My first flash of the chain of mortality was in a hotel in Majorca when I was about 11.

Not sure what was going on, but we were due to meet in the bar late morning and I'd been up to the room to change. Digga sr came up to find where I was and clearly whilst I'd been in the pool he'd been in the bar already. As the elevator arrived at the ground floor, dad led the way, clacking his keys like castanets, clicking the soles of his loafers on the (very well polished and slippery) marble floor before proceeding to fall flat on his back.

I knew well before them my parents drank, but it was at that very moment that I really understood that one day I would have to look after this bloke.

In retrospect (there have been a few further instances where the child becomes the guardian) I realise this is actually an iterative process.

First they came for the smokers

When then come for the wkers i'll be worried

By the age of 16 I realised that my mum was an alcoholic and my Dad was fast following her (until he gave up drinking when I was in my early 20's), I wont say it did not do me any harm, but I have never gone out to get drunk (I have been on more then one occasion) and tend to get a bit pissy with my wife when she gets drunk (rare these days). And as I get older I have started to go with quality over quantity. I'd rather drink one glass of a good red then 3 (for £10) bottles. Same goes for beer and whiskey.

I think they came for the fox hunters first.

This is me & Mrs P right now. I'm not too worried as it's a load less than we used to drink pre-kids!

Genuine LOL at this!

As far as I know you can still smoke as much as you want at home, and as much as you want elsewhere too as long as it's unenclosed and not forcing anyone else to enjoy the smoke.

Yep, "they" really did a number on smokers...

As for parents drinking a lot - as Mattnunn says, it's an easy habit to drop into when you've had another long day with the kids and just want to chill out/veg out in the evening. That said, it can't go too far as the sprogs will be up again early the following morning and hangovers really don't help with getting them up

Indeed, I think that's the problem, through my 20s I was probably what you'd call a binge drinker, i.e drink for an occasion for the reasons of getting drunk, usually when out very rarely around the house/flat.

As soon as you have kids the drinking becomes more like self medication, you never drink enough to really have a hang over, just enough to dull the days events and allow your brain to accept Midsomer Murders with out violent reaction, I think it's much more habit forming and insidious.

I'll leave the country if that happens.

I've got a problem with my stomach lining. If it gets damaged I suffer from a vitamin B12 deficiency. When I was in my teens I drank a little, no more than a couple or three pints of a Fri and Sat yet I would have a hangover that lasted for days. I eventually started throwing up blood and kept going yellow. April 1979 was my last drink: half a pint of Guinness which nearly put me in hospital.

Since then I've been tea-total. It was incredibly easy to do. I didn't miss it after a few months. However, I did a fair bit of research on the effects of alcohol, just to give me supp9ort, and I was stunned with just how dangerous it is. I was talking to a doctor who did a lot with treatment of alcoholism and he was of the opinion that it was more addictive, ie more difficult to give up due to physical and emotional dependancy, than any opiate.

What alcohol can do to the unborn child is horrific.

I had two lumps in my throat and went in for a biopsy. I spoke with the doctor who was going to check the lump and if carcinogenic would have there and then done a trachyoptomy. When I told him I neither drunk nor smoked he said that he had not done a trachy on any person who neither drank nor smoked in n years of doing such ops three days a week. The key was alcohol. He too was tea-total but not for direct medical reasons.

Test show that even in very limited amounts, one unit for most, alcohol affects the way one can do physical and mental acts. Driving is the most obvious sufferer, but there's machines, knitting (something to do with the automated actions), swimming, and that sort of thing.

Alcohol is very dangerous stuff. If you drink regularly, i.e. daily, then you are putting yourself at considerable risk. O course, spoken by someone who can't drink, but it is true.