It's never too late: My Dad's new Relationship With Alcohol After 65 Years
It is never too late to change your relationship with alcohol, and doing so does not have to mean giving it up completely.
My dad has been a champion of beer all his life.
Some of my earliest memories of him have a pint in his hand — smiling, laughing, full of energy. When I was finally old enough to join him at the bar, it felt like a rite of passage and drinking a beer with my old man was a proud moment. We shared over thirty years of family times with our mutual friend, alcohol, and I would not change a single one of them.
So it has been quietly fascinating to watch him change his relationship with it.
What changed
To be clear, my dad has not given up drinking. At the end of 2025 he cut back, and he now alternates between non-alcoholic beers and the full-strength version. I believe the term for this is zebra striping, and whatever you call it, it is working for him.
What prompted it was his health, not my book, The Last Drop. He has had a variety of issues that have affected his mobility, and with that he could no longer eat and drink as much as he used to. Somewhere along the way, he stopped enjoying alcohol. It was taking more from him than it was giving — digestion problems, lethargy and a general sense of not feeling right.
I like to think I played a small part, though. My dad is old school and believes a real man drinks beer, so introducing him to the new breed of non-alcoholic beers was not a small ask. But the push was his health. I just made the alternative easier to try.
Old habits die hard
What I found most interesting was watching someone question a habit that has been fun and enjoyable for 65 years, regardless of the evidence.
Dad was proud of me for writing The Last Drop and for stepping away from booze, but he could not really understand why I had done it. In his eyes, beer was fun, it was relaxing, and the pub was a wonderful place to spend an evening. So why stop?
I now think he was dealing with his own version of cognitive dissonance: beer is fun, but I'm not having much fun. Last year, I could see him forcing down the second and third pint. It was clear he was not enjoying them, but he was still in the old mindset that alcohol was good and that was simply what a night out looked like.
That was strange to watch, because it was the mirror image of what I went through at forty-six. Same realisation, different decade.
The Guinness Zero moment
Maybe seeing me move to non-alcoholic drinks and still have a good time gave him permission to try. I cannot know for sure.
What I do know is that when he tried a Guinness Zero, he could not believe how it tasted. It still took him a while to move away from the full-strength version, because habit is strong at any age, but he now enjoys a zero.
And here is the part I noticed most: when he moved to alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers, he had just as much fun. He was present in the moment, still chatting, still laughing, but without feeling off afterwards.
What I took from it
Two things, mainly.
First, it is never too late to question your relationship with alcohol. It took me thirty years of drinking before I asked the question. It took my dad sixty-five. Neither of us was wrong to enjoy it for as long as we did.
Second, it does not have to be all or nothing. My dad has found a middle path that suits him, and I would not dream of telling him otherwise. Everyone's version of this looks different.
It feels great to have a drink with my dad now, reminisce about those hazy drinking days, and accept that we have both moved on.
If you are curious about the non-alcoholic beers my dad and I now drink, head over to The Dry Bar on Pendulum of Change which has a list of the ones I have tried and tested.
