Friday March 2 - Mass debate makes me want a stiff one

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been two months, one day and 18 hours since my last drink.

What do you think is the fastest way to drive a dry man to drink? Go on, have a guess.

Stress? Redundancy? Bereavement? Being jailed for a crime you did not commit and then discovering your cell mate is a large lifer called Ron who wants to play mummies and daddies?

None of the above. (You wouldn't able to get a drink in prison anyway. Smack? Yes. Booze? No.)

In fact, scientists have proven that the one single thing most likely to knock a man off the wagon is listening to four of his mates - all of them at the classic "five pints pissed" stage of garrulousness - debate whether Denzel Washington was correctly identified as the lead actor in the 2001 crooked cop film Training Day, or whether that honour should have gone to Ethan Hawke.

There's 28 minutes of my life I'll never see again.

Gary, Jimmy, Graham and Cardy were the guilty men, during an otherwise enjoyable night at the Penny Lane Wine Bar last night. To be fair, Cardy didn't say much, but in the few contributions he made, he insisted on referring to Washington as simply "Den-zell", like he was his best mate. Which is just as bad.

Fortunately, the conversation was so stupefying that I lost feeling in my lower legs and was unable to walk to the bar to ask the barman to put me out of my misery.

I have mixed feelings about passing the two-month mark of sobriety. One the one hand, it feels good to reach another calendar milestone. On the other, it serves as a reminder of just how long I'm going to have to keep this up. Two measly months! I'll have to do another two lots of that before I'm even half way. Bah.

To make matters worse, one of the months completed is February - the most puny and pointless month of them all. It wasn't even a leap year, dammit.

Still, like a proper alkie, all I can do is take one day at a time. Tomorrow, as they say, is another day.

So, guess what I'm doing tomorrow? Going to a wedding. And weddings, as any scientist will tell you, are the second fastest way to drive a man to drink.