BEVVY is something that’s been on my mind a lot over the past few months, particularly my relationship with it.

I wrote a thing about this a couple of years ago, reflecting on my drinking habits when I was younger compared to my relationship with alcohol when I was in my mid-twenties. These habits obviously change a lot as you get older. You go from drinking exclusively to get drunk every weekend to becoming a bit more sensible. Perhaps you graduate from lurid-coloured alcopops to a deep and characterful red wine. Maybe you move from lukewarm cider in a plastic bottle to whatever craft beer catches your eye in some fancy drink shop where the proprietor would shudder if you dared to ask if they had any Tennent’s.

Since lockdown started back in March, I’ve definitely been drinking more than I usually would and I think most people are in the same boat. With no pubs open, I found myself adding ever more cans to my shopping trolley every week.

“I’ll just have wan while I make ma dinner,” I’d say.

“Might as well have wan wi it, I suppose.”

“Och, fine. Wan mair won’t hurt anybody.”

“Right, last wan.”

In the morning I wake up with a mild hangover, cursing myself. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about hangovers; as I’ve got older, they get a lot worse. At 18, I’d go on a night out, not get home til a couple of hours before my shift at work and go in fully functioning, if a wee bit tired. Now I wake up the morning after, head thumping, literally throbbing with pain, the room spinning, eyes sensitive to even the merest hint of daylight, my hair somehow in pain and, for some reason, a weird sense of impending doom. It’s a great laugh. I can remember my older colleagues telling me that this would happen and I just laughed them off. It won’t happen to me, I thought, I’m simply built differently and also will never age.

Before lockdown, the threat of a bad hangover was enough to make me consider taking the motor to the pub or just not going at all. Knowing that it would make the whole of the next day a write-off as I would just lie about, feel sorry for myself and get anxious about things that I never normally would. Now though, I just feel like I want to booze all the time. The hangovers are fine, I have nowhere I need to be, deadlines have been pushed back or paused, it’s fine. It’s not fine though. It’s a slippy slope.

I learned a few years ago that, for me, the optimal amount of pints for me to drink on a night out was three. I even came up with a term to describe the feeling of three pints, “The Three Pint Glow”. After three pints I feel like the best version of myself, the person I wish I could be all the time; I feel confident, funny and charming. A well-oiled conversational machine as opposed to the quiet and somewhat neurotic man I am when fully sober. I sometimes wished I could wake up in the morning and drink three pints then go about my day. At the pub, I’d glug down three pints as quick as I could so I can get to the promised land. This is class for about 20 minutes. Then I get to the bottom of the fourth pint, and become a loud and annoying version of myself. And, my God, do I hate that guy. Anything mortifying that happens to me on a night out is always after the fourth pint, the pint I did not need or really want but had anyway. I know what’ll happen but I drink it anyway.

The other night, while sitting alone at my computer working away on my new book, I had six pint cans of lager. I once heard the phrase “Write drunk, edit sober” and thought I’d try it out. Predictably, what I’d written while more than half-cut was absolute mince and I was not compos mentis enough to sort out the mess the next day. It was a disaster and the words written the other night have been purged from my computer’s memory though sadly they linger on in my own, a reminder of my own idiocy.

I think, at least until Christmas, I’ll resolve to not drink. Nothing good is coming from it. The perfect amount to drink is three pints but it’s never just three. I think what I really need to look at is why I’m so desperate to project a different version of myself to the world rather than who I actually am, something I think a lot of us do without realising.