By Dani Garavelli: Through a glass brightly

EVERY Friday night as I leave work and pick my way through the human detritus binge drinking has left in the city centre, I find myself tut tutting.

You can picture the scene. Young women, their midriffs exposed, being carried along by friends. Couples swearing and shoving each other over some perceived slight neither of them can quite recall. Men in doorways eating kebabs you know they're going to regurgitate minutes later.

I get into my car and go home with a sense of superiority that can only be described as middle-aged. Then I head for the drinks cabinet and pour myself a stiff gin and tonic (no point in asking how many units – I don't use a measure).

If I get home before Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, there's every chance I'll sink three or four before bed. I may wake up with a headache in the morning – but nothing a couple of Anadin won't cure before 9am, when I'm required to resume maternal duties. And certainly not enough to stop me cracking open a bottle of wine at the earliest possible opportunity on Saturday evening. So what? I work hard. I deserve it, don't I? In any case wasn't it recently revealed the national safe drinking guidelines – 14 units for women, 21 for men – are 20 years out of date and have no basis in science?

When it comes to consuming alcohol we all tell ourselves little white lies. How else can you explain the report last week that showed middle-class women are drinking more than they realise because – wait for it – wine glasses are getting bigger. Aye right. These women are holding down jobs as teachers, accountants, social workers or lawyers, but it's never occurred to them that bigger receptacles mean more alcohol. It's not just something they turn a blind eye to, so they can say "no more than 12 units a week" to their GPs without feeling like frauds? That way, if they've got it wrong, it's not their fault – it's a conspiracy on the part of the glass-blowing industry.

Perhaps we should start taking more responsibility for our actions. Or perhaps the Government should stop forcing us to answer redundant questions. Then we wouldn't have to lie to ourselves or to the health tsars who decree that living to 110 is something we should all aspire to.

If we are disingenuous about drink, how much more so are the "shocking" surveys that insist on telling us how it is blighting our lives. According to the figures from the Office of National Statistics, the proportion of women drinking "too much" has gone up from a fifth to a third under new calculations based on those bigger wine glasses, while the number of men doing the same has risen to 40%.

But when you analyse what the average person is consuming, it's not really so worrying. Professional people are drinking 15 units a week, four more than those in manual occupations, while the average male boss of a large company is drinking 22.9 units (a woman in the same position drinks just 12.5). So let's get this straight. Even in the worst categories, the average man is drinking just 1.9 units over the recommended safety limit, while the average woman is drinking 1.5 units under it.

This report is not about alcoholism, which is, of course, a real and pressing problem. It's not about people who have to go to A&E to get their stomach pumped or who black out on a regular basis. It's about people who over-indulge ever so slightly, to the possible, but by no means inevitable, detriment of their long-term health.

What I find most infuriating is the way many of these surveys are set up to portray such minor over-indulgence as a source of great misery. In December, for example, a third of 30 to 50-year-olds admitted at least one social occasion in the previous 12 months had been ruined by drinking too much. Well, excessive alcohol certainly marred one evening last year for me, chiefly because I tried to drink and cook at the same time, with predictable results. That was, however, a lot fewer evenings than were marred by stomach cramps, fractious kids and faulty technology.

What the researchers should have asked was how many social occasions did excessive alcohol improve? How many awful days did it take the edge off? And how many of the year's happiest memories were derived from nights when the wine flowed freely? But that's never going to happen, is it? Because then drink might be seen as a life- enhancer instead of a scourge.

We may be losing our religion, but we remain a Presbyterian nation at heart, hypocritical too. Because many of the researchers who produce these surveys, the doctors who endorse them and the journalists who write about them will be partial to the odd tipple or seven themselves. And because there are so many other riskier behaviours we, as a society, embrace. I mean, who decided that base jumping and mountain climbing were noble pursuits, but lowering your inhibitions through alcohol was something to be ashamed of?

I have never bought the burden on the National Health Service argument either. It is impossible to draw a graph charting the relationship between certain types of behaviour and life expectancy because everyone is different. In any case, living into your dotage may prove a much greater drain on the Exchequer than dying young.

Maybe lots of middle-class people do exceed the safe drinking limit, but I can't see how it constitutes "an affluent alcohol crisis". So long as we're not causing a public nuisance; so long as our lifestyles aren't impacting on our work, our partners or our children, then what we consume is nobody's business but ours.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm in dire need of a G&T.