'€œI knew it!'€ I said, slamming down my copy of The Jakarta Post, spilling my gin and tonic.

'€œKnew what, dear?'€ my wife asked, barely glancing up, well used to my evening rants, although normally they don'€™t kick off until after the third one.

'€œThey'€™re going to ban the booze,'€ I said, handing her the paper to read as I stormed off to fix myself another.

I can claim no great insight when I say I knew what was coming. It'€™s just that in a matter so close to my heart (and liver) I could already see the straws in the wind.

Reports of beer sales being banned in places as diverse as West Java and Surabaya have been making the rounds since last year.

Living in South Jakarta, I had already seen beer disappearing from the shelves of Circle Ks and 7-Elevens over the past few months. Now, there'€™s the Trade Ministry'€™s move to roll out the ban on beer sales nationwide.

All done in the name of the nation'€™s health, you understand. We have to stop our youth from drinking '€” because as we all know the best way to prevent people drinking hooch is by banning properly controlled sales of safely produced beer.

This has brought back memories of the Great Indonesian Booze Famine of early 2007. Prior to then, you could pick up wine and spirits at your local supermarket as easily as you could buy instant noodles or corn flakes.

Then it started disappearing. Wine shops that had long flourished suddenly shut down. It was all to do with some problem with customs or with taxes or quotas '€” so the word was.

After a few months '€” and shrieks of pain from hoteliers in Bali '€” the problem was resolved, but oddly enough the supermarket shelves were never replenished and wines and spirits became a luxury item to be purchased, if at all, at a limited number of outlets.

And now the geniuses at the House of Representatives are debating a total ban on alcohol sales and consumption.

Again, all in the name of health, of course.

'€œSo what?'€ my abstemious friends say. '€œJust give it up. It'€™s only a waste of money.'€ They have a point there I suppose, but it would be a lot less of a waste of money if drink wasn'€™t so ridiculously over-priced in Indonesia.

They are right of course. I don'€™t need it.

But then again if I didn'€™t have to put up with the mind-boggling, soul-destroying, eye-popping, hair-ripping, stroke-inducing traffic congestion '€” as well as the pollution, inefficiency, corruption and good old-fashioned insanity that I encounter as part of the daily grind in Jakarta '€” then perhaps I wouldn'€™t need a drink to unwind when I finally get home at night.

Trust me, my evening tipple is probably the least unhealthy of all the aspects of life in this town, and at the end of the day it is self-inflicted.

Sure, there are better things I could do in the evening. Such as, er, play with the kids? Well, they'€™re long tucked up in bed by the time I finally get home after my three-hour commute over a distance that would take 25 minutes in almost any other city in the world.

Watch television? Yeah right, have you seen the TV here? Was it the drink that caused me to miss the rerun of Jacob Bronowski'€™s The Ascent of Man on RCTI last night? Was I so befuddled with booze that I mistook Brideshead Revisited for Dangdut Academy?

Perhaps read a book? You know, choose one from the vast range of self-help handbooks, glossy interior-design manuals, business management guides or biographies of English soccer players available in the bookstores of Jakarta?

Far from causing '€œbrain ailments'€, as the politicians claim, booze, I sometimes believe, is the only thing that keeps me sane here.

So while I still can, I am going to fix myself a large one. As they say in my native land, slainte!

'€” Vin O'€™Veritas

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