Helping them kick the bottle

Alcoholics Anonymous arranges counselling for known offenders

Chennai: Alcoholics Anonymous, the liquor de-addiction support group, will tie up with the city police to help repeat offenders kick the bottle.

At a meeting held at the Zion Church in Chindatripet on Friday, Alcoholics Anonymous invited a group of more than 100 known offenders and their families and counselled on how life without liquor could change them. The invitees even had a role model they aspire to become: a person who had a history of criminal life but had reformed over the past two years.

The coordinator for the programme said the idea was for those present to have someone to relate to. "He is someone they can relate to. He was a repeated offender for over 10 years. He eventually gave up liquor and reformed himself." The organisers said Police Commissioner R. Nataraj, who was the chief guest, was so impressed with the idea that he even offered the auditoria in three new police stations for conducting future meetings.

Representatives of Alcoholics Anonymous said de-addiction programmes and support groups closely worked with police and prison authorities in the United States for the past six decades. They hoped that similar programmes would be possible in the future.

The Hindu

People binge drink ‘to get high’

“Young people use alcohol as a substance and no longer drink socially. Alcohol is consumed for the effect and the experience it gives, and not to enjoy a bottle of wine,” said guest speaker Dr Emanuele Scafato during a conference on binge drinking yesterday.

Dr Scafato, the director and senior researcher at the Istituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome, said that drinking trends are changing in Italy. Females in the 18 to 24 age bracket are shifting away from wine and consuming more beer and aperitifs. The same sector is drinking alcohol between meals and in larger quantities.

According to the figures he provided, in 1996, 21,000 people underwent treatment for alcohol abuse while the number increased to 51,000 in 2003.

People from all walks of life attended the conference, entitled Binge Drinking - A Modern Lifestyle? Emerging trends and culture, organised by the Family and Social Solidarity Ministry and Agenzija Sedqa. The conference analysed the social, physical, psychological, legal and ethical implications of such emerging trends.

The most important fact about binge drinking is that the person concerned takes a conscious decision to become drunk and lose control, said Sedqa Division coordinator of alcohol services Manual Mangani. Mr Mangani and clinical director of Sedqa George Grech presented a joint paper titled The True Face of Binging.

Binge drinking is defined as the consumption of five or more drinks over a short period of time, with the intention of getting drunk.

International definitions of binge drinking vary from country to country. For example, in Finland, drinking six bottles of beer is considered to binge drink, while in the UK binge drinking is defined as 10 units of alcohol for men and seven units of alcohol for women.

Although the quantities are different at face value, if one looks closely the units of alcohol are almost the same, Mr Mangani pointed out.

He mentioned a study carried out locally a few years ago, which established that over 23 per cent of fatal traffic accidents in Malta were alcohol related. “On average, there are five or six deaths a year related to drink driving,” said Mr Mangani.

There is a general consensus condemning underage drinking but most people act in a manner which opposes their words, said Assistant Commissioner Michael Cassar.

“We need to go to the roots of the problem,” he said. “It is not enough to condemn underage drinking when it is so deeply ingrained in our culture.

“Malta has a high number of alcoholics but few people really care about it until it hits their home,” he added. “For example for most people, the village feasts are nothing but an excuse to get drunk.”

Education is extremely important and must be extended to the owners of drinking establishments and their employees, making reference to outlets that sell alcohol to people under 16 years of age.

“Enforcement is very important especially where underage drinking is concerned, but it is not enough,” said Mr Cassar. “It has to be followed by an adequate punishment to prevent the person from committing the crime again.”

At the moment, the fine for a first conviction ranges between Lm50 and Lm500, and the fine for a second conviction ranges between Lm100 and Lm1,000.

“Binge drinking is a negative investment in the future,” said Mr Cassar. “Unless it is tackled, there will be more drink-driving, accidents, crime or work-related accidents.”

In his address, Dr Grech said that “four per cent of the deaths worldwide are due to alcohol and these can be prevented.”

A small number of those who binge drink might become alcoholics later on in life. “Some of the youths who binge drink simply do it for the buzz,” said Dr Grech.

Underage binge drinking usually starts at 13, increases during adolescence and peaks in adulthood after which it gradually decreases.

Dr Grech added that people who binge drink or who are heavy drinkers have more problems with their social relationships and with their family.

“More aggressive intervention is needed to address the trend of young people who are binge drinking - we need to catch them when they are young,” said Dr Grech.

The current programmes focus on people with chronic alcohol problems. Programmes directed towards youths need to be created and evaluated. Unfortunately binge drinking causes a number of health risks: death through vomit inhalation, head injuries, increased sexual activity leading to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

“More and more people are binge drinking and using drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy simultaneously. This is no longer a matter of one-off parties but is taking place regularly, in village feasts for example: either in the portable toilets or in the band club,” said Dr Grech.

Sedqa operations director Jean Claude Cardona called for stricter legislation on alcohol in Malta. “There is the need for a change in current legislation and a strong law enforcement structure to back it up,” he said.

A theme which emerged from the conference was the need of a more concerted effort between all the stakeholders involved: parents, educators, treatment and prevention agencies, health authorities along with an adequate law enforcement system.

“Education plays a major role in preventing young people from alcohol abuse,” said manager of Sedqa’s primary prevention services Paul Pace.

Foundation for Social Welfare Services CEO Joe Gerada pointed out that underage drinking is not an accidental phenomenon and that it is due to a number of factors inciting young people to do so.

“Parents have to be aware of this and measures against the exploitation of young people must be taken from all quarters,” he said. “I propose for the legal age for alcohol consumption to be raised to 18 and that those who are caught drinking and selling alcohol (to under-age people) have to be held responsible for their actions.”

Malta Independent

Shaken and Stirred

Memoirist and reformed alcoholic Augusten Burroughs talks about his $63,000 bar bill, why it's hard to be a drunk when you're allergic to alcohol, and how hard it is to have sex when you're sober.

When author Augusten Burroughs first came to New York at 23 to take a copywriting job at Ogilvy & Mather, he owned only a yellow inflatable raft for a bed, a cheap phone, a Braun travel alarm clock and a copy of "The Andy Warhol Diaries." It appeared he traveled light, but actually Burroughs carried a lot of emotional baggage. In last year's mordantly funny memoir "Running With Scissors," Burroughs wrote that when he was 12, his newly divorced, bipolar poet mother pawned him off on her crazy shrink, Dr. Finch, an onanist who got aroused by pictures of Golda Meir and sought prophecies in his own fecal matter. (His license was eventually revoked in 1986.) Finch taught Burroughs how to fake a suicide attempt to get out of going to school, and hosted a steady stream of patients in his roach-infested, anarchic Northampton, Mass., household.

By far, the most menacing resident was Neil Bookman, a 33-year-old who preyed on Burroughs; the two embarked on a disturbing relationship that was encouraged by the doctor. By the time Burroughs left Dr. Finch's house at age 17, he had no formal education, yet he'd had countless sexual escapades, witnessed primal scenes between his mother and her lesbian lover, and watched enough psychotic breakdowns -- his mother's, and those of Dr. Finch's various patients -- to shock even the most seasoned psychoanalyst.

Now Burroughs returns with a new memoir, "Dry," which begins where "Scissors" left off and is already hitting bestseller lists and garnering strong reviews. The book begins when Burroughs is 24, a flourishing, self-made advertising executive whose support network is made up of best friend Pighead, a kindly investment banker dying of AIDS; his drinking buddy Jim, an affable coffin salesman; Greer, his tightly wound colleague; and his constant companion, Dewar's Scotch whisky. For a person whose youth was one endless stream of unpleasant surprises, drinking provided an escape hatch for Burroughs, even though his allergy to alcohol required him to choke down Benadryl before getting loaded. Similarly, advertising proved an ideal career choice for him, despite his lack of schooling, because, as Burroughs explains, it "makes everything seem better than it actually is. It's an industry based on giving people false expectations. Few people know how to do that as well as I do, because I've been applying those basic advertising principles to my life for years."

As the "Leaving-Las-Vegas-esque" drinking binge that opens "Dry" is a testament, however, the bottom of that hatch would inevitably start to fall away. Greer stages an intervention and the advertising agency sends him to the rehab of his choosing. Burroughs opts for the Proud Institute, a gay-and-lesbian facility in Minnesota, where he expects to find "a discreet, Frank Lloyd Wright-ish compound shrouded mysteriously from public view by a tasteful wall of trimmed boxwood trees. Spare rooms, sun-drenched, with firm mattresses and white 300-count Egyptian cotton sheets." In this respect, his awakening proves as rude as the stark fluorescent lighting and the tasteless mush they serve up in the cafeteria.

After 30 days at Proud, Burroughs returns to New York a sober man, his job and friends awaiting him, delighted at the newly lean and clean man they see. Burroughs takes his recovery seriously, throwing himself into his work with renewed vigor, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and outpatient therapy, even as he commits the ultimate no-no: getting involved with an active crackhead, a dashing Southern trust-funder named Foster.

But it's a sobering reality that puts Burroughs' sobriety to the ultimate test. When Pighead's health takes a deathly turn, Burroughs no longer sees a reason to stay dry. He relapses, and though he stays gainfully employed in the advertising business, it takes him two years to return to A.A., where he will recover once more. Burroughs has been "dry" ever since.

I met the author on a sultry June afternoon in New York at the Corner Bistro, a West Village joint as renowned for its juicy hamburgers as its hard-drinking denizens. Burroughs was just wrapping up his book tour, and was thrilled to return home to his partner of four years, Dennis Pilsits, and their two French bulldog puppies, Bentley and Cow-Cow. After six years of sobriety, he assured me that being in the Bistro threatened him not at all, though he recalled having gone there many times, and regularly buying bottles of Scotch at the liquor store just around the corner. As we feasted on cheeseburgers and guzzled Diet Cokes, Burroughs talked about sitting for hours in basements and bars -- the underworld for alcoholics both active and recovering -- and the perils and pleasures of drinking and drying out.

Your childhood was so chaotic, and you arrived in New York at 23 with practically nothing. What coping mechanisms, besides drinking, did you use to get by?

I didn't have really any survival skills except my instincts. I don't talk about it in "Dry," but I declared bankruptcy when I was 23. I got myself so heavily into debt with my credit cards because I did not have a sense of any fiscal responsibility. I had racked up in one year $63,000 on cocktails at the Odeon (a restaurant in TriBeCa) on AmEx. That's a lot of cocktails, and that was just one place.

Do you believe people can be predisposed to alcoholism? Your dad was an alcoholic.

I think that a lot of alcoholics tend to be very obsessive. I've always had certain tics. Alcohol for me was all about pouring my drink in my favorite Santa mug, taking a sip, looking at it. It itched my brain that the level of the glass had gone down from the sip. I'd have to fill it up again. Same thing with smoking: I would smoke. I'd hate it, so I'd put it out and light another one. Four packs a day. I couldn't stand to smoke them down. I think obsessive behavior is definitely genetic. And I think alcohol, like anything, can be learned through your parents. I don't know if alcohol-ism is genetic because it's a man-made substance. It would be like having a genetic predisposition to CD players.

One of the first things you talk about when you're getting sober is your feelings rushing back. Were you conscious that you were drinking to obliterate your feelings when you were in your early 20s?

Yeah, I was fleeing. I was really ashamed of my past, the way I was raised. It felt like it was the same rush you would get driving a sports car through a tunnel at a really high speed. It was just go. I never knew what was going to happen next. I never knew who I'd meet or where I'd end up. I had absolutely no sense of responsibility or reality. To me, when I was drinking, it was all about the now. It was a complete escape.

You describe a bender in the opening of "Dry," when you and Jim start out at the Cedar Tavern the night before a big meeting with Fabergé, a major client of your firm. You could've so easily gotten home by 11, and all of a sudden it's 4:30 a.m. and you're at the karaoke bar -- what happened there? Why couldn't you extricate yourself?

I really had no control over it. That's how it was every night for me, although I'm proud to say I never did return to a karaoke bar. But it was always something. I would plan to drink only until 11 or 12, but it would never actually happen. The few times that I didn't drink for a night, or alcohol wouldn't have the desired effect of numbing, I'd be overwhelmed with emotions, usually grief, and it was just really upsetting. It freaked me out because I felt like a wreck inside, like my structure was rotting and alcohol was sort of the glue holding me together. In a lot of ways, I felt like it was the only thing allowing me to function. In fact, it was the opposite. I was able to function despite it.

But what happens to that grief when you get sober? Don't recovering alcoholics find sobriety dredges up a lot of pain and anxieties, perhaps more than they were aware of having before they started drinking?

I think a lot of recovering alcoholics can act so adolescent because that's pretty much when they stopped growing. Whatever age you pick up the alcohol or drugs, you stop all the introspection. Maybe you get maudlin sometimes, or dwell on your childhood, but it's not a lifestyle about furthering your spiritual or intellectual growth. It's really about running and hiding and avoiding and playing. You definitely feel like you're an adolescent when you get sober. You have so many feelings all at once, and you don't know how to deal with them.

That's the only reason "Dry" exists. It was never a memoir. I wrote it totally for me because I just didn't know how to even live. When I got out of rehab, I thought, what the fuck do I do with all these hours in the day? When you get out of rehab, they tell you to go to a meeting. Well, a meeting is only 60 minutes or 90 minutes at most. What about the other 22 hours of the day? It was just horrible to all of a sudden feel different emotions at once: manic with excitement and then crushed with sadness and then horrified and then ashamed. I definitely found out some things about myself that were horrible. But I also found out some good things: I am very optimistic, which I was when I was a little kid. Being raised in a chaotic environment where something incredibly unexpected would happen -- all of a sudden, a new patient would move into the house, or my mother would have a huge psychotic episode, and my whole world would turn upside down -- I learned that everything can change. If everything can change, it can change for the better. I lost that when I was drinking. I became really bitter and dark. When I stopped drinking, that was back, full force.

How did your social life change after you got sober?

My relationships were more real. Obviously if you're not drinking, if you're just wired on caffeine, you know what you're saying, and you're going to remember it. One of the big surprises when I got sober was how hard it was for me to have sex, to be intimate. I didn't know that I'd find that a problem. When I was drunk I was uninhibited. Sober, I was paralyzed, terrified of any intimacy. Any joining of sex with love was impossible. I had to figure out, what is this about? I realized it was a major thing left over from my Bookman days, when sex was a currency. I didn't understand it. It was awful.

You had to reinvent sex, in a way.

I still to this day have to work on it. That's one area of my life that's not all shiny and together. It's still hard for me.

What happened to the people you met in rehab, like Foster, the crackhead with whom you were infatuated? And your English roommate, Hayden?

Foster and I didn't stay in touch after he moved, but he sent me a couple of e-mails over the years. Last I heard, he was enrolled in some kind of trade school, allegedly sober. Hayden is in the U.K. He started painting and showing in galleries in London. I have one of his paintings. He got it together. Everyone else I went to rehab with, over the years, I just heard horror stories about. You have to really want sobriety. You have to be very ambitious. You have to want it as much as you want a new career. It's a career change in every way.

How old were you when you first checked into rehab?

Thirty. I'd been drinking for 11 years. I'd been sober about two years before I relapsed.

You relapsed as your best friend Pighead was dying. Did it feel like a temporary fix?

I didn't really have the foresight. I was just thinking about immediate gratification. I did not want to be present for what was going on at all. I used to live in fear of relapsing when I got out of rehab because I'd been brainwashed as if it were a thing that could happen, an external force. Relapse, relapse could be just around the corner, be careful. What are your relapse triggers? A whole sort of gun-and-violence feeling, like a holdup. It's not a holdup at all. It's an absolute decision.

When you first went into rehab, were you ready to be dry?

The first time, I didn't have really any other relationships beyond Pighead. He was everything to me, so all of a sudden that's gone. I did not have skills and the network of support that I would have needed to be sober and I kind of slipped away from A.A. I didn't have any reason to stay sober, I felt.

What did you do when you started drinking again and ran into people from your A.A. meetings?

I used to buy liquor from two different liquor stores in the neighborhood because I would buy a bottle of Dewar's every night. I didn't want to buy it at the same place because I felt like an alcoholic, but I figured every other day is a little easier. Sometimes I was already drunk when I'd go out to get my liquor. I can remember going to the store on Second Avenue between Ninth and 10th streets and seeing someone from A.A. as I was walking back. The person was crossing the street and looking at me, and I recognized in their eyes that they knew exactly what was in my bag. I'd obviously gained weight. I bloat up; my face gets really big and round.

How long was your relapse?

Probably two years. I got sober in 1997. I was obsessed with alcohol when I got out of rehab at the Proud Institute, obsessed with how many days I had sober, and how many days it would be until I had a year sober, and how many days left until I had two years. It was on my mind all the time.

Writing helps tremendously. The only time in my life I haven't written is when I was drinking. Writing is what keeps me tethered. It keeps me aware. I can't hide from myself when I'm writing. It fills the time, and because of what I write now, which is all nonfiction, I've got to have things to write about and that's gonna have to be what I'm thinking about.

But what really got me the second time was alcohol poisoning. It really felt like life or death. I could not sleep because my heart would startle. That absolutely terrified me. I felt the full force of it like I had never felt before so I have a very healthy fear of and respect for alcohol. There are times where I think, oh it would be nice to have a glass of wine, because Dennis enjoys drinking like a normal person and really appreciates certain wines, but it's never actually like craving.

You can have bottles of wine in the house and not feel tempted?

Totally. I never feel worried that I'm going to drink it. I don't feel unsafe with it in the house.

Do you miss anything about drinking?

I don't regret any of it. It was a wonderful experience, as terrible and as life-threatening as it was. To be in your early 20s in New York City making too much money and having a career that demanded play to a large degree and to be a drunk was fun. Alcohol is not like crack or cocaine or heroin in that it is a lot slower. I also figured it was OK to be an alcoholic, because I was high-functioning, so I could get away with it. Some people can be an alcoholic and get away with it. But alcohol will take you down in the end -- your liver shrinks, and your liver cells die and you're not able to metabolize the volume of alcohol you once were, and you require more alcohol to get that same feeling. And once you reach that point, the buzz is gone, and you suddenly have to drink in order to function. Sometimes I miss the obliteration, the mindless, absolute spontaneity of it. But there's so much more that I don't miss. And the things that I have now that I enjoy, I enjoy more than I enjoyed in those moments.

Like what?

Over the weekend, after the book tour, Dennis and I were in our house in Northampton, Mass., with our new 10-week-old puppy and our 1-year-old puppy. Dennis is in the kitchen cooking, the TV is on but it's muted, NPR is playing on the stereo, all the windows are open, it's breezy, and there are candles lit, and I was ready to weep with absolute bliss, for the mind-numbing happiness and simplicity of it. And I never could have appreciated that, never. It's absolutely wonderful.

When you get rid of one addiction, do you take on another one? Do people get addicted to meetings?

Yes, they get addicted to meetings. Some people go once, twice, three times a day. It's not healthy. Get the fuck out of the basement, get your ass out of the folding chair and get a life. That's the kind of recovering alcoholic I never wanted to be. You've just got to push yourself to do things you wouldn't normally do. I was lucky in that I had writing. I could totally channel everything into writing and if I wasn't writing, I could read. I have a lot to catch up on because I have no education. I never had a chance to relax in my life because I'd been working, panicked about not having money, because I've lived in squalor when I was growing up so I've always been very panicky about being homeless. I never had a chance to relax and read a book. I don't think I read a book until I was 24. I read a lot now that I'm sober.

Did you read other drinking memoirs before?

No. Not since, either. I don't know why. It's not a genre I'm interested in. I don't read memoirs. There are too many of them. (Laughs.) I like to read my women's novels: Midwestern women having coffee, talking about their husbands and their kids: That is what I love to read about. Elizabeth Berg. Or A.L. Kennedy, on love and obsession.

Do you think it is possible to carry on a sober life?

I'm having one now, and I am hoping it continues. I never say never, but I don't see myself drinking, even if I were having a crisis. I have a network of people. Even when bad things happen now, I am a lot happier than I was. The thing is, if it weren't easier and better, I wouldn't be sober. It's that simple. If I had to really work at it that hard, I wouldn't be able to do it, because I am lazy and pleasure-seeking.

Do you have any indulgences now that you're not drinking?

I chomp nicotine gum. I'm going to end up with half a jaw.

What do you make of those three old guys sitting at the bar over there, hunched over their highball glasses? They've been here since I got here at noon.

I know the comfort of a highball at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday. It happens in the dark. It is blindingly bright outside, and yet in here, it is like pupil dilation-land, and the music is slow jazz and the walls are brick and it's been unchanged. Nine-11 did not happen in this room. People don't die in this room. They are in another world. The fact that it is Wednesday in New York City in the summer is irrelevant in here.

The funny thing about bars is that they are a lot like little A.A. rooms. You walk through a door, and you enter a place that's just outside of society. One place serves cocktails, and one is full of people who are bitter that they don't get to have them anymore. But they're very similar. There are a lot of regulars here. I came here a few times when I was drinking, before I'd go out to the Odeon. It feels profoundly familiar. Those guys over there are probably here for the night. They'll have a burger at 8, go home and have a few more drinks and then pass out and do it again.

(The article first appeared on salon.com website)

Becoming disjointed

An experimental course may help middle-class marijuana smokers trying to quit.

Until ten weeks ago, Jane Lamarr’s cannabis problem bore a remarkable similarity to the Government’s dilemma with the drug. She was increasingly aware of its damage to her physical and mental health but didn’t know what to do about it. So she tried to fudge the issue, maintaining her outwardly responsible life while secretly getting wrecked every night.

Fortunately for Lamarr, before her situation went beyond “totally bonkers”, she discovered an experimental new course created to help dependent dope-smokers wean themselves off their all-pervading habits.

Ever since the Government downgraded cannabis from a Class B to Class C drug two years ago, evidence has mounted on the potential harmful effects of marijuana, particularly when the odd recreational toke grows into habitual use. But last week, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, ruled out toughening the law on cannabis, after a study of the original downgrading decision. Instead he announced a nationwide campaign highlighting the danger of smoking the drug. Also last week, fresh evidence of hash use’s dangers appeared in the British Medical Journal, in the form of a major review into the links between dope and psychosis. The review, by three professors at Otago University, New Zealand, declared that 10 per cent of cases of psychosis are caused by cannabis.

They described as robust and persistent the research-based link between hash and “severe mental illness characterised by the presence of delusions, hallucinations, and other cognitive and behavioural impairments that interfere with the ability to meet the ordinary demands of life”. They warned that the risk rises significantly if smokers start young and smoke frequently. Of course, many youthful smokers’ habits simply fade under pressure from those four horsemen of the ageing apocalypse: jobs, partners, children and mortgages; until their encounters with the drug are limited to post-prandial puffs at suburban dinner parties.

Sir Paul McCartney’s wife Heather Mills revealed last week that she gave him a “good incentive” to renounce his lifelong hash habit by making it a precondition for their getting married. Not all of us can depend on the leverage of a strong woman, though. Lamarr finally found a way to renounce her heavy habit through a small ad in Metro, the London free newspaper. She was, however, initially deeply suspicious.

The 28-year-old Londoner manages an NHS hospital administration system, but for the past 12 years had been smoking up to a quarter of an ounce (7g) of cannabis a day, which she describes as “quite hard core”. Others might call it titanic. “I was a real go-for-it smoker,” she says. “I had two different lives. I’d get home, disconnect the phones and get stoned. Last year it felt totally bonkers. The advert I saw said: ‘Do you want to give up smoking marijuana?’ It was such a small ad I thought it might be something creepy, but I enrolled because I thought it might be the help I needed.”

The course is called Clearhead and has been co-founded by James Langton and Adrienne McLeod, two former habitual smokers who believe that people who have become emotionally dependent on cannabis need practical advice and support with ditching the habit, rather than 12-step spiritual programmes used by groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Three months ago they began offering Londoners free places on a pilot project for what they hope will become a nationwide network of group-support courses, comprising an initial weekend and six Wednesday-evening follow-up meetings.

Langton, a 49-year-old art dealer, had smoked hash since he was 15 and stopped only four years ago. “I realised that it was controlling my life and I was moving farther away from the things I wanted to achieve. When I gave up, I got involved with running a drugs helpline and decided to start something practical,” he says.

He stresses that the course is not therapy. “We deal with the specific issue of cannabis dependence, through group talks, learning from each other’s experience. We encourage people to explore problems such as depression and lack of self-confidence, and encourage them to do physical things which will enable them to relax naturally, such as swimming, cooking or redecorating their homes, to keep their minds off cannabis. We try to make people’s motivation to stop stronger than their fear of stopping.”

At the end of the first session, which runs all day on Saturday, participants are invited to go home and to smoke their last joint or pipe. “The act of setting a weekend when you’re going to stop is hugely important for some people — and terrifying for others — because of their physical and emotional dependence,” says Langton.

For Lamarr, the experience ultimately proved very positive. “James made me add up the number of hours a week I spent stoned and it was really worrying,” she says. “I sat down on the Monday after the course and thought ‘I’ve got to do this’. Actually, I really regretted giving up and I regretted going on the course. But I felt I couldn’t go back. It’s two months and two weeks since I last got stoned and I still get cravings, but I’ve not asked anyone for a spliff. And I won’t.”

In the past three months, 20 people have completed Clearhead’s pilot courses. So far, Langton has funded it from his own pocket. But, he says: “We’re just about to start our first paid-for course, which will cost £144 per person. We aim to run courses in other UK cities this year, too.”

Times

'Ban booze to stop unruly kids'

An Age-Old anti-booze agreement must be enforced to end underage drinking and abusive behaviour, according to Eltham residents.

Hundreds living on the Corbett Estate have signed a petition supporting a covenant that bans the sale of alcohol on land in the area.

Homeowners say vandalism and teenage binge-drinking has rocketed since off-licences opened on the estate over the past year.

Covenants are an old form of private planning control in which restrictions are placed on how a piece of land is developed. However, they are a discretionary law only enforceable by a court injunction.

The agreement is about 70-yearsold and part of deeds on all properties. It was created by former MP and Greenwich landowner Cameron Corbett and is the reason why there are no pubs or clubs in the area.

Ward councillor Dermot Poston said: "There are enormous gatherings of kids making a nuisance of themselves - riding motorbikes without helmets, drinking and vandalising cars.

"Residents are up in arms. Many have suffered when these children have been drinking. In some cases they are totally blotto."

Greenvale Road resident Steve Mann said: "It's very bad actually.

"You see groups of kids hanging around street corners nearly every day.

"Before those off-licences opened, the Westmount Road area was a quiet residential road."

But drinks retailers in the area strongly denied the claims.

A shopworker from Costcutters told The Mercury that management was very strict about who the shop sold alcohol to.

And spokesmen for Thresher and Gill's off-licence said their stores did not sell alcohol to anyone underage.

Mr Mann said Greenwich council should invoke the Corbett agreement.

He said: "I pay my council tax along with thousands of others. What's the council there for if not to represent people?"

But a council spokesman said the authority had no power to enforce the covenant and licensing issues had nothing to do with the agreement.

A police spokesman said there had not been a noticeable rise in reported crime on Corbett.

ic Southlondon

Partygoer 'got up to dance after paralysing girl'

A drugged-up reveller who left a girl paralysed after leaping off a nightclub balcony and landing on top of her immediately got up and started dancing afterwards, an eyewitness told a court today.

Philip Brady, 24, who had downed a huge quantity of alcohol and two to three ecstasy pills as he celebrated his birthday, crashed on top of beautician Lorraine Mack, leaving her paralysed from the neck down.

She is now a tetraplegic, needs constant medical care and will never be able to walk again after a night out at Pacha nightclub in Victoria, central London, with her boyfriend in March 2004.

Immediately afterwards, 6ft 3ins tall Brady, who was at least twice over the legal drink/drive limit, got up and tried to start dancing before he collapsed, Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court heard.

In a statement given as prosecution evidence, Charles Collingwood-Boots said: "This male appeared to get up off the floor next to the girl.

"He appeared to try and dance around again before he slumped back on his front. He appeared to be knocked out for around five seconds. I noticed that the girl was still knocked out on her back."

Brady later told police that he had drunk seven pints, a bottle of Stella, a vodka and coke and had taken between two and three ecstasy tablets.

Police forensic expert Dr Christopher Brownstone said the defendant "had taken two or three ecstasy tablets and he had been drinking alcoholic liquor since 6.30pm."

Professor John Henry, a medical toxicologist at Imperial College, told the court that Brady would have been two or three times over the drink drive limit by the time of the tragedy.

He said: "He had taken sixteen units of alcohol. At around 1am a man of average build would have had 200 milligramms of alcohol to every 100 millilitres of blood. That is between two and three times the legal limit for driving."

The professor added there was no evidence to suggest ecstasy altered the effects of alcohol.

Brady, of Harrow, north-west London, denies causing grievous bodily harm.

The trial continues.

Life Style Extra

Alcoholism risk factors may differ in women

New York (Reuters Health) - Although genetic and environmental factors are key in the risk of developing alcoholism, the roots of problem drinking seem to be different for women and men, according to the findings from four studies of families affected by alcoholism.

For both sexes, problems with aggressive behavior in childhood -- including conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder -- signaled a heightened risk of alcoholism.

However, for women, childhood stress in general appeared to contribute to alcoholism risk, and women with a nervous, anxious personality were more likely to have an alcohol problem than those with a more balanced temperament.

More specifically, one study found that severe physical punishment in childhood appeared to raise the risk of alcoholism among females, but not males. Instances of severe punishment, the researchers speculate, may signal ongoing physical or sexual abuse.

"Clearly, there are some common antecedents (to alcoholism), such as conduct disorder or symptoms, but there are also predictors unique to each gender," Dr. Aruna Gogineni of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore said in a statement.

Gogineni chaired a meeting last year at which the study findings were first reported. A summary of the presentations is published in the current issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

While there has been much research on the transmission of alcoholism from generation to generation in families, relatively little has focused on daughters of alcoholics. One likely reason, according to Gogineni, is that men in general have a higher rate of alcoholism than women.

But understanding any gender differences in how alcoholism emerges is vital to preventing and treating the disorder, she and her colleagues point out.

The researchers found evidence confirming that children of alcoholics are at increased risk of the disorder. One study found that genes may be a more important risk factor for men than for women, while environment may be somewhat more influential for women.

In that study, alcoholism in a biological parent, as opposed to an adoptive parent, had a stronger effect on a son's risk of alcoholism.

This finding, the researchers note, needs to be "interpreted cautiously," since the evidence was only "suggestive."

Gogineni said she hopes the studies underscore that the causes of alcoholism are not identical for men and women.

"These are the kinds of findings," she said, "that call out for many more studies on women in order to determine how the mechanisms of alcoholic parental risk may differ in men and women."

SOURCE: Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, February 2006.

Reuters

Cuba and AA Take First Step

Havana, Jan 21 (Prensa Latina) After 13 years of spreading sobriety in Cuba, Alcoholics Anonymous can now count on more support from State sectors to save lives of people suffering from this incurable, progressive and lethal disease.

Amid thundering applause at the opening of Alcoholics Anonymous first National Convention in Cuba, Guillermo Barrientos of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health said the door is open for cooperation between the State and AA.

More than a decade in Cuba, the international self-help group has experienced prodigious growth on this island, and health authorities here are ready to extend a hand in the fight against alcoholism.

Barrientos, chief of the Operative Group for Mental Health and Addictions, said to Prensa Latina "Alcoholism transcends the level of health, and must enter other sectors like the Federation of Cuban Women, Committees for Defense of the Revolution, Federation of Universities and NGO´s like Alcoholics Anonymous."

"We started backwards," he explains, "with a public declaration, but now we must define our relationship," and cited a pending meeting with the Ministry of Justice to elaborate legal aspects. "We have to work on issues like technology, training and community integration," he said.

The hundreds of alcoholics here in recovery with AA´s 12 Step program are grateful their experience, hope and strength is being recognized.

Andy X, manager of the AA General Services Office said "It´s like a dream come true."

But as the banner said at the event, the fight against alcoholism is most important for those to come.

Prensa Latina

Boozing gives NHS £4m hangover

Alcohol abuse is costing the NHS in Norfolk an estimated four million pounds a year as rising numbers of people hit the bottle.

A leading consultant has warned the county's flagship hospital is seeing an increasing number of people with liver disease and more are succumbing to alcohol at a much younger age.

Across the UK the NHS is being forced to fork out £3 billion to deal with alcohol-related diseases and in Norfolk this figure amounts to a shocking £4 million for a population of 750,000.

It is impossible to ascertain the exact figure because there are such wide-ranging repercussions from drinking related incidents, such as liver disease, gastro-intestinal problems, head injuries, strokes, broken bones and long term mental problems.

But in Norwich alone the booze is costing the NHS just around £1 million to treat its population of about 135,000.

Alcoholic liver disease in the last four years has doubled in Norfolk and risen steadily in Norwich.

In 2001 267 people in Norfolk were treated for alcoholic liver disease, rising to 412 in 2003 and 513 in 2005.

In Norwich 59 people were seen in 2001, rising to 112 in 2004. The latest figures for the first 11 months of 2005 was 98.

With high-profile celebrities openly admitting alcohol addiction, such as former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy and the late George Best, alcohol abuse is high on the health agenda.

The rise is being blamed on a "binge-drinking" culture, cheaper drinks and shops and pubs staying open later.

Dr Martin Phillips is a consultant gastroenterologist at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

He said: "People do not realise how much damage they are doing to their livers in the long term.

"They are risking chronic liver damage, alcohol hepatitis and other liver complaints.

"The statistics have shot up in the last four years. We are going to be seeing this whole new generation of people with liver disease in the next few year and it is frightening.

"We are seeing 18 people a week to talk about liver damage. The average age of a person with liver failure is now 20 years lower. In 1992 it was 69 and now it is 49.

"People do not realise they have liver damage until it is too late and 90 per cent of their liver is damaged."

Peter Brambleby, director of public health for Norwich, said drink-related illnesses were definitely on the increase.

He said: "It is a figure that is so hard to calculate because it manifests in so many different places such as mental health.

"The figures from the gastro-intestinal programme, which includes alcohol-related liver disease, show that there was a rise of 10 per cent in the last year of people attending.

"I think people are drinking more because alcohol is cheaper than it used to be be and it is more accessible, with longer drinking hours. It is also down to peer pressure – it is the norm at the moment to drink too much."

Former BBC Norfolk broadcaster Tom Edwards, 60, has publicly battled the booze.

He recently celebrated 11 years of sobriety but his alcohol abuse resulted in him sleeping on the streets and spending two months in Norwich Prison for being drunk and disorderly and non-payment of fines.

Mr Edwards, who now lives in Lincolnshire, said: "My concern is that where do people go now when they need help?

"People with alcohol problems go to their GP and they get detox help but what about after that?

"There is no follow up which gets to the root of the problem. I have noticed more and more young people drinking now.

"I was in Norwich a few weeks ago and there were people in the pubs at all times. It is not just weekends, people are getting extremely drunk during the week too."

But landlords said 24-hour boozing was not to blame.

Rita McClusky, landlord of the Adam and Eve in Bishopgate, said: "I don't think people are buying more in pubs because they're not spending more, but they are buying more from the off licence.

"It's much cheaper now and there's more available so they drink more.

Sheila Mawdsley, landlord of the Artichoke Public House in Magdalen Rd said: "I think people are drinking much more at home than they used to. They drink there more because it's got much cheaper and then come out later. They're not drinking more in the pub though, not in my pub anyway."

In May last year the Evening News reported how children as young as 10 are being treated for alcohol related illnesses and injuries.

The number of deaths between 2000 and 2004 in the east of England has shot up from 438 to 491.

Norwich Evening News

AA conference begins Friday in Midland

Several hundred West Texans and others in the worldwide fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Al-Anon will be Midland this weekend to hear fellow recovering alcoholics and their Al-Anon counterparts share their "experience, strength and hope" in the 36th annual Mid-Winter AA Conference.

The series of speaker meetings will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Holiday Inn Country Villa in Midland. John R. of Midland will be chairman of the 8 p.m. Thursday "Kick-Off Meeting" there.

Men and women, including recovering alcoholics and those in the Al-Anon family program for friends and family members of alcoholics, from throughout the Southwest traditionally attend the Midland conference.

"Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism," according to AA literature.

The 12-step spiritual program, which was founded in 1935 by Dr. Bob, an Akron, Ohio, physician, and by Bill W., a New York stockbroker, is open to anyone who has a desire for sobriety and to stop drinking alcohol.

Prior to AA's founding, Dr. Bob and Bill W., who had been deemed "hopeless alcoholics," had been associated with the Oxford Group, a fellowship that emphasized universal spiritual values in daily living.

The conference is a series of speaker meetings that are open to AA and Al-Anon members and others who may suspect that they or their loved ones, family members or friends, may have a drinking problem.

The times for the conference's principal speakers are:

n 8 p.m. Friday: AA speaker is Les S. of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. Scotty A. of Midland is meeting chairman. Pew B. of Big Spring is chairwoman of the Friday Night Owl Meeting.

n 9 a.m. Saturday: Al-Anon speaker is Kathy H. of Cincinnati, Ohio. Chairwoman is Ann H. of Midland.

n 10:30 a.m. Saturday. AA speaker is Karen G. of Venice, Calif. Chairwoman is Jill W. of Midland.

n 8 p.m. Saturday. AA speaker is Clancy I. of Los Angeles, Calif. Chairman is Davis P. of Midland.

n 10 a.m. Sunday. AA speaker is Sandy H. of Pocatello, Idaho.

Chairwoman is SueAnn H. of Midland

The world-wide AA fellowship has an estimated 100,000 groups, including about 51,200 groups in the United States, and a United States membership estimated at 1.16 million.

The worldwide AA membership totals about 2.2 million in more than 150 countries.

The "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous says to "Remember that we deal with alcohol -- cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help, it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power. That One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon."

AA's 12 Steps toward recovery from alcoholism are:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My West Texas

Impact of Drugs and Alcohol on the Workplace

Curo Aeger Ltd, a training consultancy, is organising a must-attend seminar on February 15, 2006, at Nottingham’s BioCity. Entitled ‘Christmas Crackers – the hangover can last all year!’, the event is ideal for managing directors, HR directors, occupational health practitioners, trade union reps and anyone else concerned with employee wellbeing and organisational effectiveness.

According to leading alcohol charity Alcohol Concern, alcohol abuse kills someone every 24 minutes and costs the UK around £20 billion a year. The impact on British business is similarly startling, with Alcohol Concern reporting an estimated £3 billion loss every year as a direct consequence of unauthorised staff absences due to alcohol and other forms of substance abuse. The charity also highlights the role of alcohol in accidents and deaths in the workplace. However, the detrimental effect of alcohol misuse on ’UK Plc’ is lesser reported in the media than the harmful effect on individuals.

While many employers frequently turn a blind eye to alcohol and drug misuse, the widespread problem hinders productivity, damages profits, costs jobs and could be affecting the nation’s health in ways yet to be fully identified.

Hosting speakers from British Airways, Alcohol Concern, Brachers Solicitors and the Medical Council on Alcohol, Curo Aeger’s event at Bio City aims to raise employers’ awareness of the workplace implications of this looming social issue. The seminar will provide valuable insights on how to approach the problem and begin to formulate policies that work.

The initial focus will consider the series of unfortunate events that occur during the office party season, when social drinking reaches its annual climax. Verbal abuse, sexual harassment, assault and even serious crimes are just some of the results of excessive drinking - but a workplace setting can also lead to costly employment tribunals and even prosecutions of employers under health and safety legislation. Speakers will present a range of perspectives - from legal, medical and policy, through to the corporate experience of formulating strategies to deal with the problem.

Jerry Hart, managing director of Curo Aeger, says: "Some organisations resort to a strong disciplinary code to combat alcohol and drug misuse, although this can indicate a missed opportunity for proactive prevention. As recent research reveals, there is no substitute for sound policies and employee training to ensure everyone knows precisely where they and their employers stand on this vital issue."

Yet formulating and implementing a policy can be a formidable task, as Raj Gakal of British Airways will explain to the seminar audience. He says: "Responsible employers can learn from the experience of others. Alcohol and drug awareness is not just for companies involved in transportation and other safety-critical activities. Whatever the nature of your business, alcohol abuse is costing you time, effort, people and profits."

Online Recruitment

Changing Law on Cannabis Could Cost NHS

Downgrading cannabis to a class C drug has overlooked the extra burden on health services and the danger posed to young people by the increased strength of the drug, psychiatrists have warned.

They are urging the Government to review the reclassification of cannabis from a class B to class C substance because of "a wealth" of research linking the drug to psychosis, violence and psychological impairment.

Doctors at A&E departments are increasingly having to deal with a rising number of youngsters suffering from cannbis related psychosis.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists says it is "very concerned" about the Home Secretary's possible decision not
to reclassify cannabis.

In his recent statement on the US Court Decision on Cannabis use for medical purposes Professor Hamid Ghodse, President of the International Narcotics Control Board, said: "Cannabis is classified under international conventions as a drug with a number of personal and public health problems.

"It is not a 'soft' drug, as some people would have you believe."

The easy availability of the stronger form of cannabis, skunk, is a major area of concern. Cannabis is well known for the psychoactive effects that it has on the brain, and as is the case with all mind altering drugs, there can
be a link with increased violence and impulse control problems.

Psychiatrists and Accident & Emergency staff are increasingly reporting that they are having to treat, or admit to psychiatric wards, more and more young people with cannabis related psychosis.

Research has shown that anyone with a pre existing mental health problem, or who is more vulnerable to mental illness, is at increased risk of psychosis and other mental illnesses such as depression, if they use cannabis.

Cannabis has been shown to produce a short term toxic state, in which symptoms similar to schizophrenia are experienced, ranging from paranoid delusions to abnormal perceptions of reality.

Acute cannabis intoxification can also lead to short term memory loss, as well as to poor coordination and learning.

There is evidence that the use of cannabis increases the risk of road traffic accidents, including fatal ones. In one UK study of fatal road accidents, no alcohol was detected and 80% of fatalities tested positive for cannabis at postmortem.

The risks are particularly worrying with the young who are more vulnerable to its damaging effects. Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence that exposure of the unborn child to cannabis is associated with significant cognitive impairment, and behavioural and emotional problems in childhood and adolescence.

Added Professor Ghodse: "Some countries with a more liberal policy towards cannabis, such as Holland, are reviewing their position. Governments need to take a strong stance towards cannabis abuse."

UK News Headlines

Thousands Celebrate Tyler AA Aniversary

Thousands of people who have battled alcoholism gathered at Harvey Convention Center on Friday and Saturday to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Alcoholics Anonymous in Tyler.

"It gives us a chance to get together, and we really rely on each other to stay sober," said Kelly, chairman of the local AA chapter.

A Tyler bank president named Morris discovered AA in Dallas and initiated the first AA meeting in Tyler. The "Downtown" group met above the old Neil-Simpson drugstore on North Broadway Avenue.

Gradually, more groups were added, and Tyler now has 25 AA groups and hundreds of members.

Speakers traveled to Tyler from all over the country to share their stories of suffering, struggle, and ultimately, triumph.

"I used to carry wine in a Barbie Thermos to the fair," said Jean. "But because of God's grace and you people, I haven't had a drink since February of 1975."

Jean, mother of three and grandmother of eight, said she was raised as an only child with her grandparents after her mother died. Her father drank heavily, and "came and went drunk."

As a little girl, Jean perched on the sidewalk and watched her father drive away while intoxicated, and she said she thought she would never see him again.

"I never thought I'd do that to my children, but I did," she said.

Her husband introduced her to cigarettes, alcohol and raw oysters, she said, all of which she consumed in excess, soon surpassing him in her drinking habits.

She said she drank because it gave her a personality, it made her "5-7, blond and beautiful, so why not?"

But the habit was incredibly damaging to her entire family, she said. Her children were grown at the time, but she consistently drove while drunk, wrecking all of their cars but one, and even chased her husband around the kitchen with a butcher knife when he tried to take alcohol away from her.

Her son was finally the catalyst to her recovery. He begged her to promise him she would go to an AA meeting, her husband took her to the meeting and she began attending regularly.

"AA had to be all-or-nothing for me, and it was," she said. "I saw some people that were smiling, and there was hope in their eyes."

She gestured at the crowd, and thanked them.

"Everything I have, I have learned from you," she said. "You are my lifeline."

Other speakers shared their stories throughout the day, and the festivities went on in the evening with a barbecue and a dance.

Tyler Morning Telegraph

Drink and the modern girl

Natalie's mother noticed how much her daughter was drinking at Christmas. So they had 'the talk'. Which is how Natalie found herself one of thousands ringing a national helpline.

When Natalie went home for Christmas, her parents were delighted to see her. Visits were becoming less frequent after the 26-year-old had moved to London two and a half years ago to pursue a career as a public relations executive. But the holiday did not go as planned.

Natalie had been drinking heavily at family meals and staying out until the early hours. Her worried parents finally decided to act. Natalie later called it "the talk".

She said "It was a wake-up call. My mum is a nurse and she spends a lot of her time treating people with alcohol-related liver damage. She told me they had both worried for a long time that I was in danger of becoming an alcoholic."

The following morning Natalie reached for the phone and dialled for help. She was not alone. After years of binge drinking, Britain's female twenty- and thirtysomethings are starting to pay the physical and psycological price.

The availability of cheap drink, high disposable income and greater financial independence all mean record numbers of worried women are getting in touch with helplines and talking to counsellors.

And Britain's growing army of drinkers is not simply giving up alcohol temporarily to give their battered livers a break. They are taking the pledge never to drink again. The calls last week flooded into Drinkwise, the government agency set up to deal with problem drinkers.

This year has seen record numbers of drinkers picking up the phone. The helpline, established in 1993, with offices around the country, had an unprecedented jump in calls over the past year with a 66 per cent rise in enquiries over Christmas.

According to a spokesman for the group, callers were especially concerned about drinking over Christmas, and were eager to turn their lives around.

The growing problem was echoed by other groups around the country. Phone lines at the Samaritans were also ringing off the hook. A spokesman said yesterday: "We get a big increase in calls over Christmas and of course alcohol is part of that. It's a hard time when people are having to face up to the prospect for the year ahead. The new year can seem a very bleak place, especially for alcoholics.

The Priory, the UK's leading provider of private mental health care and alcohol rehabilitation, says high-profile alcoholics in the media have led to a growing acceptance among women that alcohol problems can at last be discussed.

Karen Croft, spokeswoman for the group, said: "What we hope is that the climate is finally changing and that 2006 is going to be the year that people feel comfortable acknowledging that they have a mental health problem such as alcohol and they can finally feel confident in stating that they need that help."

Media coverage of the problems of the former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has made it easier for women to talk, says Richard Kramer, director of policy at the alcohol charity Turning Point, an educational group dealing with addiction. He said: "The media coverage has been sympathetic to Mr Kennedy. His comments about seeking professional help for alcoholism helped to remove the stigma and shame associated with alcohol problems. It has helped draw attention to the extent of the problem in this country."

Mr Kennedy is not the only high-profile alcoholic in the news. Professor Nigel Williamson, George Best's former physician, is in no doubt that coverage of his client has been a major factor in a new openness towards alcoholism: "I'm not at all surprised at the big increase in women asking for help now. After George Best died I had many, many letters from people around the country with alcohol problems who felt able to suddenly talk about it. They had somebody to write to who was obviously concerned about the whole issue. It wasn't just men. Many of those were women as well. The situation, if anything, is more critical for women with alcohol problems because their biology is different."

As well a having a different biological makeup, social pressures are adding to the medical problems women face. Karen Croft of the Priory believes pressures on women have never been greater. She said: "Women are bombarded with messages that they have to succeed with every aspect of their lives. They feel they have to be beautiful, slim, eat healthily, have great careers, have wonderful relationships and raise perfect children. When you have the media bombarding women with these images it creates a climate in which women find it very difficult to admit to themselves 'I'm not perfect and I need help'."

Medical experts warn that more women will face problems. A spokesman for the Royal College of Physicians said: "Overwhelming evidence suggests that women suffer harm from alcohol at lower levels of consumption than men. Even allowing for differences in body weight, a woman will attain a higher blood alcohol concentration than a man from the same amount of alcohol. This may be because women have lower levels of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), an enzyme involved in the metabolism of alcohol."

And according to the spokesman, the medical profession faces an uphill battle: "Alcohol advertising is now targeted at women. Cultural attitudes favouring drinking and heavy drinking are in glossy magazines and on TV and receive frequent celebrity endorsement."

A European medical report warned last year that European alcohol consumption was likely to double in the next five years, with female Britons topping the league. A spokesman for the Institute of Alcohol Studies believes the problem is deeply rooted in a changing society. He said: "Women now have many more opportunities to drink than they did previously, and women's drinking has become far more socially acceptable."

Natalie has been off drink for three weeks now. She thinks about it every day, and she will avoid seeing her old friends for a while. She drinks a great deal of fruit juice. "At first I was afraid and daunted at the thought of life without a drink," she said. "But I'm beginning to realise I've set myself free."

LARGE MEASURES

220 LITRES OF alcohol per year is the average amount drunk by British women aged 18 to 25. They consume more than five bottles of wine a week, almost four times more than their Italian counterparts and three time more than their French ones.

291 LITRES OF alcohol. The average amount that British women will drink annually by 2009, according to a European survey by Datamonitor. This is the equivalent of three large glasses of wine a day and would mean a doubling of alcohol consumption in a decade.

80.7 LIFE EXPECTANCY of a woman born in 2004. The figure for men is 76. In 1990 the difference was 7.5 years. The growing culture of drinking among British women is regarded as the main reason for the reduced difference.

23% OF WOMEN aged between 16 and 24 drink more than 21 units of alcohol per week. The advised limit is 14 units, or two per day. This is roughly equal to 175ml of red wine per day.

40% OF ALCOHOLIC women in Britain have tried to commit suicide. The figure for non-alcoholic women is 8.8 per cent.

35% OF WOMEN after reporting being raped admit to they had been drinking before to the offence. Some 70 per cent of those women were not even sure if intercourse had happened. In these cases, the conviction rate is just 5.5 per cent.

51,108 DRINK-RELATED hospital admissions in 2004 and 2005, a rise of 28 per cent since 1997.

45% OF WOMEN later regret drunken sexual encounters; 44 per cent find it difficult to socialise without a drink, and 73 per cent have regretted making a telephone call or sending a text while under the influence.

250% RISE IN liver cirrhosis deaths among women in England and Wales since the 1950s. In most other European countries deaths have fallen by an average of 20 to 30 per cent since the 1970s.

Independent News

Dead Bee Gees Star's Daughter Lived In Fear Of Drunken Dad

Late Bee Gees Star Maurice Gibb's daughter has shattered her father's good-guy image by revealing he was once a gun-toting drunk in a new tell-all.

Samantha Gibb admits she grew up in fear of her father, especially after one night when he started waving a gun around in a drunken rage.

Now 25, Samantha claims her famous dad was a Jekyll and Hyde character, whose mood would change as he drank.

She says, "(One night) we came back into the house, we could tell dad had been drinking. He was walking round and round, then fell over. When he got up, there was blood on his hands."

Samantha, then 11, and her brother were told to go to their bedrooms by their worried mum YVONNE.

She adds, "When we came downstairs again, dad had a gun and started shouting abuse and waving it around."

But when Samantha confronted her father about the incident the next day, he had no recollection of it and insisted his daughter help him dispose of the gun.

But that was just the beginning of the breakdown of his relationship with his daughter.

Samantha explains, "I was angry when I first found out about his drinking problem. I didn't understand why he couldn't just have one beer and stop."

Samantha admits her father tried to beat his booze problems by attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings but he would slip back into his bad habits when he was away from his Miami, Florida home on tours.

Contact music News

AA: Attend Early and Often

Participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) concurrent with professional treatment appears to improve alcohol outcomes in people with alcohol use disorders. Whether AA alone or the timing of participation (e.g., before or after entering treatment) affects these outcomes is unclear.

In this study, researchers assessed remission (no heavy drinking or related problems in the past 6 months) in 362 people with an alcohol use disorder who entered treatment (inpatient or outpatient), AA, or both in the year after they sought help. Subjects were surveyed at baseline and 4 subsequent times over 16 years.

* Remission was more common in people who had participated in both treatment and AA (e.g., 65 percent at 16 years) followed by AA only (57 percent) and treatment only (50 percent). Differences were significant between the two treatment groups (for 3 of 4 time points).

* Remission did not significantly differ between people in treatment only and those who initially received treatment but later entered AA.

* As duration of AA participation increased, the likelihood of remission significantly increased.

Comments Rosanne Guerriero, MPH Richard Saitz, MD, MPH:
This study supports the notion that long-term participation in AA, particularly when begun soon after seeking help, is an important adjunct to professional treatment for alcohol use disorders. Treatment of alcohol dependence should include referral to mutual help groups and encouragement for patients to continue their participation.

Reference:
Moos RH, Moos BS. Paths of entry into Alcoholics Anonymous: consequences for participation and remission. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2005;29(10):1858-1868.

Alcohol and Health: Current Evidence.

Anti-social behaviour, alcohol abuse and those ‘pampered brats’

‘Young people are our most valuable asset and also our single biggest headache,’ opined Brenda Power, a Sunday Times columnist recently, and while the youth will resent an alleged undue association with criminality, the sad fact is of anti-social and riotous behaviour escalating and evidence from urban centres suggests something approaching an epidemic, a matter of obvious public concern.

A Prime Time programme on RTÉ recently examined this worsening breakdown in public order and, given higher population levels, it is understandable that some cities exhibit the worst cases of riots, fighting and drunkenness, but examples were also given of serious disorder in small towns like Kilrush in County Clare though, indeed, there are many centres where it has become dangerous to walk home late at night.

West Cork has not escaped this trend and a two-day trial in Skibbereen, over a month ago, dealt with a local case of riotous behaviour which Judge James McNulty described as ‘being in the early stage of public order breakdown’. The court report, published in this paper, said that ‘more than one hundred young men in varying states of drunkenness were involved in a number of fights’ and the scenes were described as ‘like the wild west’, as ‘madness’ and equivalent to a ‘mass riot’.

The judge, mentioning about people afraid to speak to the gardaí and ‘afraid to tell the truth’, commented further that this was indicative of ‘public disorder’ and if all such went unchecked, someone would be killed and people ‘would be walking behind a hearse wondering about fast action by the courts’.

How true and yet, in a riotous situation involving more than a hundred young men, a couple of gardaí face an impossible task and consequently, there is almost an emergency situation apropos adequate policing levels in urban centres late at night. Given the proliferation of these incidents, however, the garda force has a problem in regard to a possible ‘early warning’ system and given that a fracas could break out in almost any West Cork, or County Cork, town on any night, how does one spread available resources?

Skibbereen, as just one town, has had a number of serious incidents since these fracas, so it appears Judge McNulty’s warnings have not been taken to heart and which greatly concerns the local population. The problem of rising levels of violence and anti-social behaviour nationally has been highlighted many times but, while in April, we were told of a 7 per cent drop in ‘serious crime’, the number of reported ‘assaults causing harm’ was still at the high level of 3,700, and that is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’. A huge number of assaults go unreported and, in the case of the Skibbereen fracas, for example, it was possible to prosecute only a small number of those involved.

Aside from calls for ‘tough action’, the introduction of more closed circuit cameras and a bigger garda presence, many sociologists and other commentators are questioning the reasons for this growing law and order breakdown among young people in particular, and what motivates them to fighting and veritable ‘gang warfare’? Right across the country, in practically every town and village, people share the same worry over the current lawlessness and anti-social behaviour, but if the problem is to be confronted, the issues must be tackled at base level, in the homes at the youngest ages and also in schools.

Children, quite simply, are being spoilt to the nth degree. They are brought up with the view that money does, actually ‘grow on trees’, are oblivious to the concept of saving and are financially irresponsible and reckless with their parents’ cars and credit cards. Brenda Power, in the Sunday Times, described them as the ‘spoilt, pampered, instantly gratified product of a generation of paranoid parents’ and are ‘binge-drinking, acquisitive, self-absorbed, promiscuous brats’. They have never, she adds, been denied pocket money or liberty to misbehave, ‘want the latest fashions at whatever cost, go through sexual partners like a dose of Epsom salts, drive with no regard for other road users and exploit their parents’ tendency to indulge their every whim.’

Harsh, one might ask but clearly not so! If one adds the alarming statistics about teenage and youth drinking and high dropout rates for secondary school students which, in the case of boys, is 30 per cent, worst in Europe, what emerges is a high level of personal irresponsibility, both in regard to career prospects and anti-social behaviour. Various surveys, from the ESRI and elsewhere, have probed the alcohol problem and an European School Survey Project, for example, showed that Irish youngsters start drinking at earlier ages and have the fourth highest incidence of drunkenness in Europe, with 25 per cent of those sampled having been drunk more than 20 times. Irish students were also among the worst vis-a-vis ‘binge-drinking’.

What of the schools situation and the difficulty of enforcing discipline? The Teachers Union of Ireland, in its December bulletin, contends that pupil disruption is the ‘single biggest concern of our second level members’ and they report that the job of teaching ‘is becoming increasingly difficult, hazardous, and in some cases, impossible’. The government has a ‘Task Force on Student Behaviour’, but the TUI doubts if this will lead anywhere and threatens that if the matter is not dealt with adequately, pupil disruption will be treated as a ‘condition of service issue’ by the union.

The TUI goes further and argues for a new law to provide a ‘clear and unambiguous legal right for teachers to discipline pupils’. This, it says, would require implementing a code of behaviour and send a ‘clear message to pupils and parents that they have responsibilities’ and the TUI notes that in Britain the government is bringing forward new legislation to ‘clarify the overall basis of teachers’ authority to discipline pupils’.

Who can blame teachers? The situation in UK schools is apparently worse than here and one British criminologist stressed the need to ‘change the culture of schools so they become centres of respect and civility’, but that is easier said than done. If one can inculcate principles of responsibility and respect at earliest ages there is some hope for avoiding ‘mindless thuggery’ and achieving a return to good and acceptable behaviour.

Alcohol abuse is a serious national problem and is reflected in week-end binge-drinking, in addicted young people, in late night violence on our streets, in drink driving leading to death and in the overcrowded accident and emergency hospital units. The consumption of alcohol increased by 50 per cent over ten recent years, with Ireland moving to second place in world rankings, and while many factors contribute to street violence and law and order breakdown, there is no doubt that drunkenness is a big element but far from being the only one.

Southern Star

Quarter of British adults 'have drink-related disorder'

Britain is in the grip of an alcohol crisis with more than a quarter of adults suffering from a drink-related disorder, a rehabilitation charity said today.

Some 8.2 million Britons (26%) drink more than the recommended amount of alcohol and one in 20 are dependent on drink, according to social care group Turning Point.

The charity said 150,000 people are admitted to hospital each year because of drinking alcohol.

And 22,000 people die as a direct result of alcohol, mainly from liver disease but also because of accidents, fights and other drink-fuelled incidents.

The cost of treating people with alcohol-related health problems stands at £1.7 billion a year, according to the Department of Health.

Cabinet Office figures show alcohol-related harm, which includes the cost of policing and the processing offenders though the criminal justice system, costs the UK £20 billion a year.

In addition, alcohol is a factor in nearly half (45%) of all domestic violence, a Turning Point spokesman said.

Turning Point's chief executive Lord Victor Adebowale is calling on the Government to introduce measures to combat the alcohol crisis which he claims is sweeping the nation.

He said more should be done to educate young people on the dangers of binge-drinking and increased funding was needed for the treatment of alcohol addiction.

Lord Adebowale said: "The Government is not treating drinking as a serious health challenge.

"We hear a lot about the criminal justice aspect of the drinking culture but that is just the tip of the iceberg. The issue is about the effects on the nation's health and that is not talked about enough.

"We spend £500 million a year on illegal drug treatment but we spend just £95 million on alcohol treatment. For every illegal drug user there are six times more people with a serious dependency on alcohol."

Lord Adebowale added: "The drinks industry has not done enough in partnership with the Government on this. What we should be starting to do is educate young people in schools about what drink can do, about what sensible drinking is and how to say no.

"I do have a problem with the silence on the effects of alcohol addiction and I do have a problem with the amount we are spending in a situation where the drinks companies are making a killing on the back of other people's misuse."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said they were working on a joint campaign with the Home Office to promote responsible drinking amongst young people.

She said: "We are also working closely with the alcoholic drinks industry on preventing alcohol misuse. The industry has already introduced practical guidance on how to promote sensible drinking, and is working to clamp down on irresponsible promotions and underage sales.

"We are already investing heavily in services for people with alcohol problems. An additional £15 million will be provided to PCTs for treatment services from 2008, alongside an extra £3.2 million for new initiatives to help those who are damaging their health through alcohol abuse."

Press Association

Are you drinking too much?

Charles Kennedy's fall from power is a graphic example of the toll that drinking all too often exacts on the one-in-20 people in the UK who are thought to be addicted to alcohol. Kennedy has finally taken the crucial step of acknowledging that he has a problem but, if he drinks as heavily as reports suggest, then tackling it effectively is likely to involve more than a "chat with my GP and some vitamin C".

Denial and ambivalence are common among heavy drinkers, who often refuse to admit that their drinking is damaging their physical or emotional welfare. If you drink steadily throughout the week and average no more than the equivalent of three bottles of wine in seven days (two for a woman) then you are unlikely to come to much harm. The problem drinkers I see fall into two very different patterns of consumption - they either drink in occasional binges until drunk, or consume large amounts on a regular basis.

Government guidelines suggest that any more than 21 units a week for a man or 14 units a week for a woman is a "serious" amount of alcohol. But I use different thresholds for identifying patients most at risk, and rely on a more realistic guide as to how many units their drinks may actually contain.

Conventional wisdom has it that a bottle of wine contains six units, but that's based on wines that are just nine per cent alcohol. Drink a modern white, which contains more like 13 per cent, and you'll be consuming ten units a bottle. The same goes for beer, cider and lager, with some of the stronger brews containing four to five units a pint rather than the standard two.

If a man is drinking 35 units a week - that's half a bottle of white wine a night or two to three pints of normal-strength beer a day - then he is likely to be doing physical harm. If he is drinking more than 50 units - that's a bottle of wine five days a week, or 25 pints across the week - then it's not a matter of if he is going to come to harm, so much as when. The thresholds for women are lower at 22 and 33 units respectively to reflect their smaller size.

I tend not to worry so much about units when it comes to binge drinkers, and concentrate more on their behaviour. Although occasional heavy binges can lead to long-term alcohol-related liver disease and other complications such as brain damage, heart disease and internal bleeding, binge drinkers tend to be troubled more by the short-term implications of their habit - everything from practising unsafe sex and losing their driving licence to getting into fights.

Much is often made about the type of alcohol a person drinks. Hardened drinkers go for bangs-per-buck. Sherry, strong lagers and ciders are often the cheapest way to get drunk and are popular among drinkers with a finite budget. Spirits are another popular choice because they are easy to conceal and only need to be drunk in small volumes. But I have met alcoholics who drink nothing but the finest claret, and near teetotallers who only ever drink shorts on their infrequent visits to the pub.

So, if you can't spot a problem reliably by the type of alcohol someone drinks, or the amount they consume, then what should you look for? The CAGE or fast alcohol screening test (FAST) - see below - are useful indicators that will pick up most problem drinkers.

Answering yes to two or more questions on CAGE, or scoring more than three points on FAST, indicates a potential alcohol-related problem and should be a prompt to discuss your habits with your doctor.

A chat with a GP can be surprisingly effective and is all that is required for many people - studies suggest that just ten minutes with a GP can cut alcohol consumption by 25 per cent - but drinkers with a more serious problem can benefit from expert intervention and referral to a local NHS specialist team.

Once under the care of such a team, there is a wide range of different approaches that can be used to help - everything from in-patient detoxification programmes to implants and drugs that help reduce craving and encourage abstinence.

• Contact Drinkline on 0800 917 8282 for free and confidential advice on what to do if you have a drink problem, or for guidance on what to do if you are concerned about somebody else's drinking.

TEST YOUR CONSUMPTION

THE CAGE QUESTIONNAIRE

C - Have you ever felt you should Cut down on your drinking?
A - Have people Annoyed you by criticising your drinking?
G - Have you ever felt Guilty about your drinking?
E - Have your ever had an Eye-opener drink in the morning to steady your nerves.

Answering yes to two or more questions suggests hazardous drinking.

FAST ALCOHOL SCREENING TEST (FAST)

One drink= One untit (one very small glass of wine, half a pint of beer or cider, or a pub measure of spirits).

Men: how often do you have eight or more drinks on one occasion? Women: how often do you have six or more drinks on one occasion?

Never - 0; less than monthly - 1; monthly - 2; weekly - 3; daily or almost daily - 4

• How often during the past 12 months have you been unable to remember what happened the night before because of drinking?

Never - 0; less than monthly - 1; monthly - 2; weekly - 3; daily or almost daily - 4

• How often during the past year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you (work, social engagements, etc) because of drinking?

Never - 0; less than monthly - 1; monthly - 2; weekly - 3; daily or almost daily - 4

• Over the past year, has a relative, friend or doctor (or other health worker) been concerned about your drinking and suggested cutting back?

No - 0; Yes, on one occasion - 2; Yes, on more than one occasion - 4

A total score of more than three suggests hazardous drinking.

The Scotsman

Alcoholism is a family misfortune

There will have been few who didn't partake in a toast involving some kind of alcohol over the last month, but there's no doubt that drinking, or rather heavy drinking, has become the health issue of the new century.

From the early death of George Best due to alcoholism to the rising numbers of young people binge-drinking at weekends, or new figures showing deaths from drink-induced liver disease in Scotland have more than doubled in a decade and alcohol abuse costs the Scots taxpayer £1.125 billion a year, it seems everyone these days is troubled by a drink problem.

And now of course, former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has finally owned up to the fact that he too has a problem with alcohol.

But while he battles with his addiction - one which affects more than one million people in the UK - so does his wife Sarah... just like countless families throughout the country who live daily with the problem of having an alcoholic in the family.

Here, two Edinburgh women who are members of a city-based Al-Anon group, tell what that's like, and why they believe it's an illness which needs to be treated.

FRANCES, 66, from Leith, is a great-grandmother and still married to her alcoholic husband.

She is deeply in love with her husband of 49 years. You can tell by the affectionate way in which she speaks about him. They've raised three children together, and she smiles as she talks about how they dance in their kitchen together, sing together, laugh together.

It's strange then to hear her talk about her husband's chronic alcoholism. "I have been living with an alcoholic for years," she says.

"But I suppose I've lived with it all my life. My father was an alcoholic and he ended up on the streets which is what everyone thinks an alcoholic is - a tramp on the streets drinking out a bottle."

Frances left home when she was only 15 and married her husband knowing even then he had a problem with alcohol.

"In our younger days he'd have his binges, followed by our arguments where I'd tell him to stop. Then the hope would set in as he'd promise never to do it again. He wouldn't drink for weeks or months and once even for a whole year, but slowly and surely he would and it got worse.

"If there was a bottle of vodka in the house, he wouldn't rest until he'd drunk the lot - and even crawling to bed on his hands and knees, all the time swearing he was sober. And if things got very bad, he'd blame the brand of booze or the combination of spirits for his behaviour.

"His personality changed, and he became manipulative and devious. He even pretended to go to AA, getting dressed up and leaving the house for his first meeting.

"For him it was a progressive illness and it got worse. But it wasn't until seven years ago, when I'd been married to the man for 42 years that I realised he was an alcoholic rather than just having a drink problem.

"As he progressed in his sickness, I progressed in mine. I couldn't walk in the street in case I saw people as I was so ashamed and thought everyone knew. I was becoming claustrophobic, I had panic attacks. Twice I thought about suicide as things were so bad. Nobody could help me."

Overcome with emotion Frances stops, adding quietly: "I feel like crying, talking about this."

It was her doctor who finally confronted Frances with the possibility her husband was an alcoholic. "I thought how dare you? He is not. I was furious the secret was out. I felt his alcoholism was all my fault - I wasn't giving my man what he needed, otherwise he wouldn't be drinking so much."

When asked if there was one defining moment, Frances pauses before answering: "It was the violence, and the time when my kids were toddlers he held a knife..." she trails off, unable to talk about the episode.

"It was when I realised what kind of person I was turning into. I had also become a horrible person - I couldn't see good in anyone or say anything nice about anyone. I hated myself, my life. I felt I had failed as I couldn't protect my kids and myself - I was a defeated woman. And I was angry."

Frances was also blamed by her three children for the family problems, thinking it was her shouting that was the problem. It was her doctor who finally suggested she get in touch with Al-Anon, a support group for individuals and families whose lives have been affected by alcohol abuse.

The change in Frances, by her own admission, has been immense. "If he had cancer I would support him and look after him, so why shouldn't I look after him for having alcoholism?

"In the years since I joined Al-Anon I can honestly say miracles have happened. My husband and I are back together emotionally. We love each other and we're friends. He still drinks but nothing compared to before. I was taught how to cope and live with it. When I accepted it, life got much better. I don't criticise or run him down. I treat him with respect, as a human being, as a sick man."

Life is much better for Frances, although she stresses she takes it each day as it comes as her husband is still yet to admit he is an alcoholic. So, with hindsight, why did she stay with him? "Underneath, I always thought I could change him. Plus, I had three kids. I suppose I always thought he would stop drinking because he loved me, and he loved the kids. And my dream was - and still is - to walk hand in hand to church on a Sunday with my husband."

LOUISE, 51, lives in the city centre and is now divorced from her alcoholic husband.

Louise didn't realise her ex-husband had a severe "drink problem" until her current partner of four years, a recovering alcoholic himself, posed the question.

"I just thought 'no way', he just couldn't have been," she says. "I just didn't realise he had a problem, and I had left him because our relationship had broken down. But it's a family illness and his drinking had affected me and my children. It affected my oldest daughter badly and she had a lot of emotional problems in her late teens. She felt he never really cared for her."

Louise and her husband were married for 18 years, and have been separated for four years and, throughout that time, he drank. "I knew he drank - a lot - often six nights a week in the house. He would drink until he had his tea and that could be midnight. Sometimes he wouldn't remember what he'd had to eat he'd got so drunk. But then it didn't take that much to get him drunk - and he drank until he was drunk."

But unlike Frances, Louise rarely argued with her man, she simply thought "this was life".

She says: "I kept waiting for the family to start happening. And all he wanted to do was work, do his gardening and start his drinking at 4pm. He was a controlled drinker - he ran his own business and functioned normally, and he wouldn't drink all day but start at a specific time, and drink until he ate his tea.

"Drink: that was what he looked forward to every day, not me and the kids. I never tried to control it and change it. It was just part of life. And it's very sad to look back on and realise that's what was wrong."

Louise could have gone on with married life if it wasn't for the one defining moment which changed her for good.

"It was the eve of my youngest daughter's ninth birthday, and he was really drunk and we'd had an argument so he walked out. He had nowhere to go, but he walked out in the pouring rain. What really upset me, was the prospect of him staying out all night and leaving me to explain to my youngest why her daddy wasn't there on her birthday. That was when I realised I couldn't live like that anymore. And the worst bit was nobody else knew. I socialised a lot and no-one else knew because he wasn't out there in pubs falling about drunk. He just did it in the house. And if we went out, he often drove so didn't drink then.

"But there were times when he did and his behaviour got very inappropriate - especially to his children. We were in a restaurant once and he was flicking paper into their cleavages."

So Louise left, but it wasn't until her new partner suggested she join Al-Anon that she realised just what the problem had been.

"I thought I was fine, there's nothing wrong with me. In time though I realised that I had been scarred by living like that, and I felt sadness, and I couldn't believe I lived with that. It was a way of life for me.

"It's much more common than people assume, and that's why it was so nice to have something like Al-Anon where you realise that you're not alone. And it's not your fault."

The names of the women have been changed to protect their identities. For more information on Al-Anon please visit www.al-anonuk.org.uk or call 0207 403 0888. There are confidential help groups throughout the Capital.

The Scotsman

Cut Down on Your Drinking or Drug Use or Quit Forever

Everyone has heard of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step program that support many people each year who are suffering with alcohol and drug addictions. However, many more find themselves battling a one-size-fits-all system, and are in dire need of learning about the multitude of other, evidence-based options, resources meant to either supplement or substitute AA and its ilk. New book outling effective, non-AA alternatives in treating alcoholism seceives praise from recovery experts who understand this need for alternative approaches.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) January 10, 2006-- With New Year’s behind us, many people are preparing to get back on the wagon. For most Americans, Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs, are the only recognized approach in overcoming their battle with the bottle. But before getting caught back up in the “recovery merry-go-round” by entering a traditional, 12-step based rehab once again, committing thousands of dollars, alcoholics need to learn what the experts have known for a long time, but these drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs prefer you not know.

Dr. Stanton Peele, a New York psychologist and author of several highly regarded books and articles on addiction, says AA, “…is like any religion. If it works for you, then fine. Plenty of people go to church on Sundays, they’ve been doing it for years and I don’t have a problem with that. But in America, AA is institutionalized. We have a 12 step government whose courts are sending people to AA as a form of policy. It’s medically wrong and ethically reprehensible and completely against our constitutions. And I have a big problem with that.”

Peele contrasts the traditional 12-step approach to that of a hospital setting in which numerous treatments are often used to tackle a disease. “If it doesn’t work for you and you don’t get better, they won’t keep plying you with penicillin-they’ll try something else, then something else again until you’re well. In AA, if you say the treatment isn’t working for you, they tell you that you’re the problem, not the treatment, and that your ‘denial’ of the treatment is a symptom of the ‘disease’ and you therefore need AA even more. It’s this crazy kind of all-or-nothing attitude with 12-step therapy that is actually setting us all back.”

Around the end of the 20th century, numerous legal courts in the United States began ruling that it was unconstitutional to mandate participation in AA because it was found to be “unequivocally religious” and therefore violated the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. In a landmark 1999 case, the US Supreme Court ruled that atheist drunk driver Robert Warner had been “denied his constitutional rights” when he was forced, as a condition of his probation, to attend the “deeply religious” meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Secular alternatives, such as SOS, SMART Recovery, Rational Recovery and Women for Sobriety are now considered by the courts to be viable alternatives to 12-step programs.

One of the most exhaustive reviews of treatment literature, led by Reid Hester and William Miller, compared the effectiveness of a treatment method with either no treatment or other alcoholism therapies. Interestingly, some of the most effective treatments are the most difficult to find and the least well known, while the least effective are the most commonly used. The treatment with by far the best overall score was ‘brief intervention’ followed by social-skills training and motivational enhancements. The Miller report described the standard treatment in the United States as “a milieu advocating a spiritual 12-step (AA) philosophy, typically augmented with group psychotherapy, educational lectures and films, and…general alcoholism counseling, often of a confrontational nature.” Yet those same therapies ranked at the bottom of the Miller team’s list, with far less proof of their efficacy than other treatments. The conclusion is startling: the most frequently adopted therapies in American alcoholism treatment are those for which there is the least evidence of success.

Fueled by the 95 percent failure rate acknowledged by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a number of recovery and treatment alternatives to 12-step recovery programs are rapidly emerging worldwide—building strong track records and gaining credibility within the medical community. “AA-Not the Only Way; Your One Stop Resource Guide to 12-Step Alternatives” by Melanie Solomon is available at www.aanottheonlyway.com and responds to this growing demand for change from the recovery experts, court system, problem drinkers and drug addicts.

Armed with these new and effective treatment options, forward-thinking doctors and addiction counselors who understand the complex, highly individual nature of addiction are seeing more of their clients achieve sustainable recovery through a variety of programs. ”AA-Not the Only Way” features a personal account of the author’s ten-year attempt, and ultimate success, in saving herself from her addiction, explains eleven primary alternative drug and alcohol problem treatment modalities, and provides the reader with all the contact information for licensed professionals and treatment facilities throughout the US and overseas.

Dr. Frederick Rotgers, a leading US addiction expert, states in the book’s preface, “This notion, that ‘one-size-fits-all’ in the treatment of alcohol and drug problems has been thoroughly debunked by scientific research. In fact, as long ago as 1990, the Institute of Medicine asserted that there is no one universally effective treatment for alcohol or drug problems. Yet, we have persisted in sending our children, our spouses, our partners, our employees, and even our criminals to the same, single mode of treatment. And we then wonder why only a small percentage of the people we attempt to fit into the 12-step cubby hole, get better.”

“The problem”, he continues, “is finding treatment providers who provide these alternative, evidence-based approaches. Melanie Solomon has taken a wonderful step toward making that process, of identifying alternatives to traditional treatments, easier. By both providing her own story as a justification for this book, and by listing an ever growing list of providers who use up-to-date, evidence-based approaches in their work helping people with alcohol and drug problems, Ms. Solomon has done a great public service…this is an excellent starting point for patients, their families and those who are close to them who wish to find help that does not emphasize ‘powerlessness’, but rather empowers consumers to find the most effective help for alcohol and drug problems.”

Dr. Marc Kern, another leading addiction expert, states, “I have long awaited this directory of addiction treatment alternatives. It represents what I believe to be the future of the field…and for anyone with a problem with drugs or alcohol, provides valuable information about the growing number of options available to achieve a happy and healthy life.”

Mistie Storie, the Education and Training Coordinator of NAADAC—The Association of Addiction Professionals, states in her review in “Reader’s Corner”, and on NAADAC’s own website, www.naadac.org, “This book is ideal for any addiction professional’s waiting room, treatment process, or as an integral part of the client’s continuing care plan.”

PR Web

Long-term Antabuse keeps most alcoholics abstinent

New York (Reuters Health) - Alcoholics may have a better chance of staying abstinent if long-term therapy includes drugs such as Antabuse, a new study shows.

Someone on one of these so-called alcohol deterrents will get sick with even a sip of alcohol, with a flushed face, rapid heartbeat, nausea, vomiting and anxiety. But the main power of these pills is their psychological effect, Dr. Hannelore Ehrenreich of the Max-Planck-Institute of Experimental Medicine in Gottingen, Germany, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.

Ehrenreich and her colle