It's Up To Us All To Help Stop Our Drink Epidemic

Suicides, drug deaths, rampant alcoholism - say it fast and it feels like we're all going to hell. But can we do anything to stop it?

In the space of a few days, official reports have swamped us with bad news about life for ordinary citizens in Scotland.

Wonder if the organisations gang together and coordinate the releases just to really get us down?

Live in Scotland and you're much more likely to kill yourself than anywhere else in the UK. That puts us right up there near the top of the European league of suicide. Not a good place to be.

While deaths from heroin increase year-on-year, deaths from cocaine have rocketed up.

You don't need a maths degree to work it out. As the quality of coke improves and the prices plummet, so the use increases and the death toll climbs.

Now we have four deaths every single day of every single week of every month from booze. Even in a country that takes some dodgy pride in its hard drinking, hard partying reputation, that should sober us up.

Suicides, drugs deaths, booze fatalities - the truth is that they are on the increase in almost every developed country in the world. Number crunchers will also point out a strange fact. The farther north you go, the higher the rates of suicide and boozing.

With Moscow in Ayrshire lying almost as far north as Moscow in Russia, are we doomed to booze-soaked existences before ending our own short lives?

Just because other folks have the same problem, does that mean we should do nothing about it? Suicide, drugs and booze - aren't they all just about weakness? Even in these so-called enlightened days, isn't our gut reaction to tell these folk to just get their act together? That'll sort them out eh? As if. Yet aren't most of our policies and laws just one extended version of that approach? We jail cocaine users and look down on drunks. Those at risk of suicide? Do we ever hear them at all?

Are we even clear on the messages we send out? A few years ago, I was in London for the launch of a book I'd written with Frank McAvennie. It was held at two well-known London clubs.

One club was heaving with well-known faces. The booze was flowing fast and furious and not many folk were on the soft drinks. Among the sea of celebrity faces I noticed four who had played some part in anti-drugs campaigns. Two of them were blootered and the other two bladdered - or so it seemed, given the frequency of their trips to the toilets. Or were they just going to powder their noses? With Charlie?

Don't do as I do, do as I say is the attitude and it's rife in every influential corner of this country. Hypocrisy is a very British condition. Isn't it time to dump it?

Those most at risk are young people, and getting younger all the time. It's cool to snort coke and almost every Joe and Jessie Soap can afford it now. Taking a few drinks has always been a necessary part of socialising. Always. Binge drinking is nothing new. It's just been given a name in recent years. But it has never been cool to admit you have a problem. Everyone with a heavy coke or booze habit knows they are in difficulty.

Being so depressed you feel like ending it all doesn't come at you like a flash out of the blue. Maybe, just maybe, if more of these folk asked for help, less of them would die.

As long as we are all prepared to listen, of course. It's not good enough to leave it to our welfare agencies, charities and health staff to take care of these lost souls. The folk who are dying in increasing numbers aren't celebs.

They are ordinary people like you and me. Who are they most likely to ask for help? You and me. Are we ready to listen, hear and help? For all our sakes, let's pray we are.

It could be you or yours next.

The Daily Record