The Good Drinker: How I Learned to Love Drinking Less

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Whether this is a good or bad thing is beside the point; the reality is that this is what my life looks like, and this is what I must work with. These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Anne Lamott's follow-up to her New York Times-bestselling work, Help, Thanks, Wow. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. He starts by discussing the basics of his approach, emotions and how to handle them, and our self-beliefs.

These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice offer comfort, delight and inspiration for all; a space for reflection, and that precious realization - I'm not the only one who feels like this.Adrian Chiles has consumed absolutely eye watering, Churchillian quantities of alcohol throughout his life. I just stood in there for a couple of minutes, having a bit of a break, marvelling at how alcohol had somehow taken charge of the whole rhythm of my being. In the years since he first had the idea of prescribing short, powerful poems for all manner of spiritual ailments, William Sieghart has taken his Poetry Pharmacy around the length and breadth of Britain, into the pages of the Guardian, onto BBC Radio 4 and onto the television, honing his prescriptions all the time. Chiles is honest enough to say this won't be for everyone, my experience is that it's easier to abstain than moderate. If I walk along my three-mile line of drinks I’m appalled to realise that by the one-mile mark, I’m already seeing drinks I could have managed without; drinks I could have not drunk without diminishing my enjoyment of anything one jot.

I've raced off to games hours early to give me a chance to drink a lot of beer in a relatively short time. This bleak statement is especially true for many pop and rock stars, who find themselves catapulted from fame into obscurity virtually overnight, given the unforgiving vagaries of the music industry.There is plenty of talk of boozing sessions over the years, but this is balanced by reflections on how much of this was actually enjoyable or necessary. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. But this book is a great addition to the still very small collection of books aimed at the moderate drinker. Ever since he was a teenager, drinking was his idea of a good time – and not just his, but seemingly the whole nation’s. I heard Adrian talking about this book on the Parenting Hell podcast (coincidentally, as a parent of teenagers, it was a bloody brilliant episode – and had me in floods of tears when talking about the fact you pack your child off to Uni telling them ‘it’s going to be the best time of your life’ – and actually it can be really tough, especially at the start, being dumped in a random place with random people and expected to make friends for life and have an amazing time.

I didn’t agree with everything (for example I think Adrian puts too much emphasis on units, though if they work for him then calculate away!The book covers the basics of making cocktails (whether alcohol-free or alcohol-full), the ingredients, the equipment. What is unique to New Mocktails Bible, are recipes provided by many alcohol-free drink producers, using their own products. It turns out that all my life, without realising it, I’ve been sure to surround myself with other drinkers. Whenever I needed a break from a conversation, I’d say I was off to get a drink, but there are only so many soft drinks you can be bothered with, so I’d wander off in the direction of the bar without getting a drink.

The long subtitle of this book is All Occasion Guide to Alcohol-Free, Zero-Proof, No-Regrets, Sober-Curious Lifestyle.However, he also points out that a lot of people who drink a lot are put off by the thought of total abstinence – and therefore don’t bother looking at their drinking levels at all, because moderate drinking isn’t often deemed an option. I have a number of friends who have given up alcohol completely, and had various mental health issues entwined with alcohol issues (although none were lying in a doorstep alcoholics, cracking open the vodka at breakfast) but at the same time I didn’t feel my husband and I had ‘that much of a problem’.