So, of course, the one thing that my mate Richard was not anticipating from the other two of us at the table, just as our server came over to take drinks orders, was a furtive, simultaneous admission that we were both off booze for the night. “Neither of you are drinking?” he said, striking a tone of lightly betrayed surprise. We can debate the precise etiquette of when to drop the bomb of temporary sobriety on friends implicitly expecting the opposite. Separately, there is probably a conversation to be had about the degree to which some of us tend to blithely buttress every social interaction with alcohol.