What spending a Christmas sober taught me about office parties – and our habit of getting absolutely hammered in front of bosses and clients

We consider extreme intoxication acceptable in the moment yet the following day pretend it was a civilised evening, reflecting on another year of exemplary collaboration and stellar teamwork

There’s a weird team-building quality in the practice of comparing hangovers and tales of perilous Uber rides home (Getty)

Have you ever attempted to endure the Christmas party season without the help of booze? Have you tried lasting from the very first office lunch at the start of December, until the very last New Year’s Day brunch – inevitably surrounded by a gaggle of mopey friends in a food coma who are desperately hungover and dreading the harsh reality of returning to work – without a single drop of alcohol to fortify you?

It may come as a surprise to many, but it is possible. And once you get your head around the fact that you have to come up with an alternative plan to loading up on sherry and passing out in front of the opening credits of It’s a Wonderful Life, just to avoid playing charades with Auntie Gladys on Boxing Day, it’s actually not even that hard.

My reason for having spent the festive season teetotal is due in spring 2018, and while I’ve never been a heavy drinker, braving this year’s revelries in a teetotal state proved to be somewhat of an eye-opener.

My first realisation was just how reliant we’ve become on alcohol and how much – despite apparently being woefully underpaid and desperately squeezed by inflation – we fritter away on liquid lunches and Dutch courage.

Online market research portal Statista estimates that in 2016 each Londoner splashed out an average of £53.37 on wine and spirits during the Christmas period. Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh and Liverpool all beat the capital, but Leicester took the boozy crown with an average spend per person of no less than £65.19.

Consider that this figure doesn’t include beer – still one of the nation’s favourite beverages – and think too of all the adults who are teetotal (currently thought to be around one in four) and the sum suddenly looks quite remarkable.

My second realisation centres on just how acceptable it is to be completely hammered around your professional peers and how easy it has become to pretend the next day that you’d spent a civilised evening sharing a few bottles of bubbly and some sausage rolls, while reflecting on another year of exemplary collaboration and stellar teamwork.

I’m not passing judgement, I just find it intriguing.

Some years ago a very senior public relations manager at a multinational bank tottered over to me at a corporate Christmas do, all glazy eyes and gormless grin, and told me that she’d always meant to ask me why I was so slow at replying to emails and why I never returned calls.

For the record, as a relatively young and inexperienced journalist, I at the time prided myself on corresponding promptly with any PR who got in touch, however useless or irrelevant. But she was adamant. “I just feel like you’re avoiding me,” she warbled. “I feel like you don’t like me,” she added, in a tone not unlike the one perfected by Keira Knightley in that deeply irritating scene from Love Actually where she accuses her fiancé’s best man of hating her. I almost expected her to tell me that she wasn’t angry – just disappointed.

It was probably around 6:30pm, I’d just arrived from my office, stone-cold sober, and felt a deep sense of embarrassment for this grown woman – a PR of at least a decade – who, thanks to a particularly potent on-tap cocktail, had been reduced to a whiny teenager.

The next day she called me mid-morning. “I didn’t see you at the party last night. Were you there?” she quipped brightly, impressively disguising the mammoth hangover she was no doubt battling. “We should totally catch up over lunch sometime.” Public relations, I’d say, at its very finest.

Tales of more recent escapades are probably too fresh to recount in detail, but so many are rich sources of entertainment: the top financier who lets loose on what he thinks is a dance floor but is actually just the corner of a grotty pub in Farringdon. The overly-confident intern who tells you that she could do so much better if people just listened to her unique Weltanschauung. The guy you’ve worked with for three years but never once spoken to who suddenly admits to you that he’s considering leaving his wife for his daughter’s piano teacher – do you think that would be a good idea?

And the next day office life goes on as normal.

One of my favourite stories is of a senior banker who left a Christmas lunch so drunk one year that he deemed it a sensible idea to slide down the banister of a staircase on his way to the station. Unfortunately his Bart Simpson-style stunt was foiled by a number of large spikes along said banister that he had failed to identify when he mounted the thing. Ripped trousers and his mortified wife were the least of his worries when he found himself lying face down in A&E that Friday evening. He was unable to sit for around a month.

Drink has become as integral to the Christmas season in the City as naifs think professionalism still is, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Habits are hard to break, especially if everyone is on the same page and there’s also a weird team-building quality in the practice of comparing hangovers and tales of perilous Uber rides home. Some stories have become badges of honour.

I will probably indulge in a tipple or two next year, but sobriety is enlightening. I also have to admit that I skipped a few Christmas parties in 2017 that I might otherwise have tolerated.

At the end of the day, watching young co-workers quaffing more Jagermeisters than is strictly sensible does have a certain entertainment value. But so does an evening of Netflix and takeaway. Maybe I’m just getting old.