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1832 was the year of the great reform act - the first success of a political struggle that would eventually extend the franchise to all. But it was also in 1832 when seven men from Preston in Lancashire first signed the pledge: "We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating quality, except as medicine.” For many of the first signatories this abstinence was crucial to the campaign for democratic reform. They argued that the working classes had to organize themselves better and not spend their time and money down the pub. In 1833, at the Preston Temperance Society, one member stood up to declare his total abstinence. He stammered on the letter T – “ter-ter-total” he apparently said - and so the word “teetotal” was born. For many working class, politically active, often churchgoing men, especially in the north, being teetotal was a badge of strength and pride. Last week, a report came out that the middle classes, over 50, are drinking too much. And I for one am probably guilty as changed - for I don’t seem to have much trouble exceeding the medically recommended 21 units a week. Half a bottle of red can go down pretty easily most evenings. Furthermore, I’m generally ill disposed towards fun-sponges – medical or religious. Jesus turned water into wine and I’ve never much cared for those who want to turn it back again. After all, the central act of Christian devotion - the Eucharist - involves alcohol. But – and the more I think about it the bigger this “but” becomes – part of me thinks that my alcohol consumption could do with a bit of challenging, not least because, as a priest, I spend a fair amount of my time with people who have a problematic relationship to drugs and alcohol. On Saturday we had a church clean-up, which involved pulling disgusting spoons, needles, and larger cans out of our Garden of Remembrance - all the detritus of miserable desperate lives - and a reminder that however one administers one’s intoxicants, legally or non-legally, once they take control over you, your life can rapidly descend into chaos. As my old friend Gene Robinson, formerly the Bishop of New Hampshire - and also an alcoholic - once explained to me: “first you drink it, then it drinks you.” Karl Marx was wrong: Christianity is not the opium of the people. Opium is the opium of the people. And by opium I mean a whole range of recreational pharmaceuticals, from crystal meth to a premier cru. Christianity has never been anti-drink. But it does insist that we should develop the moral substance to go out and try and change the world for the better. And as the Preston seven understood, drink and drugs can sap that strength. No, I won’t be signing the pledge. But if the alternative is lolling about on the sofa, night after night, self-medicating the boredom with alcohol, then I might be sorely tempted.