Is Alcohol the Answer?

Last weekend I succumbed to a whole afternoon of sobriety.

My habitual Sunday pastime involves a bottle or two of half-decent plonk, a beer garden, and random conversations with whoever happens by.

Last Sunday I chose to kick the habit and support a demonstration in Leeds that a good friend had persuaded me was important. Demonstrations are serious things she reminded me. I needed to be as sober as a donkey jacket, steady as the onward march of the proletariat toward the inevitable overthrow of global capitalism. I complied and joined the demo. But this had one very unfortunate consequence. Temperance turned me into an arsehole.

Usually I’m content to fritter away the afternoon, mumbling about summat and nowt, not really interested in scoring points or winning debates, just enjoying the to and fro of whatever frivolous chatter alcohol invites. But abstemiousness seemed to encourage the stricter pleasures of squaring up to the Man and setting the world to rights. Without the best part of a pint of Shiraz in me I became bombastic, opinionated, aggressive. I got shouty. I lectured friends. I made rude and unjustifiable insinuations about the professionalism of certain parts of our local media. I indulged in an orgy of strident outrage. I really wasn’t my usual self.

Alcohol is an essential part of my self-improvement regime. Temperance just seemed to agitate my self-righteous streak and uncork my dictatorial tendencies; abstaining made me liable to explode in gaseous wrath.

Whenever I have important business to see to, of course, I don’t indulge. Which is why I only ever fill in application forms, funding bids, final reports and invoice reminders long before noon. I rarely unscrew the first cap until every item on my to do list has been well and truly ticked off; by which time I feel the justified need to sooth my jangled nerves and douse the thermal runaway in my spleen with a liquid lunch.

Obviously alcohol puts a damper on all the steely qualities that enable us get on with the bare-knuckled struggle of each against all – ambition, energy, drive, determination, combativeness – but, even better, it releases the qualities that mellow us and make us easier to get along with – conviviality, humour, toleration, empathy, creativity. After a couple of lunchtime cocktails I am naturally less competent than I was to replace the ink in the printer, resize a 4MB image into one that’s 550 pixels wide, or apply for a job with Leeds and Partners. But I am immensely more creative at making a robot out of used printer cartridges, snapping an unexpectedly delightful photograph, or penning amusing but trivial squibs about local public figures.

Wouldn’t the world be an immeasurably happier place if we could work out a way of getting and keeping the whole human race gently pie-eyed? Not laying-face-down-in-the-gutter-sobbing drunk – just pleasantly pickled. In this condition people are generally nicer, kinder, more decent human beings. All the problems on Earth are caused by the coldly sober types. Dictators don’t drink and Sozzled citizens don’t start wars. The well lubricated don’t lob bombs at innocent people, and they are too blotto to see the point of building a defence industry in the first place – all that effort to blow things up. When you’re trollied you see that as the joke it really is. When you are three sheets to the wind, political differences only cause merriment.

There are tricky technical problems involved in maintaining a permanently inebriated society – we can’t just spike the drinking water or lace the clouds with aerosol alcohol; I’m sure there are laws about that, as well as it being a damnable waste of good grog – but in these data-rich days of tracking, personalised recommendations and nudgery the difficulties are not insurmountable. We could easily develop a wearable device that monitors behaviour and individual requirements, making sure that everyone received their daily dose of chosen poison exactly according to personal needs at precisely the right time. And for those who are against drinking, the device could deliver the goods intravenously, thus taking away the pleasure while simultaneously guaranteeing the benefit. Not even the staunchest teatotaler could object to that – intoxication is in their own best interest and for the greater good of society. This is surely not beyond the reach of human ingenuity.

I’m currently working on the prototype. I propose to call my idea AlcCalc; a device, a range of products, and a service dedicated to helping people lead happier, more harmonious lives through alcohol. Our company motto is, “Less Doing, More Stewing.”

I am also working on two related ideas. CarbLab, committed to the promotion of artisan baking as the road to world peace; and ChocLog, a simple app to enable the most efficient and effective location of chocolate bars in unforeseen emotional emergencies.

I hope you’ll visit my Kickstarter page soon. Donations go toward the next round and every penny makes me a better person.