Nowhere does the British class system operate more clearly than in the wet world of alcohol. It's ingrained in to the terminology. Charles Kennedy is not, perish the thought, a "binge drinker". That contemptuous term is reserved for the lumpen-drunken, those toss-pots who defile our city streets every weekend night with human waste, screamed obscenity and vomit. Kennedy is not a "celebrity drunk", like George Best or Gazza. He is not a public-performance drunk, like Jeffrey Bernard of "unwell" fame. He is not a slob, like those celebrated on moderndrunkardmagazine.com, who regard alcoholism as one of the inalienable rights of man. Kennedy is not a "lush", like Carol in Coronation Street. Above all, he's not an "addict", like the (recovered) Mother Teresa of the soccer pitch, Tony Adams.
Charles Kennedy, privy counsellor that he is (and will continue to be, even now he has resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats) has what is delicately termed a "problem with drink". His drinking, like his advice to the sovereign, is a privy and high-toned thing. Alcoholics, of course, invariably have a problem with drink. It's how to keep the stuff coming after everyone else has stopped, gone home, or passed out.
It's in the nature of problems to have solutions. In his public admission last Thursday, Kennedy reassured us that his drink problem was "essentially resolved". He hadn't touched a drop for two months (not, alas, something for the Guinness Book of Records). Solution, resolution: same thing. End of problem, move on.
That Kennedy might be clinically alcoholic - ie, receiving medical advice - was an ITV news scoop but an open secret, one gathers, among members of the Westminster village, some of whom presumably had personally witnessed the leglessness. Those close to him were evidently unconvinced by his latest new leaf. Resolutions, even essential resolutions, are cheap, particularly so early in the new year.
Kennedy last week was at that point familiar to all practising alcoholics - he'd used up all his Get Out Of Jail cards. The Lib Dems, in AA parlance, weren't going to be his co-alcoholic any more. His wife Sarah might be willing, but they weren't. Cover-up had failed, "intervention" had failed, wise counsel from older heads had failed. Even medical advice had, apparently, failed. They gave up on him. He was on his own. We love you; bugger off and drink yourself to death if you have to.
What next for the ex-leader? Will he succumb again to what the press likes to call his "demons", or will he win his "battle with the bottle"? Cliches won't help. There are two moments in the drinking career when recovery is most hopeful. One is AA's classic "touching bottom" - when you've lost everything: job, family, place in society, health, self-respect. AA is full of such down-and-out, where-else-can-I-go? alcoholics. The other moment is when, before that final plunge into the depths, you realise all your safety nets have gone. If you don't do something instantly, you'll be over the edge. The "moment of clarity" (more AA-speak) does not return. The path of such alcoholics in recovery (I was one such) is easier, and - in non-drinking career terms - more hopeful. Assuming, that is, they can pull back.
Kennedy's prospects aren't necessarily bad. He still has his marriage, a job, an income, a position in society. And he has - albeit with a very mealy mouth - admitted that he is an alcoholic. That, as the gurus of AA insist, is step one.
If he stays sober, Kennedy can climb to the top of the slippery pole again. He's got the years to do it, and the political talent. His brain doesn't seem to have suffered any obvious alcoholic rot. He'll have time to do the rounds of the chatshows, and endear himself to the electorate. He's ambitious and loves power: the party had to stamp on his fingers to make him let go of the leadership.
If he plays his cards right, Kennedy could be the first British politician to integrate "recovery" into a revived and even more successful political career than he aimed at when ostensibly sober. His aim should be not merely recovery but spectacular recovery.
Show business shows how it can be done. The industry is star-spangled with performers who have "battled booze", come clean about it, done something about it, and come back, stronger than before. Kristin Davis, for example, who plays Charlotte in Sex and the City, is a publicly confessed, spectacularly recovered drunk. She gave it up 14 years ago ("It was leading me down a dark road"). She drinks on screen brilliantly. Like the spectacularly, and equally publicly, recovered Jack Osbourne, Davis obviously had her moment of truth early in life.
Not all are so lucky. But, as political life goes, Kennedy is still young.
Who, if one was casting Kennedy the Movie, would one pick for the lead from the ranks of the spectacularly recovered? Robert Downey Jr? Too spectacularly recovered, perhaps, and too prone to spectacular relapse. Charlie Sheen? The pudgy cheeks are perfect, but the complications of sex addiction wouldn't fit with the Scottish presbyterianism. Christian Slater? Too darkly good looking. Nick Nolte? Too old and too obviously ravaged. Ben Affleck? Yuk. Tim Allen? Perfect.
Kennedy will have a lot of time on his hands in the next few weeks. He should walk to Leicester Square one afternoon, when the debates pall, and catch the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line. As played by Joaquin Phoenix (whose family knows a lot about addiction and its perils) the singer is portrayed as a hero of spectacular recovery. Had he not come through the fire - drinking and drugging - Cash might, on the strength of his early songs, have been remembered as a great country artist, but not the greatest: a verdict which, the film suggests (and most fans would agree) depends on his later, cleaned-up career.
Over the next few years, Kennedy could even be a role model. In the media last week, the impression was given that there was something uniquely "tragic" about his case. In fact, it's commoner than the common cold. Taking the rule of thumb that some 10% of the population either have, have had, or will have problems with drinking or other destructive addiction, there must be between 60 and 70 MPs who are, or could find themselves, alongside Kennedy. And there are millions outside the house. As the Lancet coincidentally informed us last week, Britain's alcoholic constituency is growing at an even faster rate than Cameron's revived Tory party.
Sadly, many who overdrink never come back. Many who do recover jog along sober, but with duller lives than they had before. But a significant proportion rise above their wretchedness and, in sobriety, get to places that, arguably, they couldn't have, without the experience of addiction and the self-knowledge it can bring.
So the prescription for Kennedy is: work hard, regain the trust of your colleagues and constituents (two years before the next election is enough time), rebuild your career, aim higher than before, don't drink, and listen to your Johnny Cash CDs.
