Booze . . . time to put a cork in it

I don’t drink alcohol, writes blogger Emma Suddaby, and that either makes me the last person who should be commenting on our binge-drinking crisis, or one of the few people left with clear sight on this issue, having long ago left my beer goggles at home.

Either way, I can’t keep quiet about it any longer.

I stopped going out in town on a Friday or Saturday night years ago, as town centres, on those nights, are now the sole preserve of the pickled and the lairy, the unsteady and the scary.

I don’t even like to drive through in my car . . . it’s more like target practice than driving. Groups of swaying, staggering young men forget the difference between pavement and road, using both freely and chaotically on the intoxicated crawl from one pub to the next.

And don’t even get me started on the women! I’ve lost count of the underdressed yet overconfident ‘ladies’ who’ve tumbled heel-over-cleavage, into the path of my car. I’m amazed any of them actually make it home considering the gauntlet of dangers they’ve run during their night out.

There’s the potential alcoholic poisoning, the possibility of having having a drink spiked - victory for the rapist, waiting in the shadows - and then the stagger home, in shoes which seemed like a good idea before downing five vodka-tonics and four sambuccas, but which afterwards will have her falling off the pavement and rolling around in the gutter, knickers akimbo.

But the worst thing is how completely acceptable, even desirable this behaviour is.

I actually feel ashamed to admit I’m teetotal, and when I do, eyebrows threaten to take flight and my face is quizzically examined for signs that I’m either insane or joking. I feel like I’m letting the side down!

And Government talk of increasing the price of the shamefully cheap drink available in shops will do nothing but punish the responsible few. Yet again those behaving decently will be penalised, not those causing the problem.

I don’t think there’s a simple answer to this epidemic. What I do think is that everything we teach our children about alcohol is wrong. We drink for drinking’s sake. It’s no longer an accompaniment to the meal, it’s the main course.

Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to stop alcohol being sold by every Tom, Dick and Tesco, and return it, solely, to the hands of the off-licence. That way, responsible, experienced, trained licensees can decide whether the person trying to buy alcopops and fortified wine in his school jumper is really over 18, and be accountable for that decision.

As things are, why should teenagers worry about the legal drinking age, when they can pop into their local supermarket and get one of their mates from school, working the Saturday shift, to serve them?

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but apparently children are allowed to sell drinks to other children now, so long as they shout ‘alcohol!’ to the supervisor as they hand them over.

• Inspirational Emma Suddaby shares her ” highs, lows - and various murky places inbetween” - with her weekly blog. Emma, a finalist in the 2007 Shropshire Star Woman of the Year competition, was diagnosed with aggressive, destructive rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 22. She has since won a dream flying scholarship with the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled and is now training for a National Private Pilot’s Licence.