The Royal College of Physicians has told us again that men should drink no more than twenty one units of alcohol a week and women no more than fourteen units a week, spread out over several days.
For people over the age of sixty five, the limit should be eleven units for men and seven for women.
A unit is one small glass of wine, half a pint of lager or one publican's measure of spirits.
And the RCP has emphasised again than we should have two or three alcohol-free days each week.
Otherwise we get liver disease and sixteen thousand of us will die of it every year in the UK.
This is all true - but we didn't listen last time and we won't listen this time.
The problem is that the RCP are treating us all as one group. We are not.
Some people abstain totally for religious or medical reasons or by choice.
Some drink solely for the taste, rather than to change how they feel. They might as well drink orange juice.
Some drink for a laugh. They like getting legless. Mostly, they grow out of this.
And some find that they can go dry altogether for a time but they cannot be sure that they can stop drinking in any day when they start to drink.
It is this last group, in which I myself could come if I now drank at all, that is particularly worrying. We are the ones who have the accidents and the hospital admissions and the other disastrous consequences of excessive alcohol consumption.
The ten percent of the population who come into this group drink fifty percent of the total amount of alcohol consumed in England. Because of Presbyterian abstainers in Scotland, only five percent knock back the fifty percent of all hooch consumed in that part of the United Kingdom.
If the medical experts in the RCP didn't know that, they should do.
Their focus should primarily be on the professional drinkers. Even though anyone can be damaged to some extent - or even a lot in some circumstances - by lesser quantities, we are the ones most likely to fill up the hospital beds.
There are particular behavioural characteristics that identify us because people like us tend to use alcohol in special ways:
We tend to use it quite frequently on our own.
We tend to be pre-occupied by it, often having it on our minds – thinking about using it or planning not to use it for a time.
We use it primarily for the mood-altering effect - the hit - rather than merely for the taste.
We use it as a medicine - as a tranquilliser, antidepressant or sleeping tablet.
We protect our supply, making sure that we don't run out, whereas we are not so concerned about having the money for the rent or for holidays or even for food.
We find it difficult to predict what will happen in any day once we start to drink. We can go dry altogether for a time and sometimes we can stop after one or two drinks but, at other times, we go off into a binge.
We have a higher capacity than other people for holding our drinks without getting obviously drunk and incapable – although eventually we lose this tolerance.
We continue to drink even after we get damaged by its effects in our lives.
We tend to use other mood-altering substances and processes as 'first reserves'.
We become dependent on it for normal functioning.
We tend to go looking for it when we run out - we don't like waiting.
We continue despite the repeated serious concern of other people.
If we have any four of these twelve characteristics then our problems are likely to get worse, rather than better, in time.
They are all dependent upon why we drink, rather than what or when or how much, and the 'why' doesn't change in time.
If the RCP really want to find out what to do for the alcohol scourge that devastates so many individuals and families, they would be well advised to listen to advice, rather than give it again when it is not heard.
The experts in this field are not the eminent doctors. They are the common or garden alcoholics. There may be some of them in the RCP but there are shedloads in Alcoholics Anonymous.
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