A Head Full of Blue: A Memoir
Nick Johnstone
224pp, Bloomsbury
£9.99

Writers have always had problems; that's probably a lot of the reason they become writers. Graham Greene saw a writer's childhood as his capital, and the same can be said of a writer's sorrows. Until recently, partly because they wanted to demonstrate their skill and partly because they didn't want to have people pointing and laughing at them, writers used to take life's little pile-ups and make bad, brilliant or boring novels out of them. But living as we are in a short-term, I-want-it-now society and all that, not many people can be arsed to go round the houses any more. Rather, they shoot their bolt in a "memoir" and sit back smugly to listen to the oohs and aahs of the paying public.

Drink, drugs, incest, in-laws, anorexia, bulimia, nasty parents, dead parents: paydirt! At one time I was seriously thinking of bringing out a spoof book called I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus: A Memoir, but instead wrote my autobiography, which was criticised by many for its relentless optimism, but never mind. The steady drip-drip of confessionals - by the sort of people who would, curiously, look down on Springer rednecks or kiss'n'sell girls or strangers who show you their holiday snaps - continues to this day. And while most of us would agree that a pretty good definition of a bore is someone who tells people they don't know their problems, for some reason these jokers - and their ever-willing publishers - think they're pretty damn fascinating.

Latest of the Screaming MeMe's is Nick Johnstone, whose memoir A Head Full of Blue deals with his Drinking Problem. Excuse me! He stopped drinking at 24; that's not an alcoholic, that's a wuss, in any language. The first time he gets drunk, at 14, "the sky had the colours of a bruise" and "my eyes sang as beautifully as Billie Holiday". I don't know about you, but that nasty collision of metaphors would have had me reaching for the phone number of AA on day one.

And so a decade of misery unwinds for this boy from a solid Surrey home whose only real problem seems to have been a little too much time on his hands to indulge and prolong the normal adolescent morbidity that affects most of us. Sleepwalking at seven, fears of nuclear war at 10, becoming fetishistic about Coca-Cola (hey, take a walk on the wild side!) at 13 - and that's before the drinking even starts.

Does Johnstone really believe that these humdrum little tics are interesting and/or unusual? It's almost a relief when the nasty stuff starts happening, and I did feel a spark of malicious pleasure when the spewing, black-outs and self-mutilation finally began, in the manner of a young working-class mum swiping her grizzling brat at the check-out and hissing "NOW you've got something to cry about!"

The love of a good woman gets him clear in the end - of the booze, that is; nothing can cure Nick of his addiction to bad metaphors ("September, tight like a scarf"). There's a good bit at the end when he does a miserabilist résumé of the story so far: "vomiting up the walls in my sleep, cutting myself, the skull-crushing depressions, bottles of bourbon, getting fired, the friends I used to have". Then he fills us in on his progress. "I'm still kick-boxing every week. Going to yoga now too...Still taking kava kava and Nytol and Quiet Life. Still have days when my moods are all over the place. But these things are me and always will be." You almost expect Morrissey to walk on with a big red book and a smirk and say "Nick Johnstone, This Is Your Life!"- there's something that cosy and smug about the I-made-it-through-the-rain triumphalism. What exactly has Johnstone done that's so great? - got sad and pulled himself together, like the rest of us.

I haven't knowingly read anything by Johnstone before (though apparently he used to write for Dazed and Confused , which I found morbidly amusing considering the subject of this book), so I have no way of telling whether he was a better writer when he was drinking. But I would probably bet on it. We are always being told that we should "listen to our bodies" and give them what they want; the fact of the matter is that many bodies want alcohol, drugs and sweet foods in various combinations. Self-medication is one of the nicest, most practical things you can do for yourself during your short stay on this planet, especially with the NHS being so overstretched.

When he was a drunk, Johnstone might or might not have had something going for him, but now he is simply a Johnny One-Note with a rehab'n'recovery habit - and, as we all know, they are the most self-indulgent of all. A junkie proper may burgle you to feed his habit - but a recovery-junkie will bore you to within an inch of your life in order to feed his.