Sarah Vine: After a lifetime of drinking, sober October has me hooked

As a general rule, I don’t have much truck with so-called motivational months: Stoptober (smoking), Movember (prostate cancer), Veganuary (which in my experience has a tendency to segue into Fartbruary).

But for some reason, this year’s Sober October has struck a chord.

Strange as it may seem, after a lifetime of drinking, I might be ready to knock it on the head.

Not that I’m a particularly heavy drinker. I don’t fall asleep in a ­stupor at night in front of the TV, or find myself lugging embarrassing amounts of empties to the recycling.

But like many people, especially women my age, I drink more than is probably good for me. I love champagne — the glamour, the bubbles, the excitement that comes with the pop of a cork — and there’s nothing nicer than a chilled glass of Albarino on a warm summer’s evening or a drop of Barolo on a cold ­winter’s night.

My unusually high tolerance for alcohol doesn’t help. My father always used to say that being Welsh means being born with two livers, like the old Jaguar XJ-6’s two petrol tanks. When one runs out, the other just kicks in.

This means that at the end of an evening out when most people are dancing to Abba and generally making fools of themselves, I’ll be the one making sure they don’t accidentally leave with the wrong husband.

That’s not to say I haven’t had my moments.

I never drink cocktails. Indeed, during a party years ago at Chequers for Samantha Cameron’s birthday, I got rather over-excited while dancing, having knocked back several negronis in quick succession.

But I don’t feel I have a problem with alcohol. I say this as someone who is very self-critical and who does, for example, have a problem with over-eating. Drink is not my poison, that’s sugar.

And that, I reckon, is part of the reason I’ve gone off the booze.

Alcohol is basically sugar. We may kid ourselves that having a couple of glasses of wine with ­dinner is all very sophisticated but we may as well be stuffing down a Dunkin’ Donut with our meal.

People tend to characterise problem drinkers as full-blown alcoholics. But the truth is that there are plenty of us so-called “moderate” drinkers who don’t do it so much for the effects of the alcohol but for the other, arguably just as treacherous, high — sugar.

We may not slur our words or fall down the stairs but that doesn’t mean we’re not harming ourselves. We drink because alcohol gives us the same kind of warm, fuzzy pleasure as a bar of chocolate, or an eclair.

A bottle of rosé contains around 600 calories. You might as well eat a whole cake. Only cake won’t leave you hungover or give rampant indigestion during the night.

And that, really, is why I’ve gone off the drink. Perhaps it’s my age (57), but the pleasure simply no longer outweighs the pain. I just don’t enjoy it enough to find myself waking up at 3am with acid reflux, or feeling rotten on my morning dog walk.

And I certainly don’t appreciate the blubbery belly, the muffin top, the grey skin and bloating that results from ­regular consumption of alcohol. And, of course, the inevitable self-loathing.

Lately, when someone offers me a drink, I don’t think, “ooh, go on”, but, instead, experience a slight sense of dread. Do I really want to do this to myself?

Which is why I’m giving Sober October a go.

So far (and admittedly I’m only a week or so in), it’s not been hard. Though the real eye-opener is the alcohol-shaped hole in my life.

Without a trusty glass of wine during social occasions, I feel I’m missing a vital social prop. Sitting at dinner with two friends the other night with my mineral water as they drank vodka, I was paranoid that I might have suddenly turned into a monumental bore.

I’m struggling to overcome the notion that if I’m not drinking, I’m not “fun” any more.

Does that mean that drinking alcohol is as much a psychological problem as a physical one?

I’m not sure. But what I do know is that after a week — with only one relapse (a small vodka with a friend who’d just received some terrible news), I feel ­noticeably better.

I’m sleeping better, going to bed earlier (partly, to be honest, out of boredom — again, that alcohol-shaped hole), not waking up in the night and, joy of joys, my waistband feels looser. Surprisingly, too, I also feel a lot calmer and less anxious.

Will this be permanent? Am I about to part company with something that’s been a companion for longer than pretty much anything or anyone?

I doubt it. But it has made me think: maybe the apparently sober Gen Z — almost 30 per cent of whom say they don’t drink — are right: perhaps there really is more to life than a drink at the end of a long day. Either way, it’s a ­fascinating experiment.