Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews

A conference in Sheffield today will look at ways of stamping out alcohol-related problems including illness, crime and anti-social behaviour. Sheena Hastings reports.

Brenda Hemment started drinking socially when she was about 18. She says she didn't really notice how her consumption was steadily increasing. By the time the factory supervisor was 24 years- old, she was drinking every day, putting away two to three bottles of gin.

"I suppose the reason I never noticed was because I was never actually drunk, I was just 'topping up.' I needed it to get through the day. I didn't think I was behaving badly, and for a long time everything seemed normal.

"But then I started to lose friends – people wouldn't come round or go out with me. I began to stay at home to drink and lost my job. Over the years I lost my nice home, my family – including my son, who hated me drinking and went to live with his grandparents. Eventually I went to prison, after burgling to pay for alcohol."

Around a decade of Brenda's life was spent in and out of prison (where she brewed her own hooch) and bail hostels, or living on the street, where she was surrounded by other alcoholics and drug addicts.

On a few occasions booze led to hospital admission, and Brenda twice attempted suicide by mixing tablets with the drink. She came out of prison on her 40th birthday, and after another 12 months' solid consumption she collapsed with severe liver and pancreas problems. She weighed only around three-and-a-half stone.

"I was so out of it. I don't remember the two weeks in hospital really," says Brenda, who is now 54 and has been dry since that two-week stay in hospital, when she was told she had either to stop or choose her own coffin.

Brenda says she still struggles every day with the urge to drink, and has never fathomed why she, from a "normal" family in a village near Doncaster, whose parents rarely touched alcohol, was the one who became an alcoholic.

Having moved to Sheffield, she was helped in her recovery by a Methodist minister and members of his congregation. She still doesn't understand how she didn't die years ago. Brenda stuck to her determination to resist the bottle, but David, her partner of eight years, died last year from an alcohol-related brain haemorrhage, having tried many times to quit drinking.

"I've no idea how I survived everything, and I look back to all the things I lost. There's just me and my dog now. I still go into town and talk to some of the drinkers I used to be on the street with. I don't try to convert them, but sit and listen."

The ones she does try to change by telling her own story are the under-age drinkers she sees hanging around local shops in the Low Edges area of the city.

"When I see the way some of them are knocking it back, part of me wants to hit them, I feel so annoyed. I've told some of them what happened to me, and a few of the young girls seem to have cut back on how much they drink as a result. I look at them and think 'what a waste'."

The health service gave Brenda the care and the wake-up call she needed. But in her view the authorities could do more to help stem the escalating tide of drinking among young people and problem drinkers in general.

"I don't think there's enough support, the way there is with drug addicts. There should be more people going out on to the streets to find them and offer help, and far more fines for shopkeepers who sell drink to under-18s. I see them doing it all the time."

A one-day alcohol "summit" held in Sheffield today will hear the views and ideas of the agencies involved in tackling alcohol-related problems and promoting sensible drinking to minimise the rate of associated illness, crime, violence and anti-social behaviour. They've been co-ordinating efforts in this field and others for a few years, under the banner of the Sheffield First Partnership.

"No-one's making out that Sheffield is any worse than other cities in the North of England when it comes to alcohol-related problems," says Jo Daykin-Goodall, director of the city's Substance Misuse Strategy.
"But we want to do all we can to ensure that adults who choose to drink can do so safely and responsibly.

"A major challenge is that of the dual perception of alcohol: that it is enjoyable but it also has a clear cost to society. We recognise that the drink industry is a major employer and adds to the vibrancy of the city, and we're working with the industry. For instance, we're hoping to implement the national Best Bar None scheme, which gives bar and door staff additional training in dealing with issues around excessive drinking. We're not talking about zero tolerance, though."

While Sheffield may be no worse than some other cities with large student populations and certainly better than some, statistics published last year do make sobering reading.

Of a population of 417,500 in Sheffield, 108,550 were "hazardous or harmful" drinkers (men regularly drinking more than 3-4 units a day and
women drinking more than 2-3). Other figures suggest that almost 21,000 people are alcohol-dependent.

What that misuse adds up to, says Daykin-Goodall, is £11.9m a year in costs to local health services, £15.3m cost to the criminal justice system and the loss of around 250,000 working days in the city each year. Alcohol was linked to 161 sexual assaults a year, and the lives of 7,900 children were affected by having drinking parents.

The many-pronged approach needed – and being adopted in Sheffield – to reduce the prevalence of harmful drinking and help those already damaged by it must also address public perceptions of drinking, says Daykin-Goodall, citing recent research by the University of the West of England, which monitored references to alcohol made across 1,200 hours of radio on six stations from December 2007 to February 2008.

"There were more than 700 references to alcohol, with DJs frequently referring to people being 'out on the lash', 'having the hangover from hell' or suggesting that fun was 'only a bottle away'. Nearly three-quarters of the comments appeared to promote drinking or excessive drinking.

"There's been a societal change, with more people drinking above safe limits year-on-year, but also a change in attitudes, with people now laughing and accepting drunkenness."

Steps already taken in Sheffield include the creation of "safe points" where police and ambulance patrol together, and city ambassadors around the streets on the look-out for trouble.

Funding has also been found to increase the number of treatment places available for community-based treatment for those with alcohol-related illness. The current wait for such help is six months.

Chief Inspector Simon Verrall of South Yorkshire Police says one strategy used when new students suddenly surge back into Sheffield at this time of year is a "Meet and Greet" which involves getting the message across to young people temporarily living the the city that they should be treating it and its residents with respect.

Binge drinking by youngsters in a small area of the city centre can wind up costing valuable NHS as well as police resources, but those who tend to end up in the care of hepatologist Dr Dermot Gleeson are drinkers who have been hitting the bottle for many years.

He sees 40 new cases a year of people in liver failure due to alcohol. Their mean age is 46, but they range from mid-20s to 70s. Typically, they have drunk for decades and have become gravely ill. Often they are swollen around the abdomen, jaundiced, bleeding and in pain.

Of these 40, one in six will die during their first hospital admission (one of the 5,000 deaths a year nationally due to alcohol-related liver failure), and the other five will leave hospital with the potential to recover if they give up drinking.

"The most worrying fact is that the average age of a patient presenting to us is mid-to-late 40s. Twenty years ago it was 60. Various factors influence this, including people beginning to drink at a younger age, the amount of alcohol being drunk, social deprivation and obesity," said Dr Gleeson.

"If I could make one highly focused improvement in how we deal with the problem it would be the provision of more specialist nurses to help people in treatment to minimise or stop drinking. A more general strategy could involve raising the price of alcohol."

Yorkshire Post