Dial back the sanctimony, Amigo. BBQs are a carcinogen. Do you berate people who invite you to a BBQ as trying to lure you to a carcinogen event?

Nobody’s denying alcohol has risks — it’s a carcinogen, that’s just a fact. But risk isn’t all-or-nothing. A weekend drink in a social setting is not the same thing as chronic heavy use, and public health research makes that distinction.

The “you’ll never know the life you’d have had without it” line is basically unfalsifiable — you could say that about anything from coffee to football to religion. Humans bond over shared rituals, and in many cultures moderate drinking is one of them. That social connection has measurable wellbeing benefits too.

Hard disagree, but that might have a lot to do with me being Scottish.

I hear you, but me and him are from the same town. I’m sure I thought the quarry was swell when I was his age. But now he’s away having the time of his life, while his friends are settling into the same rut. He’s experiencing the world and seeing what it has to offer - and fortunately that’s within reach of most people his age, at least where I live. It’s not elitist or privileged, you just have to be curious and see what’s out there.

To be fair, as someone who lives in rural Scotland, New York City sounds amazing. It’s one of the biggest in the world and understand it’s packed with variety and culture.

Some of it might depend on where you’re from. I live on a Scottish island, but have travelled extensively and can’t recommend it highly enough.

Me and a young guy I worked with, here in my hometown, were once out on a tech support job. We passed an old quarry and the kid said “man, that’s so cool and massive”. He’d literally never been anywhere, so from his perspective this shitty (and actually rather small) quarry was impressive.

Travel gives you perspective. Dismissing travel for me is like dismissing art, or learning. You’re willingly limiting your lived experience and that’s not, to my mind, anything to be celebrating.

As for the kid, he’s currently in Vietnam on a career break. Keen to hear how the sites he’s seen compare to that quarry when he gets back.

Some of the best times of my life in my 20s were enabled through alcohol. I traveled the world using my own money, met countless interesting people in pubs and at festivals.

As I sit, fully sober at my workstation in the office some 20 years later, I can think back to those times and can only smile when someone claims it has zero net benefits.

Totally. There’s old duffers at work that struggle to open a word doc, but are strangely adept at Navigating Facebook…

Saw them recently in Glasgow. Absolutely fantastic.

That’s the tack I’m taking. My eldest goes to high school next year and most of his peers are automatically getting a smartphone at that point. He’ll be 13. He can forget it. A dumb phone at a push, for safety. That’s it.