There's more good news for the DG; that is, those who overtipple. A new drug may not just stop liver damage but reverse some of the collateral of those late nights. Any suggestion this may encourage binge drinking in the knowledge you can pop a pill later should be discounted.

But bad news for readers: you may be in rare company in the very near future. As Proust said, reading is "that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude".

There’s no reason to think that reading and writing are about to become extinct, but some sociologists speculate that reading books for pleasure will one day be the province of a special “reading class,” much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy, in the second half of the nineteenth century. They warn that it probably won’t regain the prestige of exclusivity; it may just become “an increasingly arcane hobby.” Such a shift would change the texture of society.

Yes. Libraries would become home only to students, smelly hobos and creepy types.