This time last year I was busy making a TV documentary about drinking. Chastened by the experience, I have had some (but only some) success in moderating my intake. I have become more of a connoisseur of writing on drinking (and there is a fine piece by Gay Alcorn on this website), than of whatever I am drinking. And there is one key fact that is often missing from most articles, including – until recently – mine.

Here is said fact, and do feel free to amaze your friends and infuriate your enemies with it. Ask them what percentage of all drinkers are drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol a week – that is around six pints of 4% beer or a bottle and a half of wine. I have never got an answer anywhere near the right number. “Hardly any” and “maybe 10%” are the most common responses. The correct answer is 70%. So, to be clear, most drinkers are drinking moderately.

Counterintuitively, this is absolutely critical for the rest of us – the heavy-drinking 30% – to understand. Whatever excuse we use to keep drinking too much, it cannot be: “Hey, it’s fine, everybody drinks more than 14 units a week!” It just isn’t true. We, the 30%, are not the norm. And neither can we opine that it is impossible to drink 14 units or less a week. It’s not impossible; it can’t be, because (sorry to bang on like a drunk at last orders) 70% of all drinkers are doing just that.

And by the way, they are not possessed of special powers, this silent majority. They are just less idiotic than most of us in the 30% who mindlessly tank it down, telling ourselves it is perfectly normal to do so. Whatever it is, the one thing it isn’t, strictly speaking, is normal.

• Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian columnist