John Robbins

And there's no one ever mentioned anything about drinking too much or what would happen if you couldn't stop or what it meant if when you drank, every time you drank, you sort of drank until you were hammered.

So only as a sort of 40 year old was I beginning to understand this thing that had been such a feature of my life for so long.

I talk about this early on in the book about being at a friend of my mum's house with my mum, and they were drinking champagne.

My mum never really drank.

There was never really alcohol in the house.

I mean, there might have been a bottle of gin after my dad left, and that would have just lasted for five years.

I would have been, I don't know, six or seven, maybe five.

It's all quite hazy when I'm at that age.

But I just remember thinking, I have to try this.

I want to experience this.

And eventually, my mum let me have a sip.

And I'm talking like four millilitres.

And I immediately went, mum, mum, I'm drunk, I'm drunk.

And I remember lying down on my back, pretending to be drunk and just desperate for something to happen.

Like what was going to happen?

Was I going to see stuff?

Was I going to, you know, was this going to be like a...

I don't know, a wizard or something, whatever kid that I was thinking about at the time.

And then maybe a year after that, we were at another friend of hers and he'd poured a glass of wine.

I don't think my mom had had any.