See that glass of red wine below? It’s half full – or maybe half empty, depending on your philosophical stance in life.

It’s what it is half full or half empty of, though, that is the issue: booze.

It has been Alcohol Awareness Week, as you might be aware. And a very good thing that is, to be aware of the amount of alcohol you are imbibing.

Alcohol can cause all kinds of horrible illnesses; it can send people into violent frenzies; it can cause ordinarily sane adults to dance to Oops Upside Your Head.

So we should all stop boozing at once, right?

We-e-ll... I don’t want to appear off-message here, and I’d certainly not want to undo any of the good work done by the various agencies involved in Alcohol Awareness Week, but isn’t it time we all chilled out a bit?

Before the massed armies of police, health practitioners and everyone else involved in promoting the awareness week call for me to be thrown into the stocks, I want to qualify that by saying we should ALL chill out a bit – especially those who are regularly boozing too much and kicking heads in up town of a Saturday night.

We in Britain have something of a boom and bust relationship with drink – we booze until our heads go boom and our bank balances go bust. Then we spend all day in bed, throwing up into our shoes, and vow never to touch another drop. Until Sunday night, at least.

Once, as a callow young reporter, I earnestly asked a recovered heroin addict why people took such addictive and potentially lethal drugs. She looked at me as though I was stupid. “Because it’s great,” she said.

She did go on to qualify it by adding it’s great as long as you can afford to keep your habit and before your veins crinkle up and you start to sneeze bits of your brain out, but the same thing applies to boozing.

Most people are well aware of the dangers of drink. But we do it because it’s a sociable, enjoyable thing to do. As long as we can handle it. Which is why we need a bit of a social shift in our attitude to drink.

Wouldn’t it be much nicer if we adopted a more Continental approach?

Go to France or Italy and you’ll see families enjoying a big meal that lasts all evening, liberally watered with wine or beer. But they seem to manage to do it without descending into a drink-fuelled fist-fight or chucking up their pasta.

Telling people booze is bad just isn’t enough any more. But in the same way as we can’t un-split the atom, we can’t uninvent booze. It’s here to stay, and the only thing that’s going to change is our attitude to how we imbibe it.

A society where booze is appreciated but not abused? I’d certainly drink to that.