Pensioners are searching for solace at the bottom of a glass | Charles Nevin

‘Most drivers of drinking are ones which notably and peculiarly affect the older: guilt, regret, and the quest for consolation.’ Photograph: Alamy

With what, in accordance to taste, you may well take into account both commendable or killjoy timing, new statistics on drinking have been released just in time for Christmas. The message, as with most things considered through the bottom of a glass, is not totally clear.

The very good information, for those concerned about the anti-social effects of drinking on drinkers, their pals, households and the NHS, is that the habit continues in a gentle, unstaggering decline. The undesirable information is that more than half of the guys and females who drink eat much more than the advisable quantities.

It’s also striking that the ONS figures contradict some firm views nearly uniformly, and of course loudly, voiced in the saloon bar and anywhere else where gin mingles with tonic, ice and lemon. Individuals who perform drink a lot more than individuals who never, for instance. Individuals in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s are far less likely to drink each day than people between 45 and 65. Pensioners appear to be the most irresponsible, possessing minimize back hardly at all, drinking as routinely as, wait for it, students. (Duty to the truth, even so, compels me to include that the students binge far more.)

Sociologists and campaigners will pore above the findings permit an individual who has been conducting prolonged-term investigation in this field to recommend a few helpful contemplations. Probably I may possibly be permitted to quote Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus: “Doing what I do greatest: drinking and thinking.”

Plainly, for example, the younger are drinking much less in order to be in a position to deal with all that complex individual gear which defeats individuals who are older even with an totally clear head and prior to 11am. In a extremely practical sense, numerous contemporary and youthful situations involving each thumbs and a fixed gaze downwards merely will not enable the hands to be totally free or the mouth to be in the right imbibatory position.

Much more extensively, and perhaps far more significantly, I really feel the age-primarily based findings support my view that most drivers of drinking are ones which especially and peculiarly impact the older: guilt, regret, and the quest for consolation.

I know, for instance, that many of us are feeling especially guilty at the current time, getting only too aware that we are the 1st generations since, oh, Ethelred started out paying out the Danegeld, to have offspring who will be worse off than we are. That is a burden felt nearly (but not obviously quite) as keenly as if it had been our extremely selves.

Regrets are almost automatically personal, but I would venture some have a reasonably wide application: missed probabilities to help ourselves, and other people the failure of morality to maintain speed with advances in technology to the detriment of world peace and civilisation that extended time period because 1966 (with the additional worry of Manaus, of program) the closure of so numerous pubs and missing the finish of the repeat of Mrs Brown’s Boys which was replaced by the announcement of the death of Nelson Mandela.

Enough to prompt an unwavering need to have for solace, I should have mentioned. But please will not consider I am urging alcohol as a special resolution. There are numerous other individuals, from Gregorian chant by means of all the large arts to the non-elasticated socks I hope to be finding beneath the Christmas tree yet again.

And even though you will discover numerous a supporter of drink, you should also don’t forget other folks less enthusiastic. Dean Swift disagreed with Inspector Rebus, recalling the saying: “A lot drinking, minor contemplating.” And when the medical professional in the sanatorium warned Dorothy Parker that if she didn’t end drinking she would be dead in a month, Ms Parker replied with a sigh: “Guarantees, guarantees.” Cheers.

Pensioners are searching for solace at the bottom of a glass | Charles Nevin