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About 30 years ago, I met my first bona fide alcoholic. He would drink several bottles of wine a day, but lard the first one with a chaser of neat gin, just to steady things up. He was a young man – still a student – and there were deep concerns about him. His doctor, as doctors do, told him to cut down seriously or, even better, to stop drinking altogether. He took the point, and cut out the gin chaser.