The people of these islands have long been famous for their drinking. A Frenchman writing in the 12th century described the various races of Europe: ‘The French were proud and womanish; the Germans furious and obscene; the Lombards greedy, malicious, and cowardly; and the English were drunkards and had tails.’ By 1751, at the height of the gin craze that William Hogarth immortalised in ‘Gin Lane’, the English were drinking on average the equivalent of 20 bottles of gin per person per year. But Britain is losing its taste for alcohol. Around a quarter of 16- to 24-year-olds don’t drink at all.

Gen Z said they associate alcohol with ‘vulnerability’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘loss of control’

It’s a far cry from when I was a teenager in the 1980s. We would sit in the park smoking and drinking, waiting until we looked old enough to go to the pub. In one recent study of young Britons, seven out of ten said that the reason they didn’t drink is because they have so many other ways to be entertained. Rather than go in search of sex in sticky-floored suburban nightclubs, young people just swipe right to find love. Clublife is dying, a victim of ever more restrictive licensing regulations.

When surveyed, Gen Z said they associate alcohol with ‘vulnerability’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘loss of control’. That’s precisely why my generation used to get hammered, but who would want to do the same today, with the ever-present possibility of online disgrace? Alcohol is also seen as unhealthy, and Gen Z are obsessed with their health. Teenagers look different to when I was young; they’re better groomed, with better teeth and skin. They want to look good for social media. They seem obsessed with drinking huge quantities of water. The water bottle has now become a cult item.

Perhaps that’s because water is cheap, and alcohol isn’t. The average pint costs £4.70 in Britain; it was £1.95 when we rang in the Millennium. It’s no wonder that Generation Z are going out and drinking less – it’s cheaper and safer to stare at a screen at home.

It’s easy to blame the yoof for everything, of course. But worryingly – at least for Britain’s booze industry – it’s not just young people who have sobered up. Since a peak in 2004, average alcohol consumption has declined. Sales of traditional Christmas drinks such as port, champagne and spirits were down on this time last year. To make things worse, Dry January – introduced as recently as 2013 though it feels like it has been around forever – has become a fixture. Nine million people are supposedly taking part this year. Even if most of them won’t see the whole month through, that’s a lot of lost alcohol sales.

In response to these trends, drinks companies such as Diageo have devised non-alcoholic ‘spirits’ that cost as much as gin and normally taste faintly of peas. They’re being pushed but the demand doesn’t seem to be there. As one former Tesco employee put it to me, you just need to look at the dust on the displays of such drinks in supermarkets: ‘They’re not exactly flying off the shelves.’

Alcohol-free beer, however, has proved more popular – sales have doubled in four years and are still rising at about 25 per cent a year. No pub nowadays would dare not stock one, such as Lucky Saint or Erdinger Alkoholfrei. Sales of Guinness 0.0 have increased 150 per cent in a year. One study found that a third of all pub visits are alcohol-free. There are even bars that only sell non-alcoholic drinks – and not just in Brighton. One recently opened in Manchester, which shows that teetotalism isn’t just a southern affectation.

Teetotalism is least prevalent among people in the 55-74 age bracket. As drinks companies try to win over a more youthful audience, you can spot the increasing desperation. Whisky brands, for instance, market themselves with adverts featuring groovy racially diverse youngsters rather than their actual customers: white middle-aged men. I received a press release describing a new whisky from an established producer as ‘the ultimate flex for those reaping and celebrating the successes of their hustle’. I had no idea what it meant.

Drinks industry types increasingly talk of ‘premiumisation’. With fewer customers, those left will inevitably pay more. The drinks industry is trying to seem sprightly, while continuing to price out many customers. There are signs that economic realities are finally hitting home. This year, after a long boom, exports of Scotch whisky were down 20 per cent. Meanwhile, wine has been stagnant for years with only prosecco and rosé seeing serious growth in Britain. The British wine trade is spooked, but over in the US there’s an air of panic. The creeping legalisation of cannabis has put a major dent in sales. Rather than pour a glass of merlot to take the edge off the day, many people would rather chew on a teddybear-shaped cannabis gummy.

The real losers in Britain have been pubs. Since 2000, Britain has lost more than 13,000 pubs – a quarter of its total – and the rate of closures is growing. It doesn’t help that we are all increasingly told to drink less: in 2016, recommendations for drinking levels were lowered to 14 units for men and women in Britain. The World Health Organisation even states that there is no safe level for alcohol consumption, despite numerous studies which show that in small quantities alcohol can be beneficial to our health. Not that you are likely to hear about the benefits of drinking from the alcohol industry. Instead, it is fighting a losing battle in enemy territory, up against public health officials and the NHS.

We’re a long way from ‘Gin Lane’. These days Britain isn’t even in the top ten booziest nations in Europe, and yet groups like the Institute of Alcohol Studies are taking a leaf out of the anti-tobacco handbook and pushing for ever-stricter control, such as plain packaging. The aim is to ‘denormalise’ alcohol consumption. Ireland is already preparing to introduce warnings on bottles from 2026; the Scottish government is planning to push ahead with increasing control of alcohol marketing which could see Scotch whisky, the country’s biggest export, become practically invisible. There will be no more alcohol sports sponsorship or even window displays in whisky shops in case children see them and are tempted to drink.

The young are, of course, more inclined to be glued to their phones several hours a day, using social media rather than actually meeting up. Whether this makes them happier is a hotly debated topic, but those who are less likely to meet are obviously less likely to drink. So the pub may be another victim of the smartphone.

If we’re not careful, we might soon discover that alcohol has become an unaffordable luxury, or something bought from the supermarket, with the only place to drink it being in the home. It’s a sobering thought. The cheap pint of beer in a local pub or the £10 bottle of wine imported by that funny little chap from France can’t exist without a lively drinking culture to support them.

What’s certain, though, is that mankind’s need for intoxication will never go away. When Pakistan went for full alcohol prohibition in the 1970s, young people in Karachi (which had a lively nightlife) turned to heroin. As T.S. Eliot wrote: ‘Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’ The risk is that we throw away our infrastructure of sociable, controlled intoxication in pubs, bars and restaurants. The sort of places where we can meet others and random encounters can happen, where young people can dance, flirt and laugh. In other words, civilisation.