'Tis the season to be sober. There is a sense of quiet satisfaction among us non-drinkers as we wake up today, in the aftermath of Christmas, with our heads clear and brains sharp, Deaglán de Bréadún.
We are no more grouchy than any other morning and, above all, we don't have that awful blinding realisation that we said something the night before that we shouldn't have, or made fools of ourselves at a Christmas party.
We non-drinkers come in two categories: people who gave up because they had to, and those who stopped drinking by choice. I belong to the latter group of moderate drinkers, who quit just the same way you might decide to stop smoking or eating chocolate, or become a vegetarian.
Apart from the usual student excesses, I was never that much of a drinker in the first place. "Ní ólann tú puinn (You drink damn-all)," an Irish-speaking friend with a formidable thirst told me once. Another friend introduced me to a new acquaintance: "He doesn't drink. Well, not much."
Nevertheless I enjoyed it, every last drop. But ceasing to drink even moderate amounts in this country is an educational experience. Such is the grip of alcohol on our culture that many people fail, even refuse, to understand. "You don't drink? At all!" they ask in amazed tones.
It's as if they feel personally threatened. It's like not going to Mass in days of yore. "Will you not just have the one, or even an oul' glass of wine?" they venture. They would never try this with a cigarette, because cigarettes don't matter in this context but drink does.
What are the pillars of our national psyche? A random list would include politics, religion, sex, sport . . . and drink. Vast tomes have been written on how members of historically-oppressed nationalities drown their sorrows in alcohol. In our case it went even further. Instead of a weakness, drink came to be seen as one of our strengths. The Englishman couldn't down as much as we could, nor could he hold his drink as well as us, was our boast.
So there is a ready understanding in our culture for the alcoholic, but what I might call the "moderate non-drinker" is almost an invisible category. Recognition is withheld, because how could anyone decide to give up drink unless they were becoming a slave to it?
Deep suspicions are entertained and sometimes expressed. "Was drink becoming a problem then?" "No, I just decided to stop. I feel better when I don't drink, I'm fitter, sleep better, have more money in my pocket."
None of these reasons will wash with the 'Suspicious Ones' because, to them, drink is like oxygen. One acquaintance told me with absolute certainty that the only Irish people who gave up drink were reformed alcoholics.
I later heard that the same man had slashed a friend's face with a broken glass in a drunken row.
An African visitor told me how she was brought to the pub on her first night in Dublin. "The place was packed, I thought it was a national holiday." But then, the second night and the third night, the place was still packed. Drink is more than just a pillar of our national psyche, it is the linchpin of our social life. A non-drinking friend went to lunch with the boss: "I had wine because I didn't want him to think I was an alcoholic."
But a quiet revolution is brewing, so to speak. An isolated minority up to now, we non-drinkers are coming into our own. The others need us as designated drivers to give them a lift home from the pub. The smoking ban showed that a major change in social habits can be brought about relatively easily.
Not that I am suggesting a drinks ban. Far from it. Sensible drinking is one of life's great pleasures. What worries me is the disproportionate place that alcohol holds in our daily lives. Read the court pages of any newspaper and count the number of cases that would never have happened without the demon alcohol. Peruse the tragic road accident statistics. Talk to any social worker about all the broken homes as a result of drink.
I am not launching a temperance campaign, merely observing that drink causes far more damage than smoking, yet is regarded with far greater tolerance and understanding.
Our ancestors frequented miserable shebeens whereas we go to well-appointed super-pubs, but the end result is much the same except that our ancestors posed less danger to pedestrians as they drove home by pony and trap.
Nor did our ancestors glamorise drink. In fact, it was almost a secret vice.
Now the ads are trying to establish a link between alcohol and personal psychology, promoting the idea, for example, of the pub as the last refuge of male companionship.
Our devout, conventional forebears would be mystified by the homo-erotic overtones in some of these commercials.
Some day I'll start drinking again. It won't be in this country, but at a table in the sun by the Mediterranean, in a place where drink has its prized but modest place in daily life, and where nobody is knocking them back as if Prohibition was about to be reintroduced at midnight.
Until then, it's Diet Pepsi or a sparkling Ballygowan and, if you don't understand, that's your problem, not mine.