It was my friend Alex who tipped me the wink. I bumped into him at a party earlier this year and to my astonishment he’d lost about two stone and was nursing a glass of fizzy water. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, draining a goblet of red wine. ‘You’re usually about three sheets to the wind by now.’
He explained he was on Mounjaro, the slimming drug, and one of its side effects was to suppress his desire for alcohol. He’d had a couple of glasses earlier in the evening, but had then lost interest. ‘You should try it,’ he said, eyeing my unsteady gait.
After a particularly heavy night a few weeks ago, I decided to follow his advice. He’d given me the name of a website that could prescribe Mounjaro following an online consultation, but when I entered my details it told me I was ineligible. Not fat enough, apparently. I was initially quite flattered, but then realised that couldn’t possibly be true. I weighed myself and, sure enough, I’d understated my weight on the application form by 10lb. I found a second website offering the same service, entered my correct weight and, bingo, the wonder drug arrived 24 hours later.
I felt a bit squeamish about injecting myself, but the needle is so tiny you can barely feel it. Would it have any effect? I was dubious because the initial dose is only 2.5mg, which you’re supposed to give yourself once a week for a month before upping it to 5mg. And I was right to be sceptical because it didn’t do much to curb my appetite for food. Would it help me moderate my drinking? I went to a posh dinner that night where the host was serving good mature claret – my first test.
To begin with, I noticed no change. It tasted as good as it always does and after I’d polished off the first glass I signalled for the waiter to refill it. But then something odd happened. Instead of that familiar warm glow, I began to feel slightly dizzy. It could just be because I’m drinking on an empty stomach, I thought, and got stuck into the second glass. Still no euphoric effect. On the contrary, the dizziness increased, accompanied by a mild headache. It was as if my dopamine receptors were malfunctioning and sending a negative signal to my brain rather than a positive one. It was like licking a battery instead of using it to generate heat. For the first time in about 40 years, I stopped drinking after the second glass.
I felt like a first responder surveying the aftermath of a natural disaster
OK, so the drug passed its initial trial. But that was a dinner. Would it be strong enough to stop me drinking at a party? Last week came the ultimate challenge – The Spectator summer party. Would I be able to stagger out at 10.30 p.m. without being supported on either side by a couple of interns? (The magazine hires an army of interns every summer whose only job is to put the writers in taxis after the annual shindig.)
I decided to pace myself by drinking white wine spritzers and that seemed to do the trick. I got through two without any discernible effect, neither a pleasant buzz nor a feeling of vertigo. I ploughed on, more interested in observing my experiment than talking to the big hitters around me. After the third spritzer the dizziness returned, and after a fourth so did the headache. I didn’t feel drunk so much as disorientated. Instead of getting another, I just decided to keep diluting what remained in my glass with soda water until, by 10.30 p.m., that’s all I was drinking.
Being sober at the end of the Spectator summer party was a novel sensation. I felt like a first responder surveying the aftermath of a natural disaster. Bodies lay sprawled in hedges; young women clutched on to each other, make-up smudged and hair in disarray, as they stumbled towards the exit; Rod Liddle howled like a mastodon bellowing across a primeval swamp. Was it always like this, I wondered? I felt a tinge of regret, as if I’d missed all the fun. Then again, how much fun is it if you can recall nothing the following morning? If no one can remember a pack of shadow cabinet ministers baying for broken glass, did they really make a sound?
The next morning I felt quite smug. I must have been the only person in the Westminster village not to have a hangover. Yes, the sober life isn’t very exciting, but at least you don’t live in dread of a colleague gleefully informing you of something incredibly embarrassing you did the night before. Now that I’m 61 and a peer of the realm, that’s probably a bargain I should accept. Mounjaro, you are my Man Friday. And to cap it all, when the dosage goes up I might even lose a little weight.
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