Sobriety at Christmas is a challenge. But it really is greater than the alternative | Pem Charnley

Christmas cheer has to keep in the pub for some people. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

I bear in mind clearly – certainly it truly is one of the number of items I do don’t forget – this counsellor turning to me and asking if I’d drunk sufficient. I must have been in my mid-20s at the time and I could not quite grasp what he meant. At very best, I identified his tone flippant, antagonistic even – it would be yet another 15 years just before I fully understood what a pertinent query he’d raised.

And so it is Christmas once again, and do you know one thing? This will be my third Christmas sober. And when I say sober, I indicate sober, not a dry drunk, my tongue hanging out and desperate. In other words, I did at some point drink adequate – and I was sitting right here quietly the other evening when a wave of joy washed in excess of me: I don’t crave alcohol! Not that this was an epiphany, but at this time of year? – what a effective reminder of just how lucky I am.

I truly feel no sense of superiority, only a profound relief that I no longer endure as I as soon as did – and nevertheless, there are a great number of other people out there who aren’t so fortunate. Such is the prevalence of alcoholism, it is a safe bet that a member of your family members – not always you or your companion, it may possibly be a maiden aunt in Somerset, but someone near will have witnessed December technique with a sense of dread. Maybe they will have vowed to both themselves and the family members that they will not touch a drop above Christmas.

They may, they may not. I close my eyes and it requires my breath away, just how miserable Christmas employed to be. Oh, miserable doesn’t come close. The season torments, overwhelms – workplace events spill out on to the street and the supermarkets are awash with the things gallons and gallons – crates in each aisle.

I spent one particular or two Christmases dry back then, possessing promised I would not drink, but I was hardly ever productive. New Yr just took the piss. Abstaining whilst the world gets drunk is torturous, and you want to throttle any individual with a drink in their hand. How dare they!

This is a plea for some magnanimity, created by a person who’s observed each sides. I am not advocating you mollycoddle those who are striving to abstain, only that you demonstrate some understanding. Need to the camera pan and a character will take a extended pull from a pint in the Queen Vic, smacks their lips, and a loved one sitting next to you lets out a cavernous sigh, or worse, feels the require to go out into the garden and howl – for there’ll be melodrama and sulking along with the torment – I even now bet you they’re making an attempt their damnedest not to have a drink in the face of virtually insurmountable odds.

Count to 10 and give them a hug, even if they are currently being a sullen bastard.

As for any drinkers out there reading this – in no way is this piece carte blanche for self-pity, nor need to you assume unique remedy. And definitely, there’ll be limited sympathy from me ought to you fall off the wagon and behave monstrously, but I do know what you’re going via. I understand totally.

While the world does the hokey cokey, you’re stuck at property with a Horlicks and Last of the Summer time Wine, pulling your hair out that it just had to mention wine in the title.

And as for you other people, raising merry hell – and deservedly so? Well, I’d enjoy to sway with you in the taxi queue come 2am, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t finish there, not for me, and I know this now. For me it would be a hospital detox a number of months later, Valium, and no genuine notion of whether or not we’d yet manufactured it into 2014.

And funnily sufficient, which is not something I altogether miss.

Sobriety at Christmas is a challenge. But it really is greater than the alternative | Pem Charnley