How to be a flexi-drinker – and cut back without going teetotal

My name is Phil and I’m almost certainly not an alcoholic. However, I often find it hard to refuse a drink. It’s not a physical yearning, it’s a complex set of social obligations – by which I mean British drinking culture.

With Sober October now at an end and Christmas closing in, I’m making a plea for a new approach that stops short of total abstinence, but frees us from the book of booze rules we have all learned and internalised.

For example, the moment a friend leans across the table, drops their voice to a conspiratorial whisper and says: “Another bottle?” They’re saying: I like you, I feel close to you, I want to extend our time together, I may even share some feelings.

How can you refuse?

But drinking is changing, according to research group IWSR. This year, sales of alcohol-free beer are almost double what they were five years ago. The range of offerings from gins to IPAs is now full of genuinely delicious brands but, more importantly, the arcane and deeply embedded symbolism and tradition around drinking seems to be breaking down.

Alex Aber, head barman at the Athenaeum Hotel in London, has been serving drinks for 15 years and is seeing a real change in habits. “There’s a new generation not drinking as much. People want to be healthier, feel less groggy the next day, and are looking after themselves more.”

Annabel Bonus, director of evidence and impact at alcohol charity Drinkaware, says: “People are more and more willing to try low- and no-alcohol products. They are using them in different ways; you can still be social and moderate your intake. It can be a way of avoiding peer pressure.”

However, I still drink more than I want to. I’m in my late 50s and ludicrously, embarrassingly, I often find it hard to drink on my own terms.

For starters, there is the link between masculinity and drinking. I was taught this in my teens. I’m relatively small and thin and so consuming pints, partly the sheer volume and partly the units, was a fairly uncomfortable experience, but in the 1980s, my group defined itself through beer, usually our favourite – the Australian lager Castlemaine XXXX.

We were pale Englishmen, none of us performed any kind of manual labour: we were effectively drinking liquid manliness.

By the 1990s, women were recruited too. All of us learned the rules: be first to the bar, rounds are a contract of intimacy, to refuse a drink is to end an evening, all special occasions are drinking occasions, all business travel ends in a 3am hotel bar, the unplanned “school-night” binge is an expression of personal freedom and non-drinkers are weirdos who require hours of interrogation.

But now I’m changing. I want to drink when I feel like it, in the quantities I choose. Total abstinence I respect, but it doesn’t appeal. I do not feel addicted to alcohol. I have many friends who have stopped entirely, and I fully support their decision, but I still want to enter a country pub and sit by the fire with a Guinness. I still want to look out at a Positano sunset and sip a Negroni.

I’m advocating a delineated status: a clear position people will respect without offence or a sense of rejection. I want to come out as a flexi-drinker. I want to wear this badge as a teetotaller or vegetarian would. No one says to a vegan: “Just have one small bacon sandwich. It’s my birthday.”

So, what do I mean by flexi-drinker? I want to be able to switch between alcoholic drinks and alcohol-free without being asked what’s wrong with me. I want to be able to manage my units and set fire to the book of drink rules I’ve internalised for the past 40 years.

It appears I’m part of a quiet revolution. James Crampton is corporate affairs director at Heineken, one of the biggest vendors of alcohol-free beer in the UK. He says the industry is investing heavily in alcohol-free. “People assumed in the past that you were on antibiotics or pregnant if you asked for one. We’re rolling out Heineken 0.00 on tap to 100 pubs this year.” It also struck a deal with our leading TV soaps to have its 0.0 brand stocked in both the Rovers Return and the Woolpack.

The desire to take control comes from a hierarchy of fears and exhaustion with the effects of alcohol. If I drink on consecutive days, I start to feel a general unease. I’m like a man who committed a crime in his sleep and can’t quite remember what happened. I’m overcome with the urge to apologise to much of the country and parts of Europe and America. Then there’s the long-term health paranoia. I rank these with cognitive decline at the top and a terrifying list of cancers close behind.

The benefits of cutting back are real. The less alcohol you drink, the less the risk – and the evidence is compelling. Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK says: “Women who drink 35 units per week have a one-in-10 chance of dying of an alcohol-related cause. This drops to one in 100 when drinking within the weekly guidelines of 14 units. Men can reduce their risk of stroke by 11 per cent by sticking to the guidelines.”

On the other hand, I know two glasses of wine produce the “best me”. Calm yet alert, relaxed but able to access an anecdote at will. Honestly, you would love two glasses of wine with me. The camaraderie and warmth of social drinking have given me some of the best nights of my life.

Being a flexi-drinker allows me to hold these two positions at the same time. First, I gave up drinking on weekdays. Two pints after work, a wine with dinner – the drink was incidental, I was accumulating units with no joy. Stopping was effortless and gave me more time awake and alert.

Then I began trialling alcohol-free beers. Lucky Saint, Guinness 0.0, Beck’s Blue had everything I wanted from the flavour but with none of the alcohol. The first purchase is the hardest – brace for the identity crisis: “Barman, please pour me a fake version of something that’s been part of my identity since I was 18.”

It’s not exactly the same. There’s a depth the alcohol gives to the taste that can’t be matched but, with a little imagination and peripheral props – salted nuts, a proper glass, ideally in an 18th-century coaching inn – it works.

There have been, I’ll admit, moments of clandestine use. But no more. This Christmas, when the disastrous extra final drink is offered, when the friend tugs me towards the pub in the middle of the afternoon, I will refuse. The people-pleaser in me will wince, and I will search the faces of my friends for disappointment – but I will refuse.

Join me and just say no. Or yes, if you prefer – just so long as it’s really your choice. 

Eight ways to be a flexi-drinker 

1. Be conscious of the social pressure that will await you and prepare in advance. If a particular group always “go on” to a late bar, anticipate the moment when they will begin to cajole you, decide how you want to play it, above all be aware of the conflicting feelings that will arise. 

2. Practise “spacing” your drinking with no- and low-alcohol drinks and, importantly, ask for these openly. Anticipate questions and objections. Be prepared with firm answers, no apologies. Harder than it sounds. 

3. Think of the week in terms of varying drink arrangements. Once Monday to Thursday is accepted as alcohol-free, your diary will fall into place around this. 

4. Have a good supply of booze replacement drinks at home for when people come over or you may experience an unplanned yearning (we all have them). 

5. When alcohol-free drinking at home, make sure you bother with the peripheral accompaniments – slivers of Manchego, olives, crisp. Whatever you normally surround your drink with will help deal with ingrained habits.

6. Become interested in the alcohol content of your drinks. An Aperol spritz is usually around 1.5 units of alcohol, while a Negroni is 2.7. “Long” drinks – bigger with a non-alcohol ingredient, tend to be much weaker. Pints can be a trap as export lager or craft beers can be wildly powerful. Ditch them for shandy.

7. Embrace fizzy water/soda mixed with wine. This lends you an air of Italian Riviera sophistication and is much less intoxicating than smaller drinks.

8. Buy classic French bistro wine glasses – a genuine design masterpiece but a fraction of the volume. “Shall we have another glass?” becomes less of a threat to your wellbeing.