Why I’m giving up sobriety when everyone else is giving up drinking

Over the years, Kate Spicer has swapped boozing for dog walks and long lunches for yoga classes – but as new figures show that British women top the list of the world’s biggest drinkers, she’s decided to jump off the wagon. And science tells her it might not be a bad idea...

Kate Spicer swapped drinking days for dog walks, but is rethinking her relationship to boozing and asking herself if there’s not a problem, why try and fix it? (Supplied)

We drink too much, and don’t we know it. The advice, the shaming, the hectoring, the guidelines – it never ends. Yesterday’s headline was: “Wine o’ clock culture blamed for UK women being biggest boozers in the world.” A respected global think tank, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) had published a “Shock report!” and guess what, British women are the sobriety school dropouts of the world.

Believe me, I know it’s bad for me. I’ve long written about the growing sobriety trend and the booming “no and low’’ alcohol market. I’ve personally tried to inflict numerous restrictive and prohibitive regimes over the years. I got the drinking is bad memo, read it multiple times, pinned it to the cellar door, and consumed many thousands of peer-reviewed studies that describe alcohol’s causal role in over 60 medical conditions, including many cancers and depression.

I really have tried. I once had an entirely alcohol-free cocktail party just to prove it could be done. Half my friends, the fun ones, didn’t show up. And half of those that did come had a gin and tonic afterwards to calm the nerves – including me. The ex-chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has a cosy nook in my brain, where she sits glowering as I head to the bar, saying over and over that I need to ask myself, “Do I want the glass of wine or do I want to limit my own risk of breast cancer?”