Wednesday August 8 - Even if I wanted to drink, I wouldn't have time...

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been seven months, seven days and 23 hours since my last drink.

God I'm tired.

Giving up booze was supposed to give me loads of time, but I feel busier than ever. It makes me wonder how I used to fit all the drinking in. Just years of practice, I suppose. And having a piss-easy job with a 15-minute commute didn't hurt, either.

I spent Friday and Saturday last week in Welshpool, for Gregg and Hannah's wedding, and I have to say that being off the booze has never been so hard.

I always thought I would miss booze the most during difficult times - a really boring night out with people I don't know, for example, or a period of major stress.

In fact, it was the opposite. This weekend was so damn good, I felt it deserved alcohol - not as a tranquiliser to numb the pain but as the icing on the cake.

I have made so many fantastic friends in Liverpool over the past seven years. Friendships that were forged mainly in pubs and bars and late night sessions waiting for the Booze2U van to arrive outside one of our homes at 3.30am.

Although we remain close, it seems that various factors - careers, families, homes - have conspired to make us spend less time together.

But this weekend, as we all decamped to deepest mid-Wales, felt like being 25 again. The whole gang was together - including Matt from Dubai and Jon from, erm, Ormskirk - the sun was shining, we were all booked into the same hotel, and two of the very lynchpins of our group were getting spliced.

It was in many ways the perfect weekend - the sort that didn't come around very often when you were younger and come around even less now. Weekends like that should be savoured. They should be preserved. And how do you preserve something? Why, you pickle it in jars of alcohol.

So, yes, I was tempted to drink. I was tempted when we played 18 holes of golf on the Friday, and I had to slake my thirst with warm orange squash while they got ice cold lagers. I was tempted when we sat outside the pub on Friday night - the first warm Friday this whole shitty summer - and I nursed sickly pots of blackcurant and soda while they got pint after pint of Guinness and cider and red wine. I was tempted on Saturday lunchtime, when we spilled out of church and I minced around with a mineral water while everyone else - the pregnant and mentals aside - got stuck into the Pimms. And I was tempted on the evening do, when I toasted the happy couple with lukewarm coffee instead of champers, and drank Appletize all night because it sort of looks like booze.

Did I have a bad time? No, I had a great time. It was a brilliant party and despite my sobriety I led the charge on the dancefloor, and sang myself hoarse to the extent that Gregg took me aside and asked - with some incredulity - if the mind-bending dance drug ecstasy had finally made it to Welshpool. (For the record, it hadn't, and that goes for the rest of my year, too.)

However, I do have to wonder if a brilliant night could have been made even better by alcohol. And now I'll never know. At least, not until Gregg's next wedding, which won't be for at least a few years. (Joke.)

By the way, the one advantage to staying sober at a wedding is that you get to feel smug and superior at breakfast the following day, as the other guests struggle to keep down the cooked breakfast. Unfortunately, due to our hotel room being the noisiest, hottest, lightest place in Wales, I couldn't sleep for more than a few hours. Hence, at breakfast, I felt almost as wretched, paranoid and tearful as the band of brothers (and sisters) who were last seen screaming Bon Jovi songs with their ties wrapped around their heads.

The difference was that they got to sleep it off while I had foolishly volunteered for the Sunday shift at work.

Hence the lateness of this entry, and my ongoing fatigue.

Sorry.