ALCOHOL

• Have you ever promised yourself that you will cut down on your drinking?
  
• Do you feel just a bit guilty about your drinking?
  
• Has anyone ever annoyed you by suggesting that you are drinking too much?
  
• Have you ever needed an "Eye Opener", a drink first thing in the morning to get you started?

If you answered these questions really honestly, even if the answers were slightly worrying, and came up with a "Yes" more than once, you may have a drink problem. Dealing with it may be easy to contemplate but much harder to do.

Society is awash with alcohol. This statement is not meant to be critical but the fact is that alcohol is present in every part of our daily lives. If we meet a friend, we probably do so in a bar or in the pub. If friends or relatives come round to our homes, we often open a bottle. Whenever we have something to celebrate, we do so with drinks and if life is not going so well, we drown our sorrows. We drink at weddings, funerals and christenings; we drink with our meals and we drink after work. For most of us, drinking is part of our daily lives but for some of us it becomes a problem that can destroy everything.

No one really knows why some people find it difficult, or even impossible, to control their alcohol consumption. Someone may drink heavily for years and avoid becoming dependent, whilst others succumb quite quickly.

Stress can lead to drink problems as we may find that alcohol seems to ease the tension but the great danger is that if we use alcohol as a treatment for something that is wrong in our lives, without doing anything positive about the underlying problem, the drinking will become a further problem.

Drink, unless it is in modest quantities, is damaging. Lives are destroyed by alcoholism, with careers lost and families torn apart. Would you employ an accountant who clearly drank heavily? Would you believe that he or she could do the work to a high standard with a brain that was perpetually anesthetised by alcohol? Would you confidently expect sound judgement and shrewd decision-making? No, of course not. You would expect clients to be put off, work to be sloppy and slow, and errors to be numerous.

Alcoholics are among the best in the world at avoiding the truth. Ask a problem drinker how much they do drink in a typical day and you may get the answer "Oh.... maybe a bottle or a bottle and a half of wine". This will in fact be between a half and a third of the true figure - underestimation by a factor of at least two is the hallmark of the problem drinker. If you are concerned about your consumption, it is virtually certain that you are drinking too much and the only way to be sure is to keep an honest diary. The drinker must face the truth before they can begin to deal with the solution. Either keep that diary for a week or two or take a long hard look at your credit card bills and work out what you are really spending, in total. You may be surprised.

Drinkers never believe how obvious their drinking is to the rest of us. They will cheerfully state, categorically, that they "enjoy a drink" but that no one would be aware of this, whereas in truth their friends, family and colleagues will have been deeply worried for years.

Medical experts believe that modest amounts of alcohol can actually be beneficial, and one survey found that teetotallers had a marginally shorter life expectancy than moderate drinkers but when regular consumption rises above three or four units per day in men and two and three in women, the risk of health problems rises inexorably. The risk of serious and irreversible damage to liver and kidneys, the danger from stomach problems, the greater risk of anxiety and depression, the greater likelihood of diabetes, epilepsy and cancer and the increased risk of cardiac damage, to name but a few and of course the increased risk of accident, all contribute to a significant increase in overall ill health.

So how much is too much? There are many misconceptions about this. The common mistake many of us make, is in assessing what makes a unit. We tell ourselves that a pint of beer is two units, which is true only when it is a standard 3.5% abv. Many draught beers do fall into this category but many do not. One of our most popular lagers, for example, Stella Artois, is actually 5% abv, making a pint three units rather than two. Many of us also believe that a glass of wine contains a unit but it is true only if it is small - a sixth of a bottle. Many measures served in pubs are around double that, as are most of the glasses of wine you will pour at home. Similarly, a single pub-measure of spirit measures one unit, but at home you might easily pour two or three times that amount. A single measure looks very small.

So when you assess your own consumption, be brutally honest with yourself. If a man is drinking a bottle of wine a day he is consuming double the recommended amount of alcohol. If it is a woman, it becomes three times the recommended amount.

And one last thought: Use these questions to test your own attitude to alcohol. If you get more than a few "Yes" answers, think carefully.

• When you go to a party, do you look anxiously around until you find the drinks table?
  
• If, when you leave a party you are not pretty drunk, do you think of it as a "dry do"?
  
• When you get home in the evening, do you pour yourself a drink within the first fifteen minutes?
  
• You drink virtually every day?
  
• You get pretty drunk at least once a week?
  
• You always add a bottle or two (or more) to your supermarket trolley?
  
• Have you risked driving in the last three months when you know, in your heart of hearts, that you were probably over the limit?
  
• Do you regularly take taxis because you know you will be over the limit?
  
• Do you always have to have drink in stock at home - you would hate to run out?
  
• Have you woken up with a hangover recently?
  
• Do you find that the same amount of alcohol seems to have less effect these days?
  
• Do you never relax without a drink in your hand?
  
• Do you drink to cover your shyness?
  
• Do you wake earlier than you would like, after drinking the evening before?
  
• Do you drink alone?

Think hard about this - it is never too late to do something about it and help is available. Call CABA's 24 hour Advice and Counselling Helpline on 0800 107 6163 to talk to a professional counsellor in confidence.

If you are affected by someone in your family or a colleague who drinks excessively, or if you are a young person living with someone who drinks heavily and would like to talk to someone in confidence, please call on 0800 107 6163.

Further information and local support is available on the following web-site.

http://www.al-anonuk.org.uk/

Back to top