Guilt-free boozing will be the ruin of us all

A scientist appeared on British television this week seeking investment for the development of substances that mimic the effect of alcohol.

Why? Because a drug that's less pharmacologically "messy" than alcohol could deliver the pleasures of your favourite tipple - minus the harm.

Professor David Nutt's vision is synthetic beer that would leave the imbiber with neither a hangover nor guilt.

Guilt-free drinking makes me think of a brave new world, and not in a good way.

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel is named after a speech given by Miranda in The Tempest :

"O wonder!

"How many goodly creatures are there here!

"How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

"That has such people in't."

But Shakespeare is having a laugh at Miranda. Her words aren't sparked by a transcendent sight but by a group of intoxicated, shipwrecked sailors. There are many people who'd welcome Professor Nutt's alternative to alcohol if it had the Miranda effect, making public displays of drunkenness so rare that the sight of them would move one to poetry. But wouldn't Nutt beer make inebriation more common, not less?

Crowds of rowdy drunks are the opposite of "beauteous".

Guilt-free, hangover-free inebriation would deliver squadrons of such anti-beauty. To develop a new soma misses the point about alcohol's role in the world. The point is the guilt; the point is the hangover. Learning to manage your alcoholic intake is, for most, part of the road travelled from infant to adult. Such lessons (of self-control) cannot be learnt if choices become consequence-free: to drink must be to volunteer oneself for risk.

I worry that were drink to become consequence-free too many people would spend their time sozzled.

Every beer-drinker knows that there's an appointment with reality - however long-delayed - at the bottom of one of those pint glasses.

Maybe not this one, maybe not the next - but it's coming.

And I think we're better off that way.