Sober January? Oh do please fuck off

G&P is the first to admit that the benefits of sobriety, in the short, medium, and long term are inarguable.  The benefits of inebriety are mostly confined to tolerating situations and people, and even then it’s a stretch.  Still, drinking must have some benefits, otherwise why would so many people do it, in so many different forms, so often and for so long?
Having reread that last sentence, one could well ask the same about smoking, the point of which really is lost on me unless it’s to satisfy an addiction.
People drink for many reasons, to relax, because of social convention, or because their universe is a lot better when observed through the bottom of a pint glass that was until recently full of cider.
Drinking, obviously, has its drawbacks.  Too much alcohol prevents one from enjoying many of life’s pleasures.  However, in fairness, it also allows one to enjoy drinking, and beer gardens, and starchy snacks, in a way that just does not happen in Soberland.
Here at G&P, it’s fair to say that we like a drink, by which we mean booze.  We love the idea of situation specific booze most of all, with port on Christmas Eve when listening to a Ghost Story for Christmas, fizz on Christmas Morning, wine with lunch, and spirits throughout the Yule period.  Being visited by spirits at Christmas should not be the exclusive preserve of repentant Dickens characters.  This indulgence, one might argue, is the springboard for sober January.
But it’s not just Christmas that provides opportunities for booze.  Any visit to the theatre requires a gin and tonic during the interval.  Social occasions increasingly rely on fizz.  Wine is appropriate with dinner and lunch on Sunday, although tea remains the only beverage to drink while having a bacon roll, champagne is an option when enjoying fish and chips.  Keith Waterhouse was right about that, at least.  During the summer one can enjoy long drinks, such as a two litre bottle of Strongbow.  And of course the cocktail is the perfect way to mark the transition from dressing gong to dinner gong.
Booze has yet to go out of fashion.
Sobriety is, increasingly, becoming fashionable.
It used to be that the only long term sober people were recovering, lapse free, alcoholics.  Now we witness people giving up booze for a month, ‘going sober for October’.  They profess to feel good, sleep better and have more energy, and yet the day after Halloween they are back on the sauce like an HP quality assurance taster.
January is both the best and the worst month to go sober.  Best because after the Yule period you are probably ready for a few days off the sauce, worst because January is longer than a few days.
If you do decide to go sober, get ready for a long haul through some long dark evenings.  You may not be going to bed when it’s still light out, but that’s only because it’s winter, it’s still seven thirty by the time you are in your jim jams and ready for bed.  This is because sober television is no fun.
If you do decide to go sober, please keep it to yourself.  Vegetarians and their militant wing, vegans, have recently found the confidence to start talking to people about diet at barbeques.  And yet any chap taking a healthy bite of his bacon cheeseburger, while being talked at by some lettuce licker, will notice the way that any veggievegan’s gaze will be drawn to the glorious grease dribbling down your chin, and disquietingly wonder if the fellow is about to crack and lick about 8,000 calories of beefy goodness from your chops.
Similarly, any fellow doing dry January, and letting you know it will, if you are both in a pub, be looking at you taking deep, refreshing, draughts of your pint like a desert dweller regarding an oasis that does both still and sparkling water, and has a lemon grove attached.
Self control is of course laudable.  G&P recommends periods of sobriety, extending to lunchtime in normal circumstances and prolonged if operating heavy machinery, such as a 747.
Naturally, G&P recommends drinking if flying in one.