Alcohol is my friend.

In fact, apart from family it's probably been the single biggest constant in my life since my mid-teens.

For the past 25 years I've raised a glass to everyone and everything. I drank champagne the day I got engaged, the day I found out I was pregnant, and again the day the boys were brought home from hospital (it was only a tiny sip).

I don't have a problem with alcohol. I just have a problem avoiding it.

Most mornings, I wake up and wish I'd been more strong-willed the night before.

I tell myself, "Lainie – you're not having a drink until the end of the week." But I do.

I tell myself, "Lainie – alcohol increases your chances of getting cancer. Dad died of cancer. You're not drinking tonight." But I do.

When dinner time rolls around, so do the excuses: I can have an AFD (alcohol free day) tomorrow; I'm busy, I deserve a drink; I'm grumpy, I need a drink; It's summer – let’s drink; weekend? wine time.

So why am I fessing up to the kind of pathetic suburban dysfunction that I loathe to see on Dr Phil?

Well, three reasons, really: 1) relatives are visiting at the moment, which has been cause for rather intense and remorse-inducing celebrations; 2) I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not alone in fretting about the amount of wine I consume; and 3) In all honesty I'm hoping to shame myself into action.

Give me five minutes (or a 650-word column) and I'll happily recite the evils of public drunkenness, smoking or illicit drug use; and the massive associated burden on taxpayers through lost productivity, physical abuse, mental illness and hospital costs.

I have very little patience when it comes to addiction to cigarettes; even less when it comes to well-heeled mums and dads boosting the coffers of druggies and bikie gangs by popping Es and snorting cocaine.

Last year, though, I researched a feature on the rise of middle-class drug taking in South Australia for Adelaide* magazine, and one of the mums who spoke on her drug use (confessing even to occasionally taking meth to get the housework done) said something that’s stayed with me.

"I take recreational drugs in my own time – my time out from being a mother and downtime from my job," she said.

"I don't get home from work, have a line and then cook dinner. But I do know a lot of mums that would come home from work and polish off a bottle of wine..."

That mum is me.

My children see a glass of wine in my hand on five, maybe six nights out of seven.

Regular and sustained alcohol use – particularly when adults are socialising – is as normal to them as watching television, going to school or eating sausages cooked on the barbecue. (Yet if my sons see someone smoking, they point it out like it's an act of extreme naughtiness.)

When they reach their mid teens and start to organise their own social events with friends, what do you think the chances are that Jack and Harry will see booze as a very normal, even essential part of the equation?

And who will be to blame?

Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council states that "For healthy men and women, drinking no more than two standard drinks on any day reduces the lifetime risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury."

I've always felt pretty buoyed by that. I rarely drink more than two glasses of wine a day – except on weekends or course. They're the exception.

But did you know that one standard glass of wine is only 100ml? Trying pouring 100ml of water into your normal wine glass and you'll see how little that is.

Or here's an even easier way to work it. Wine bottles are 750ml (or 7.5 standard drinks) so if you and your partner share a bottle in a night, you both consume nearly four standard drinks – or double the healthy limit.

Over a lifetime, I'm guessing that's not good.

So here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to not drink tonight. But my lovely relatives are leaving tomorrow. And I can always have an AFD tomorrow.

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This article was reproduced courtesy of Adelaide's Sunday Mail.

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