Toby Young: Why I’m giving up drinking. And chocolate. And ice cream…

I’ve gone completely overboard with New Year’s Resolutions this year. I’ve sworn off three illicit substances — alcohol, chocolate and ice cream — and vowed to eat an apple every day.

I’ve given up alcohol before. The first time was when I was living in New York in the 1990s, though the episode that prompted it happened in Switzerland. I got spectacularly drunk at a nightclub in Verbier and woke up the following morning without my signet ring. This was a family heirloom given to me by my mother so I was understandably distressed. It turned out I’d given it to a young Swedish woman who I’d proposed to the night before. I didn’t drink again until I got married, more than two years later — not to the Swedish woman, obviously. I never saw her again.

There are some advantages to not drinking. You lose weight, save money, work harder and sleep better. You feel more clear-headed, and I don’t just mean in the evenings, when you’d normally start drinking. Alcohol has an anaesthetising effect that lingers after the other, more tangible effects have worn off. At least, it does for me. After you’ve stopped for a few days, the mist begins to clear and you experience a kind of awakening. You feel fully in control of yourself in a way you haven’t for a long time.

At first, that’s a welcome change, but it isn’t long before boredom kicks in. One of the shocking discoveries you make when you become teetotal is the extent to which your moods are dictated by alcohol. Typically, I would wake up with a hang-over, full of shame and remorse, then, over the course of the day, my self-esteem would recover until, by 8p.m.,