A month without alcohol - the thought fills me with terror - Telegraph The evening is a different matter. I like to arrive home around seven-ish, take off my coat, put on some slippers, sit down and pour myself a largish whisky, mixed half-and-half with water, no ice. This is a very satisfying moment, when the cares of the day are lifted. Then I'll drink half a bottle of wine with dinner, before going to bed. I'll drink rather more than this if I go out to dinner with friends. But not that much more because I am one of those lucky drinkers who does not get violent or argumentative when I have had too much to drink. I just get sleepy and want to go to bed. Others get overcome with what Boswell called, in his London Journal, the "rage for drink." This is a dangerous condition, and can lead anywhere. There is a certain kind of drinker who can avoid drink for months, but then have just a couple and go missing for days. Others go out of their mind and carry out actions they later come bitterly to regret, sometimes for the rest of their lives. I do like pubs. I am not quite as dedicated an admirer as Books Bagshaw in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, who knew, often by instinct, the location of every pub in London and would always leave any evening event, no matter how important, in time to sink a quick pint or two before final orders. But I know how Books Bagshaw felt and exactly why he did it. Pubs are wonderful places, and beer is of far higher quality today than the filth we used to put up with when we were young - Watneys, Double Diamond and indifferent Guinness. One of the greatest organisations of the last half century has been the Campaign for Real Ale, and I don't think that its achievements in improving our lives have ever been adequately acknowledged. So, I like alcohol, and feel certain that its influence on the human race has been almost entirely for the better. People who drink tend to be happier, more relaxed, and much more humane and compassionate. Those who do not drink are very often mad. Let's consider the Second World War. Hitler, who did not drink, was probably the most evil man who ever walked this earth. His main opponent, Churchill, led the British people through the war on a diet of whisky, brandy, vintage champagne and first-growth claret. George W Bush is another case in point. Would we have had the epic horror of the Iraq invasion if George Bush had enjoyed the odd drink? One wonders. In my experience, all the wisest politicians drink a fair bit, and the ones who don't are the ones to watch out for. Margaret Thatcher famously enjoyed a whisky or two before going to bed. By contrast, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair didn't drink nearly enough. After he had retired, Blair claimed to have drunk too much during the latter stages of his premiership, audaciously revealing that he often drank "a whisky and a couple of glasses of wine" in the evening. Compared to Thatcher and Churchill, Blair's intake was pathetic. He would have been a better prime minister if he had drunk more. Although it has to be admitted that Harold Wilson, who towards the end of his premiership used to sit up late at night surrounded by cronies complaining about the first editions of the following day's papers and drinking endless brandies, had a bit of a problem. Even so, he kept us out of the Vietnam War, which is more than Blair did over Iraq. This is why it is so reassuring that David Cameron likes a drink in the evening, and I was glad to read recently that at Sunday lunchtime the Prime Minister likes to have quite a few drinks and then have a kip afterwards. I do that, too, and not just on Sundays. So why am I giving up drink for January? Recently, I have become conscious that I have been looking forward to that first drink of the day a little too much, and resenting its absence just a little too much when it does not come my way. I admit that, while not an alcoholic, I am in danger of becoming alcohol-dependent. I find the prospect of doing Dry January simply terrifying. In particular, I am dreading going to parties. One of the minor virtues of alcohol is that it dulls the tedium of talking to bores, and therefore makes one a nicer person. On the other hand, I am looking forward to waking up in the morning and not feeling fuzzy-headed and slightly ill, with pains around the kidneys. I know from past experience (I travel a certain amount in Muslim countries, which forces me to give up for weeks at a time) that I will wake up in the morning clear-headed and raring to go. The fact is that drinking is a very exhausting business. It is, in its way, hard work. Not drinking releases an extra two or three hours in the day. This is why teetotallers have such an edge over us boozers - something else that makes them dangerous and untrustworthy. They also tend to be thin, and I am getting fat. I am hoping to lose weight over the coming month. It won't be easy, though. I don't feel confident. The month stretches ahead like a desert and fills me with gloom and terror.