The Big Read: The unspoken eighth habit

I'm really looking forward to my next hangover. Gummy eyes, dry mouth, pounding headache, oily sweat.

Saturday spent in the dog house. Waiting for the clock to strike noon so I can pour myself a small, restorative glass of something bracing. This future glitters like an impossible dream on the horizon.

Like many people I give up booze every January. It's not really a resolution, just something I do. If I'm honest, the only real point is to prove to myself that, for a twelfth of the year, I can be a functioning non-alcoholic.

I divide my January into three stages. The first stage is easy. After the Christmas binge you genuinely don't want to get plastered: the memory of the compound hangover on December 27 is still too raw.

Then you move into the middle of the month. You've lost the proselytising zeal of the recent convert. But it's been replaced by something else. You discover that long sober hours can be filled with useful tasks. You begin to marvel at just how much you can accomplish and think there might be something to this.

This passes, too, because towards the end of the month you catch your first glimpse of the finish line. The goal. Suddenly, healthiness, productivity and abstract notions about being a better human being fall by the wayside. Ahead of you is the only thing that matters: a glass of cool, delicious wine shining so brightly it looks like the Holy Grail.

Now it's time to reflect on what I've learned while I've been no sheets to the wind. I'll start by stating the obvious: You do need to drink to have a good time.

Normally, I'm a pretty sociable guy. I am, as they say, the life and soul (and occasionally the a**hole) of the party. At any given dinner table I might be responsible for 50% of the volume, if not the quality content, of what is said.

Booze removes my social safety filter and makes me a more entertaining, if less diplomatic, companion. But without booze I filter everything. No one ever tells me "you've gone too far this time" in January.

If I'm duller, then so are my friends. Probably because they are on the wagon, too. I mean, you're sitting around a dinner table where eight people think before they open their mouths.

It gets worse: all those hilarious anecdotes - they're not that funny.

It goes on. I've discovered I don't really like pubs. If I'm drinking, a good pub is like an old mate. But without the buffer of a couple of pints, they're horrible; they stink of beer.

Also, they're full of strangers. Strangers who, if I was a bit pissed, I'd probably be happy to talk to. But sober?

I know, at this point I'm supposed to have a horrified epiphany where I realise that all my mates and I have in common is booze. But honestly, I'm okay with that. Or I will be as soon as I've got a few frosties inside me.

My wife isn't keen on the teetotal me. In fact, she is in the unusual position of wanting her husband to drink more.

"I just wish he'd get back on the sauce," I hear her telling friends on the phone. "He's like a different person."

Finally, the greatest and least anticipated injustice is that giving up booze has made me fatter. How does that work? Well, if I have a glass in my hand, it gives my hand something to do, but if I don't I turn to food. Specifically my children's pre-packaged snacks in tasty, bite-size portions. My wife has put locks on the kids' snack cupboard. I related this story to some parents at school. A funny anecdote, right? Wrong. With a glass of wine in my hand I'd have had the confidence I needed to labour the point until they laughed. But sober, they just thought me "a bit odd".

Then there's the productivity. I've edited 10000 digital images, filed my receipts from the mid-1980s, and arranged my bookshelves according to the Dewey decimal system.

I also now do more work in a week than I normally do in a month. I start sending e-mails at 7am, and bounce in at 9am, rather than the crack of whenever.

I'm even being a half-decent parent. When it's 4pm and the hours until bedtime stretch ahead of you like a vodka-free tundra, well, you probably are going to help set up that annoying train set. And, what's more, you're going to enjoy it.

The trouble is, I can't stand people like the sober me. No one else does either. They want boozy, dishevelled, disorganised, loud Alex back. They're right.

What's more, most of the upsides to not drinking aren't really upsides. Productivity to do what? File? Organise? It's productivity pressed into the service of pointlessness.

The work stuff? Ditto. A hangover focuses the mind wonderfully. You only deal with important tasks and delegate everything else. Drinking is definitely the unspoken eighth habit of highly effective people.

It's all just smugness masquerading as virtue. Now having proved to myself that I don't physically need a drink, I really need a drink. Cheers.