘Anyone with a drink problem who wants to find out how to kick it will not find what they need in its pages.’ This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this. Note the title of the book starts with: How I. I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else how to give up drinking. I think I’ve gone into quite a lot of detail about what I did. Again, I sometimes wonder if reviewers actually read the books they’re meant to be writing about.

Folks, you have to find your own way. No one else can do it for you. I, and anyone else, can only make suggestions.

And here’s Tom Widger in the Tribune, second one down. One error in there, but it’s not his fault.

And the Scottish Daily Record.

PY, best known for his stint running the Millennium Dome, is a charming, jolly bloke, with an English wife and young baby. We, and the BBC’s Claire Burgoyne, sat in the corner with mugs of tea as we brainstormed about what could be done. He has lived in the UK for years, and continues to be astounded by London’s late night carnage. ‘In Paris, if you saw someone lying in the road like that, you would stop and ask them if they were ok.’ In this country you might expect to be stabbed, or at least spat at, during the process of such an enquiry, and would tend to back off.

For PY, the clincher happened when he was driving through town and saw a man slumped on the pavement with a pint of Guinness. He drank some of it, vomited it back into the glass, drank some, and then vomited again. The man was clearly a true Brit doing what we do best. But how to change this culture?

I wonder if it’s time to introduce shame into the process. We did it with drink-driving, why not public drunkenness as a whole? We had a very interesting chat.

The programme will air on Radio 4 in a couple of months time.