Just take the pledge

SOME PEOPLE I KNOW are deeply upset about that extra 50 cent on a bottle of wine. Don't get them wrong. It wasn't their main budget bugbear by any means.

Their biggest budget moan was, of course, the government's ingenious plan to kick older people repeatedly in the shins, rob their handbags and rifle through their pockets in the manner of Fagin. Fifty cent on a bottle of wine is a pain, fair enough, but it was edifying to see how the prospect of our leaders abusing our elders united the nation in one almighty roar of "over our dead bodies".

Even Michael Parkinson was going mad about it to Pat Kenny on the Late Late Show. Parky said that if it happened in Britain Gordon Brown would be toast. At that moment I had one of my Late Late-related epiphanies. I rang my mother. "It's not going to happen, this great medical card robbery, you know, so don't be worrying," I said. "It's not going to be tweaked or amended or revised, it's going to be thrown out altogether. Otherwise, and Parky is with me on this, Brian Cowen is toast".

A few days later Cowen had backtracked. It wasn't quite an abject apology but it was close enough.

Still, even with medical cards for most over 70s reinstated, there are still 32 cuts in education and that dratted 50 cent tax on a bottle of wine. I don't know what can be done about us having the largest class sizes in Europe, but I have a radical proposal on the wine front. It's a recession-busting idea that might save some of you hundreds of euro a month. Are you ready for this? Stop drinking wine. In fact, stop drinking alcohol altogether. And, that's basically it.

I realise coming from me this might sound rich. I have written here before about my fondness for wine and my tendency towards the binge end of imbibing. A typical example was when I was invited to the races last year. It was one of those events in a tent with free wine and champagne all day long, with the added bonus of a famous film director being all moody and unapproachable at your table.

The words "free" and "champagne" generally have a deeper meaning for me. I tend to interpret those words as "drink with abandon, drink with no thought for tomorrow, drink as though your very life depended on it, as if you will never get another flute of champagne ever again, not even a glass of cheap cider. Drink!" That's how I ended up hitching a lift from the race course and having to ask the driver to stop so I could vomit at the side of the road while best dressed ladies looked down at me from high up in their 4x4s. A great day at the races it was.

Of course, that was the more visible side of it. What I see as the more insidious stuff took place at home. It would happen like this. I'd come back after a "stressful" day. I'd open a bottle of wine. I'd drink a couple of glasses at dinner, enjoying the warm, fuzzy feeling that ensued and because my boyfriend didn't really drink, sure I'd finish off the bottle. Might as well. A nice bottle, mind. Sancerre or something else posh-sounding. My boyfriend would go to bed and I'd stay up "just to finish watching this fascinating documentary on ancient Egypt". I'd open another bottle of wine. Have another glass. Or two. And so it continued.

Did I have a problem? After a while it certainly felt like it. I started to notice how at social events I couldn't relax until I'd necked that first glass of wine. I noticed I drank more wine, more quickly, than other people. I noticed that sipping one glass of wine through dinner wasn't an option. I noticed I was isolating myself from my boyfriend, that his healthy attitude to drink was starting to irritate me. I noticed I looked forward to evenings when he was out so that I could curl up with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé or two and a tube of Pringles, far away from his disapproving gaze. I read articles about middle-class women binge drinking their way through life. I recognised myself.

Then last Easter we did another Vipassana meditation course. This is the 10-day silent retreat, where you meditate in the Buddhist style pretty much all day from 4.30am to 9pm, and your last vegetarian meal is served at 11.30am. (In. The. Morning.) You don't talk or even make eye contact with other participants. You certainly don't unwind after a hard day's meditating with a bottle of wine. When I finished the course, I continued this non-drinking lark. Life was better, plus I had more money to spend on Pringles.

It did take some adjustment. Organising my sister's surprise 40th birthday party, I started feeling panicky as the guests arrived. I knew that a glass of wine would have taken the edge off things, but I went to the bathroom instead where I threw up and had the first of many non-drinking revelations; deep down I was a sometimes shy, sometimes fearful person and I'd been using wine to mask this fear.

So if drinking doesn't feel like fun anymore, I can highly recommend a hiatus. Maybe just a break for November in the manner of Bertie Ahern who, whatever else they say about him, would never have attempted muggery of our older people in the name of patriotism.