I always want to be able to take a quiet early evening pint or two with a friend or share a bottle of wine over dinner somewhere. I heard Adrian talking about this book on the Parenting Hell podcast (coincidentally, as a parent of teenagers, it was a bloody brilliant episode – and had me in floods of tears when talking about the fact you pack your child off to Uni telling them ‘it’s going to be the best time of your life’ – and actually it can be really tough, especially at the start, being dumped in a random place with random people and expected to make friends for life and have an amazing time. This bleak statement is especially true for many pop and rock stars, who find themselves catapulted from fame into obscurity virtually overnight, given the unforgiving vagaries of the music industry.

Honest, funny and full of strategies on how to moderate your drinking, Chiles is genuinely passionate about his pints and the need to enjoy them without ever coming across as preachy - a fine line many have failed to tread . However, he also points out that a lot of people who drink a lot are put off by the thought of total abstinence – and therefore don’t bother looking at their drinking levels at all, because moderate drinking isn’t often deemed an option. What is unique to New Mocktails Bible, are recipes provided by many alcohol-free drink producers, using their own products. This pocket-sized book presents the most essential poems in his dispensary: those which, again and again, have really shown themselves to work.But this book is a great addition to the still very small collection of books aimed at the moderate drinker. One line particularly stuck with me: ‘If you’re feeling thirsty, it’s almost too late: your body is already dehydrated. There is plenty of talk of boozing sessions over the years, but this is balanced by reflections on how much of this was actually enjoyable or necessary. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

And for full disclosure, Club Soda founder Laura has also written two pages to the book on her thoughts on alcohol-free cocktails. I always assumed that my friendship group, which was 98% made up of drinkers, merely reflected society, but that’s nonsense. It may be easier to give up alcohol totally than commit yourself to a future life of drinking moderately. I didn’t agree with everything (for example I think Adrian puts too much emphasis on units, though if they work for him then calculate away!

His book takes a Jungian psychology approach to addictions and drinking, with five universal archetypes as the thread through his take on the topic. Sitting alongside his propensity to admit his ignorance is an attractive willingness to listen to anyone, of any age or social station, who might tell him something meaningful .

Note: We will be hosting Adrian at our Tasting Room in early 2023, where Laura will discuss the book with him.

I rarely vomit from alcohol consumption (and last time I did, I’m sure there was something wrong with the coffee beans in the espresso martinis, it wasn’t the volume of booze!