14 January

I mostly stopped drinking alcohol years ago for health reasons (it can trigger arrhythmias in me). But I rarely miss it, and what I do miss in taste is rapidly being caught up by non-alcoholic alternatives. Alcohol is very much like cars. A lot of our behaviour around it is social, and not about the thing itself. We drink certain things and in certain ways to fit in, and to differentiate ourselves from others. Older adults still think it's a rite of passage, which it was for them, socially. The young increasingly see no point in it. Just as many of them have no interest in driving, another rite of passage for older adults, which they mistake for how things are for everybody.