I’m an alcoholic, but my kids do the drinking

AS all you moderate drinkers continue to enjoy what the ‘Daily Mash’ calls your “pretend battle with drink” — that is, Dry January — you’ll forgive all of us actual alcoholics for feeling smug, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

We have so got this. Not only January, but February to December, too. We prefer the word ‘sober’, because ‘dry’ implies what most of you — three days from February — are probably now feeling: a bit twitchy. You are gagging for that warm, alcoholic glow, which you will never get from Diet Coke or those pointless 0% beers; fantasising about that delicious glass of Pinot, before popping three-quarters of the bottle back in the fridge to enjoy another day. You incomprehensible freaks.

The unofficial day for hitting the fuck-it button is January 20, although the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic hitting this button can be anything from a slight headache to an actual jail sentence for events we don’t remember. The non-alcoholics who don’t make it to the end of January might experience mild disappointment, when recounting to friends and colleagues that they haven’t quite succeeded this year. Oh, well. Never mind. It’s not like you’ve got a mystery black eye, or can’t find your car. For the first time in years, Dry January has been a bit damp in our house. While not personally diving into a vat of anything stronger than tea — I go to meetings for that — my teenage dependents have discovered the joys of fermentation. And I don’t mean kombucha. I hear an unmistakably clinky noise when the 17-year-old opens her sock drawer. My blood freezes. Amid the socks are a dozen empty bottles of genuinely terrible wine, an empty half-litre of cheap vodka, empty beer bottles.