As if you needed telling, Dry January is over. At last! Here we go again! Cheers! Only, as you also won’t need telling, it’s not that simple any more.

At this point, those who did Dry January might be wondering if they should keep going, to prove that drink is not their master.

Meanwhile, those of us who didn’t give up drink, or drank only at the weekends, with the occasional midweek lapse (ahem), are feeling guilty for not having achieved anything. So that’s everyone who drinks alcohol, sliding in to Wet February with a lot of guilt, but only slightly more than we experience every other month of the year.

It’s hard to back up scientifically, but at a rough guess we’d say 89 per cent of drinkers, moderate or otherwise, feel conflicted about their alcohol consumption. (Correction: that would be not counting anyone over 80 years of age. They’re all baffled by the modern obsession with the downsides of alcohol and can’t see what all the fuss is about).

You could argue – and they definitely would – that there’s no point in drinking at all if you feel bad for doing it, and no need to feel guilty about drinking if you approach it sensibly. Reset your attitude, abide by a few basic rules and, bingo, you’re cooking on gas.

So, for anyone approaching Wet February with mixed emotions, here’s our guide to guilt-free drinking in the year ahead.

How to avoid morning-after drinking guilt, aka MAD guilt 

• Watch how much you drink. Sounds obvious, but this is not something we’ve necessarily taken on board in all these years of drinking. You cannot simply intend not to drink too much, you have to check and count and be aware of how many glasses you’ve had. “I was overserved” is not a reasonable excuse for a hangover these days. Neither is “the wine was filthy” (your job not to chug it back if that is the case.) At first, this self-monitoring might seem like a downer, but the truth is it’s normal. You’d know if you’d had thirds and fourths and fifths of the shepherd’s pie, after all.
• Be a drink-nurser. This is key. Put it down on the table, don’t glug it like Tizer, and have a crisp instead,
• Say no to shots.
• Do not have more than one of the cocktail in very small glasses. It’s probably a White Lady, the equivalent of taking a truth drug and a Yanomami enlightenment ritual hallucinogenic.
• Don’t keep drinking even when the candles have been blown out.

Situations where drink makes all the difference

• Playing Scrabble – all board games, in fact
• Dancing
• Meeting the parents
• With a steak
• Marking the start of the weekend, when you are in the same place and going nowhere
• Sitting outside on a warm evening (we wish)
• Doing your accounts (just kidding)

Times you should probably abstain from drinking

• Before running a marathon
• Before having surgery
• Before having your picture taken (if that’s going to take place in the morning)
• When meeting your friend who has given up alcohol
• When in charge of several small children
• At lunch, unless you are prepared to doze off in the afternoon, in which case go ahead
• When lecturing someone close to you about their drinking
• Doing your accounts

Times when you need to be particularly on your guard

• When you haven’t drunk for a few days (one teeny glass of Grüner Veltliner and you’re looking for the wigs and karaoke machine)
• When you are going to the Whatsits who never feed anyone before 10pm. (Never thought we’d miss that, but we do now.)
• Whenever White Ladies are being served
• When you’re nervous
• When you haven’t seen your friends for six months and you’ve only got one night. (Once we’re released back into the world, this will be one to watch.)

Know when to stop

As everyone knows there are the standard five ‘When To Stop’ clues. These are:

• When your elbow misses the table or when you inexplicably fall sideways off your chair
• When you are in the middle of telling a noisy story and can’t remember why you started it
• When you start hugging everyone (the old days)
• When you find yourself jumping on a remark about preferring Comté to other cheese and turning it into a serious argument about being easily manipulated
• When you start to repeat something really important you have to say, quite loudly, again and again

These are the basics and we all know them well when we see them. Not so much, however, when we are the ones arguing about cheese. The only way of rectifying this is to watch what you drink (see MAD guilt) or to nominate a control buddy (your partner, perhaps) and ask them to give you a signal when you are approaching the danger zone. (Note: very good chance that their intervention will be seen as patronising or, at the very least, unnecessary, and you may not be able to get them to volunteer for this role).

Some ground rules for February

• Make kick off 7pm, not 6pm (7.30pm even better)
• Lay off the Negronis
• Get in some non-alcoholic beer. They do say it’s OK.
• Agree to have three, ideally four consecutive days off, and then slap a hefty penalty on the one who cracks (this could lead to drinking in secret, in theory, but how easy would that be, given the circs?)
• Don’t, on one of your days off, when the characters on Call My Agent are tucking into caipirinhas, nudge each other and look mischievous. That counts as incitement.
• Open one bottle – that’s not a bottle of red for Him, bottle of white for Her. You’re both drinking one or the other.

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