Everyone brings, I think, a certain belief system to drinking. Some see a single chilled gin as a mental full-stop to the working day; others revel in the sensory pleasures of wine, choosing a glassful to accompany a meal with the same care and delight as they would select a wife, or a brogue. Some, and we must be realistic here, have found that a Fruit Shoot bottle full of vodka in their handbag is the only way to coach Purple Reading Group through their SATs without going nuts, and if you try to take it from them, they will take out first the Board of Governors, then you, before turning the gun on themselves. Or the “gnu”, as Purple Reading Group will interpret the headlines in the Crouch End Journal.

My own drinking beliefs are quite simple, almost Amish in their unadornment. I see alcohol as a magical potion that, drunk in sufficient quantities, can set fire to some manner of internal touchpaper and blast me over the walls of England into Club Tropicana, where drinks are free and there's fun for everyone. Being drunk is not to be wasted on sitting around talking about schools and house prices and David Cameron's stupid hair. It's for adventure. I don't drink because it tastes nice, or because it relaxes me. That, my friends, is what mashed potato is for. No, when I drink alcohol I am like Bruce Parry in Tribe, dauntlessly imbibing some tribal hallucinogen, then sitting back in the jungle clearing waiting for the spirit of the jaguar to take me away. Or, to translate that experience into a modern, urban setting, trying to play a game of “miniature rounders” outside a pub, using Biros as bats and a Malteser as a ball, then nearly getting run over by a Jaguar.

Of course, when you view drinking as a quest, on a par with the Fellowship of the Ring - the Fellowship of the Ring-Pull, perhaps - it's obvious that it cannot be a terribly frequent activity. In many ways, my all-or-nothing drinking style stems from failing to have the daily commitment to be an alcoholic. When it comes to booze I'm all for time efficiency, and cramming my incipient alcoholism into small, concentrated bursts. I wholly eschew the bottle for 40 days or so, then knock off a month's worth of cheap supermarket brandy'n'Diet Coke in a single, concentrated, semi-professional, ten-hour burst of protoViking wassailing. It's like a menstrual cycle, but with merriment. A wench-strual cycle.

However. All faiths must be tested and, currently, I am undergoing a literal crisis of the spirits, vis-à-vis my drinking beliefs. As dictated by the edicts of my forefathers, three weeks ago I white-water-rafted down 64 units of cava, plus half a cigar scavenged out of a bin, to regulate my chi. I was on particularly good form. I did yoga in high heels. I invited a stranger to come live in a tent at the bottom of our garden. At one point I became so “special” that, during a group sing-song, I developed an ability to harmonise with myself - something that more feeble-hearted anatomists would have previously presumed to necessitate the development of a second head. I tell you no word of a lie when I say that when, the next morning, I found a dead mouse on the patio my immediate reaction was: “My singing killed this mouse. This creature has died for rock'n'roll. I am Crosby, Stills, Nash and Wrong.”

Of course, in the grand scheme of booze, singing like an eagle being clubbed to death inside a handbag is neither here nor there. The loss of a mouse to ill-advised amateur West Coast rock harmonising is regrettable, yet acceptable, collateral damage. In isolation, it certainly wouldn't have altered my drinking habits. But the dead mouse came in conjunction with a hangover so intense that it was unlike anything I have ever experienced. I appeared to have taken part in an alcohol experiment so extreme that - like the Hulk and Spider-Man before me - I had altered my own DNA. Intriguingly, cava-irradiation had given me the extraordinary ability, if I moved my head too quickly, to see what lies between the atoms. (For the interest of any passing scientist, it seems to be made up of grey loft- cavity insulation and tiny, accusatory-looking mouse-skulls). This hangover was even worse than school Sports Day Picnic hangover, when I woke up deaf, with “BALLS” written across my forehead in indelible marker and my nose coloured in blue; three hours before I was due to appear on Richard & Judy.

As I lay on the floor, a great truth dawned on me: haha, I really am drinking too much. But this was something that, ironically, I could never have learnt unless I was drinking too much. This is why, as every week brings a new, concerned story about the nation's bingedrinking, I can't help but feel that our reaction is fundamentally incorrect. The presumption - and it is an easy one to make - is that the only way to stop people binge-drinking is to make them drink less. But my dauntless pioneering into this area leads me to believe that this is all wrong. They must drink more! Much more! So much that their blood turns into acid and burns out the part of the hypothalamus devoted to thinking: “If I'm this happy after three drinks, I'd be happy2 if I had nine! E=mc beered!”

Like someone on Oprah, I'd like to “share” the end of my “story”. Last week I went out drinking with my most “adventurous” friends. They ended up giving Toby the bumps in the middle of a dual carriageway in Lambeth, then drinking Polish lager out of a saucepan in a stranger's house in Aldwych. I, on the other hand, had a mere two glasses of champagne, like a dainty lady, and rose the next day feeling like a hearty, healthy farmer's daughter.

The answer to Britain's alcohol problem is at the bottom of the glass. It's just that that glass is hidden among 14,648 other glasses, all quite full - and you might have to step up and “take a few for the team” before you find it.

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