For many in my generation, it’s still normal to go to the bar after work on Friday. Drinking because you’re happy, because you’re sad, because there’s a random beer in the fridge – also normal. Even in our thirties, with partners and babies and jobs and mortgages, we understand when someone loses their purse while drunk, vomits in a taxi or sleeps in their clothes and crawls into work with a hangover. In fact, drinking isn’t just normal to our generation. In some ways, it defines us. It’s hard not to think that this isn’t partly because we grew up watching alcohol adverts on the TV, surrounded by plentiful, cheap booze in the supermarket. Today the drinks commercials are more tightly regulated, but the wine-sponsored TV cookery contest and beer-branded football shirt are here, reminding us that alcohol is a normal part of everyday life.

Beyond the health risks and potential harm, that’s the more insidious aspect of Peak Booze: the mental baggage. A fair few of us are more dependent than we’d like to be on that cold glass of white wine or cheeky gin and tonic at the end of the day. It’s important to me to know that drinking is a choice, not a need. But if I choose not to drink for one night out, I find myself rambling an explanation, assuring people that, no, I’m not pregnant. The fact that staying sober for a month is seen as a feat of willpower and the subject of charity campaigns such as Dry January shows just how embedded alcohol is in our lives. It’s the grease that keeps many of our days moving.

This would be fine if we chose to be part of the drinking culture. Sometimes, it feels like it chose us.

This is an edited version of an article originally published by Mosaic, and is reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.

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