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I get asked a lot 'Why did you start drinking?
Did something terrible happen to you at fifteen?
Because terrible things do happen to
fifteen year old girls, I get that.
And the scary thing is that no,
nothing happened.
I had a really nice family.
I had amazing parents, I still do.
I had great friends.
I was never particularly confident,
I was never particularly attractive.
I was always one of the really awkward teenagers.
I just loved it.
I just felt like I fitted in my own skin,
if that makes sense.
It was such an amazing feeling.
It kind of felt like a big quilt,
like a big quilt being wrapped around you,
where you didn't worry,
where you couldn't really feel anything.
I don't know why I didn't wanna feel anything at 15...
I can't even tell you. It was like being in love.
I knew something was wrong.
Because sometimes... you know, like one of those kaleidoscopes,
where you're looking through it and everything clicks.
Sometimes, the kaleidoscope would click into place,
just for a split second, and you'd know what was wrong.
You'd know something was terribly wrong,
and you didn't know quite why it was alcohol.
But it was.
Every time the kaleidoscope clicked into place,
and all the colours made sense,
I'd go off again and there'd be an excuse to drink.
Because there's always someone drinking more.
There's always someone more messed up than you.
So it was always OK.
I've never had enough to drink.
Never in my life have I had enough to drink.
And thank god really because then I would be dead.
MUSIC
MUSIC - MOBY 'LONELY NIGHT'
GUITAR
This is me.
This is actually the only photo of me holding a can of beer.
My name is Arthur Cauty,
and I am one of the few people in Britain who don't drink.
That's how it feels anyway.
That's not to say I've never tried it. I have.
I just never liked it.
Even as a teenager when all my friends where out drinking,
I always preferred to be out shooting silly films.
Making music.
Or sitting in my bedroom trying to save humanity
from the latest threat of Armageddon.
I even tried my hand at pro wrestling.
I always had something more interesting to do.
Alcohol just didn't stand a chance.
But I saw the affects of it all around me,
at home, on the streets.
Fuck off! Fuck off!
You having a lovely time?
On TV.
In the news.
Britain's got a major drinking problem...
...one in five of all deaths are caused by alcohol...
...Britain's binge drinking culture...
...binge drinking...
Forty Jaegers!
Wherever I looked, people were getting pissed.
DRUNKEN CHANTING
So why do we do it?
The British drink more than any other culture
because they can handle it.
And because we know how to have fun.
Yeah it doesn't look that fun. But maybe it's just me.
Alcohol is a potential menace to community safety
as well as to his personal health.
Absolutely, we should ban it entirely.
The only obvious thing to do is to
get rid of this scourge completely.
Well that sounds like a terrible idea.
Violence, wanton destruction and utter lawlessness...
- I think we can all agree
we've built up a pretty bad reputation for ourselves
when it comes to drinking,
but this obsession with alcohol is nothing new.
It's something that has been around for hundreds of years.
For most of human history, and certainly until
the late nineteenth century,
water was basically unsafe to drink.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth century,
tea, coffee and soft drinks were all unavailable,
so you'd find that old, young and
even children were drinking beer.
They were drinking a variety of beer called small beer,
perhaps a little bit stronger than modern day Shandy.
Working men felt that it gave them health and strength.
''Beer gives you muscle''.
Men in hard physical jobs particularly
would be drinking vast amounts,
drinking up to three gallons of beer a day.
In the early eighteenth century,
gin drinking reached what people have seen
as an epidemic or a craze.
Of course it's epitomized most famously in Hogarth's Gin Lane.
Basically you could produce it and sell it
more or less anywhere.
So not only public houses sold gin,
but grocery shops and general stores also sold gin.
You could go in and buy
some basic items and have a shot of gin on the side.
They also used to sell the stuff on the streets,
people would go around selling gin
to the spectators at public executions.
And then the First World War had a big impact.
The government, and particularly the Ministry of Munitions
and later Prime Minister Lloyd George
identified drink as a real threat to the war effort.
Famously he said
'we are fighting Germany, Austria and drink,
but the greatest enemy is drink.'
In the Second World War, the Government saw drink and pubs
as essential to maintaining morale.
It was thought important to keep up a
reasonable supply of beer to the troops.
There used to be a phrase 'beer and Britannia'.
The French were identified with wine,
so the English were identified with beer.
Well, yes, rather.
In more modern times, from the nineteen fifties and sixties,
alcohol consumption continued to rise.
From the nineteen eighties it became a particular concern
the eighties associated with football hooliganism
or the 'lager lout' phenomenon.
And then in the later twentieth century,
the binge drinking phenomenon.
One of the Government's aims in the 2003 licensing act
was to try and persuade us to adopt a more
'continental style' of drinking,
where we drink sensibly as they do allegedly in French cafes,
having cultural conversations,
rather than binge drinking and falling out of pub doorways
as allegedly we are doing here.
I don't drink a lot of alcohol,
I drink sometimes once a week.
And only if I am in a restaurant.
I never drink alone, in my home or
if I am alone with my kids or family, I never drink.
We don't drink to be drunk,
we drink to appreciate the wine or the alcohol.
My opinion about the British?
The first thing I would think about them, is binge drinking.
I think they don't know what to do,
and there is no interest in their lives,
and they think that the only way to have fun is to drink.
I think the first time I had alcohol it was for my birthday
when I was thirteen, just one drink.
My daughter is fifteen and she doesn't drink alcohol.
For their birthday they have the right to
put a finger in the glass and to taste it,
normally they hate it
and I am very happy about that.
Quite famously people know that in France and Italy for example,
quite young children are allowed or encouraged
to have a bit of wine with dinner with their parents.
In the UK, young people tend to have fewer meals with adults
than in other countries
and spend more time with friends.
We tend to eat earlier in the UK
which means parents often aren't home from work.
On the continent they eat dinner later,
it sounds trivial, but it completely changes
the dynamic of the family environment.
In this country there has not been a culture
of respecting alcohol or
respecting the manufacture of alcohol
or the produce of wine or things like that,
we have never had that culture.
You can be on the continent, France, Spain for example,
and observe people in their late teens or early twenties
happily socialising over a coffee or a milkshake,
and alcohol isn't the point of purchase,
it's the social contact with each other.
Whereas it's quite unusual to find that phenomena in the UK
in the early evening, that young people would be socializing
in a non alcohol environment in that way.
We are well known as a nation of boozers.
Really in Britain there really isn't any stigma
about being seen drunk in public.
I think that's quite surprising for people from other countries.
CROWD CHEERING
In the US, I don't think you see that kind of binge drinking
public drunkenness culture in quite the same way.
There is obviously the Spring Break culture of going out
and getting absolutely wrecked for about three or four weeks.
Spring Break y'all!
But outside of Spring Break
I think they are quite a bit more disapproving
of drunken behaviour.
I don't think Americans tolerate drunkenness
anything like the extent that we do.
So the French seem to think we are a bunch of piss heads,
but what do the Americans think?
PIANO MUSIC
So when you think about Britain
and British culture what comes to mind?
Err... Bangers and mash, fish and chips, pubs.
Urm, soccer, drinking games,
Tea and crumpets and bad teeth...
sorry. Urm Guinness!
The British like to drink, I mean they love to drink.
They wake up in the morning and first thing outta the fridge,
they're grabbing a beer.
When I was living in London, I drank every day,
seven days a week and it was definitely way more
than I ever drink in America.
It's like when you are there at five o'clock everyday,
every businessperson goes to the pub.
I think its kind of ingrained
in their culture that you work,
then to the pub, and then you go home.
When I was in London,
I was amazed by the fact that there
were no open container laws,
and that everyone was in the streets drinking,
it seemed like such a communal activity
that everyone could do together out in the streets.
And I definitely think there's not as much of a stigma
as there is in the United States.
I don't think anyone gives a crap
in the UK when you go out and drink.
It's a lot more acceptable.
I watched this documentary
and they had an ambulance that drives around,
I think it's London, and picks up drunk people
and hooks them up to an IV
so that they don't die that night.
I don't remember if it drops them home or to the hospital.
But it's crazy.
- The age limit. It's twenty one here and eighteen over there.
That has a lot to do with it.
So much more of being young is drinking.
That's how they have fun.
I've talked to people who are British and they are like,
'my brother brought a keg at fifteen' so
I really think they are just very relaxed about it.
As you get older here, you drink a lot less,
but there, even if it's just one drink
you kind of just have a drink every day.
So, Yeah... pretty much the same as the French.
You may see a certain similarity,
at least on the surface,
between the famous pub,
and the corner bar in the cities of America.
The pub which is practically an institution in Britain
is something like the state side corner bar only more so.
It's more like a friendly club,
a neighbourhood gathering place,
where men can meet to share the quiet pleasures
of a glass of beer and conversation.
Where nothing is hurried.
A little world all on its own.
It's changed completely. I mean it's happened slowly
and fairly insidiously and I think when
things happen so slowly,
you don't notice until you turn around one day and think
' Oh my God, things have really changed'.
All I have to say to someone is
'look outside your front door, walk down the street.
What building do you come to first,
which is a public service, for the public?'
And often it's a public house. It's a place to consume alcohol.
If you look at a typical city centre or town centre in the UK,
it tends to be populated by lots of pubs and clubs,
which has been brilliant
because it's spawned a music culture here.
ROCK MUSIC
But what it doesn't have is outside space for socialising.
On the continent you tend to see big open town squares
where adults and young people socialise in close proximity and
there seems to be an association between that kind of socialising
and a healthier attitude towards alcohol for obvious reasons,
because you see parents and adults
consuming alcohol over dinner
in a more responsible normal way.
So there's these countervailing, very deep rooted forces at work
which prevent young people from having the exposure
to responsible adult drinking
that you see they have on the continent.
Out of the slime and darkness it comes
to inflict its life destroying poison on the careless,
the unwary, the unprotected.
No sane person would deliberately
expose themselves to its venom.
No intelligent person would come
within striking distance of its fangs.
Yet today, young people are flirting with a poison
every bit as deadly as that of the snake.
MENACING MUSIC
Thank you children, now lets get back to work.
I think it all starts with people being influenced by
either their parents, or older brothers or sisters,
or your mate's older brother and sisters.
You see them having a good time, you see them getting drunk.
That's where it starts.
I'd say its more a cultural thing now,
it's something that we have grown up with.
It's something that when you go out,
you automatically start drinking alcohol now with your mates.
Drinking becomes almost associated with having fun
people think to have fun you have to drink
and so they get into a cycle like that.
We had the school nurse come in,
she showed us different bottles of alcohol
'Don't drink this, it's bad for you'.
- Alcohol is bad, you shouldn't drink alcohol,
and as for drugs well, drugs are bad, you shouldn't do drugs.
- And telling you not to do something as a
young person makes you want to do it?
Can do yeah.
That first drink isn't very enjoyable I can tell you.
It burns your insides and its makes your eyes water.
We had more education on how not to
climb up on an electric pylon than we did on alcohol.
We got nothing on alcohol until we were about sixteen,
in our last years of school,
by that time everybody had done it so it was like
'why are you telling us now?'.
My children at the age of eight and ten
haven't had any tuition in that and I think 'why not?'.
School isn't just academic ability,
it's about social integration as well,
and I think that is weak in this country.
It's not even mandatory, it's an absolute disgrace.
We'll give them all the academics,
we'll have league tables,
but when it comes to doing practical work in schools
around health and wellbeing of young people,
for their potential that can actually fuel
the rest of the work they do, it doesn't happen.
- They ask a few questions, an hour in a year.
I don't know if we did have any talks about alcohol,
I can't remember them.
Sixty percent of schools give only one lesson a year, if that.
And what they are using in the classroom is not evidence based.
At high school age, even though your mind seems mature,
your body isn't and alcohol is a violent narcotic.
I just question putting all the responsibility on schools
because it's not like the other stuff you learn in school,
like maths
it's not factual, it's an attitude.
Whatever they say in a lesson
can't really fight against everything else
around you in the world that you are learning.
I believe it's parents and
generally the way you're brought up at home.
Parents obviously play a massive part
in how their children grow up.
This is a middle class problem
that's behind closed doors,
where the way we behave around drink,
the way we talk about it,
and the way we use it can impact on the behaviour of our children
without realising it.
When a man can't or thinks he can't measure up,
he looks for a crutch, something to help him, he takes a drink.
Don't look at your children's behaviour,
look at your own. Thank you.
We probably haven't with our parents
spoken about drinking a lot,
other than maybe we've come home after a party,
been vomiting everywhere and they've said
'You really shouldn't drink so much'
but actually we're not dealing with the 'why?'.
Why did you absolutely get off your face?
When I was around 20,
it was all going a bit mad,
I didn't understand that I could do anything differently
because everyone that I saw around me
was in the madness as well.
I think we could do with educating our teens in Britain,
before they head off into the madness.
MUSIC
As the sun goes down, society fades away,
and what emerges from the shadows is a monster
of low inhibitions, aggression, and casual chaos.
It's almost like every night we go to war.
With ourselves.
EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE
On one side you've got the police, the emergency services,
the council and various groups of volunteers.
And on the other side you got, well...
everyone else.
BANG
Are you fucking videoing this?! Fuck your mum bruv.
We fight and we fight, it's just that nobody ever wins.
EXPLOSIONS AND GUNFIRE
You go out to get off your face,
you go out and drink a load
that's what most people understand by binge drinking.
Some countries will define that as having six units of alcohol,
but that's only two thirds of a bottle of wine.
That doesn't feel like a binge to most British people.
It might to people in other countries,
but to a lot of British people that doesn't feel like a binge.
I drank a lot in the early days when I first started
ten, twelve pints a day.
Every day.
I could go out and drink twenty pints of lager
and walk home okay.
I see people who are drinking a bottle and half of vodka a day,
I mean, that's a lot.
If you drank that right now, you might die.
But to them they are just maintaining an equilibrium.
We have this phrase 'binge drinking',
making out that in between these mad sessions of alcohol,
people aren't using anything at all,
but that's not what's happening.
People are drinking all the time.
I binge drink like hell, I'm not going to lie.
I drink everyday, I'm going to die soon,
but it's not too bad, I live my life.
If we had no alcohol, no cigarettes,
if we had none of that, this place would be so boring.
It's like fast food. If we had no fast food what would we eat?
We'd eat nothing. It would be horrible.
MUSIC
If anyone makes a statement that in Europe it's better,
I say 'where's the evidence?'.
I think that Europe, as opposed to Britain, Europe is different.
Well there is evidence, because liver disease is going up here
and in most of Europe is going down so
surely that suggests that it is worse here?
That's possible.
In the past ten years, the number of people under thirty
who are going to hospital for liver problems caused by alcohol
has gone up by one hundred and seventeen percent
and in particular regions of the country it is even higher.
In the north east of England,
it's gone up by four hundred percent.
I mean these are catastrophic levels
of liver damage taking place.
It's really unusual in the rest of Europe
to see people in their twenties or thirties with liver disease,
but it is something that is happening
to a whole generation of people in Britain.
MUSIC
Oi mate, you left some of your Chinese on the floor.
LAUGHING
You will always see people joking about a drunk and
thinking that's great, and I laugh at that as well
and I think it's very funny
but actually it's rather sad.
I'm not sure there are many responsible drinkers
in this world,
I certainly can't claim to be a responsible drinker.
MUSIC
The medics told us to stop filming
while they help this guy covered in sick.
Then they turned around and started laughing at us.
They accused us of wasting their time
because this guy was only 'pissed'
and the fact that we were concerned for his health
was apparently really funny.
It just goes to show how normalised
scenes like this are on our streets
and how we've all essentially become numb to it.
Their ethos is
we could be attending an incident
that could be far more serious,
but we've got to be here with you,
and you have put yourself in that condition,
and I totally agree with them.
Go to A and E any night
and it is full of people who have broken things, or
have blood everywhere, or
who are completely disorientated,
somebody's attacked them or they've attacked somebody
and the person's hit back.
And they don't really know how they've got there...
because they're drunk.
As a GP a huge proportion of my time
is spent dealing with people with alcohol problems
and not just dealing with patients,
it's dealing with their families,
it's dealing with the social, psychological wreck
that results from one member of the family
having alcohol problems.
I've seen patients where
I've gone in to talk to them and made it
perfectly clear to them that they are going to
kill themselves if they don't stop drinking.
And their response is
'if those are my choices, I'm ready to die.'
MUSIC
Violence is a significant challenge for us.
Fifty percent of that violence
we know to be fuelled by alcohol.
It impacts families and children,
it puts a load on our hospitals
and a huge load on policing,
and where would people want their police
not policing bars and clubs
at three or four o'clock in the morning,
but to actually be available during the day
to reassure people and be solving crimes and
doing the sort of things that police do.
So if fifty percent of violent crime
with all the damage that it does
is alcohol related, there is no case.
We must do something about this.
So in terms of economic costs, what are we looking at here?
Alcohol costs this country 21 billion pounds every year.
That's the best estimate we have
it's the one with the clearest evidence base behind it,
but it's not perfect, and others have estimated it's higher.
And that's broken down into the cost of crime itself,
lack of productivity and NHS costs.
In 2011, we had 1.2 million hospital admissions
related directly to alcohol in the UK
and that's an increase in the last ten years
of about a hundred and thirty five percent.
I mean, this situation that we are in
at the moment is absolutely horrendous.
If we don't literally address this right now,
I wouldn't like to think of where we are going to be.
APPLAUSE
Whenever a person in the public eye
comes out and tells the world they are in recovery,
it inspires thousands of people
to try and do the same thing.
I am therefore delighted to nervously introduce
Russell Brand to you.
APPLAUSE
Hello Everyone, I'm Russell and I'm an addict.
LAUGHING
I did that to weed out other addicts.
Who here is prepared to admit
to having a drug or alcohol problem?
Oh fucking hell, I'm gonna rinse this. It will be a doddle.
I'm not here as a famous person
or a celebrity or anything,
I am here as a drug addict.
As a famous drug addict I can raise attention
I'm a professional attention seeker, I do it
to a professional standard.
I've been highly paid for attention seeking.
But I'm here today
Chip never fails to remind me
that I am a bog standard drug addict.
Nothing special,
unusual, different, or unique about my drug addiction.
I'm a very ordinary drug addict.
In fact when I first met Chip,
about eleven and a half years ago now
I'm about eleven years clean.
I remember his words.
He was very condemnatory and casually callous
and I remember being sort of vaguely offended.
He said 'oh, you're a complete garbage head.
If you don't stop taking drugs now,
you'll be dead, in prison, or in a lunatic asylum,
within six months'.
I thought, 'fuck me that's a heavy verdict from this guy'.
But I still didn't think 'oh I'd better stop then'.
I just thought 'Oh no.'
I just felt a bit desperate.
I was hoping to go on holiday.
LAUGHING
I drank initially because I used to feel nervous.
I didn't like the taste of booze at first.
Then I realised, 'oh my god it makes me super confident'
it sort of gave me another identity.
I've never been any good at modulating,
moderating or controlling things,
so I'd drink real cheap booze from the off license,
like a seven quid bottle of white rum
or some dodgy tequila, and sip it throughout the day
and once in a while if I had a particularly challenging
obstacle ahead, I'd drink a whole bottle of it.
In a kind of stupor.
My mates here, Sharon and Martino,
both knew me at that time and I remember
a journey from Martino's house in Rome
to Sharon who was meeting me at Stansted Airport that day.
I nicked a litre of vodka from duty free in Rome,
drank it, and it's only a two hour flight,
by the time I arrived I was like a giddy delirious idiot.
Sharon reminds me that the security guard said
'can you keep your monkey under control.'
I was in a right state.
You can really mess yourself up with that legal drug alcohol.
It is a serious problem.
If you're drinking excessively
it's going to create problems for yourself,
in the short term, the long term, the medium term.
It's a problematic substance,
unless you got no proclivity towards addiction at all.
That's something you need to be aware of. That's my experience.
The only community I've ever
really felt actually a part of,
not outside of, is the community of drug addicts and alcoholics.
At school I didn't feel like I fitted in.
I didn't feel like I fitted in anywhere.
I'm an only child from a single mother and
I didn't feel like I fitted in my family.
It's only one other fucking person.
It's hard to develop an identity as an outsider
under those conditions.
I wasn't a recreational drug user, not from the get go.
For me it was medicinal from the first ever time I took drugs.
I was unhappy, I was miserable,
I felt lost, I felt alone and if anyone could offer me anything
that would deal with that feeling I'd have it.
When I was a kid chocolate biscuits,
when I was an adolescent pornography,
when someone came along with drugs, I'd take it. I'd do it.
And I believe that for we drug addicts and alcoholics,
we've got a spiritual craving, a yearning
and we don't have the language, the code
to express that in our society.
But the feeling won't go away so you gotta nullify it,
anaesthetize it somehow. I can't live with it.
I can't be alive
unless I'm living in love and community with other people,
I can't cope with it.
My only other option is to take drugs.
Because the feelings behind my drug use and my alcoholism,
they haven't gone nowhere.
Some drugs are great fun, all drugs can be fun used correctly.
Like booze as well.
It does a lovely job on occasions, loosening people up,
but when there are social conditions
like we have currently,
where there's a kind of an economic deprivation,
and where there is no moral or spiritual centre to our life,
I think it's really easy for all drugs
to play too a significant a role in a culture,
and I think that's happened with booze in this country.
MUSIC
When I see bankers taking people's money
and doing exactly what they want with it,
and when they're in trouble we bail them out.
Are you for real?!
We could start by shooting all the bankers,
hanging all the politicians.
A socialist society has got to be better than this.
ROCK BAND PLAYS 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN'
Fuck the Tories, fuck Margret Thatcher
and I look forward to her being worm food.
ROCK BAND PLAYS 'GOD SAVE THE QUEEN'
You are a hideous disgusting excuse for a human being
and I'm so glad you're dead.... cheers.
In a society where people are feeling lost, hopeless,
disenfranchised
then they are going to turn to alternative ways
of dealing with it and
you can either choose drugs or you can choose alcohol.
So when stuff in our life get too much
we just turn to alcohol because it's so easy to do that.
Even small amounts of alcohol
may provide an illusion of relaxation,
the person usually feels confident everything is alright.
Our government, has done it's best to curtail
people's access to any other forms of drug.
That's something that needs to be understood
right from the beginning
alcohol is a drug, as is Marijuana, as is coffee.
But it's a question of having a look
at which are most constructive
and which are most detrimental.
Most of the information and the facts that I know about alcohol
have come mainly from Professor Nutt.
As he said in the BBC news, alcohol is more harmful
than heroin or crack
when the overall dangers to the individual
and society are considered
according to the study in the Lancet.
So heroin is not dangerous?
Of course heroin is dangerous,
I wouldn't recommend anyone to take it!
The media tend to take a very sensationalist
and hysterical view about drugs.
- You've compared the dangers of ecstasy to horse riding.
You haven't read the paper have you?
Notorious drugs gangs.
Ecstasy and Speed.
Illegal drugs.
Drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs.
Shoot the drugs!
So a few years ago I started to get
interested in the relative harms of drugs.
Why are some drugs legal and some illegal?
And we pulled together an expert panel,
and we used a new technique
called Multi criteria Decision Analysis,
which looks at all the kinds of harms a drug can do
whether it can kill you when you take it,
to whether it actually causes environmental problems.
We discovered there were sixteen separate harms
and we ranked all the drugs on those harms,
and then we weighted the harms.
And amazingly out of that, to my surprise,
alcohol came top.
Alcohol is the most harmful drug in the UK.
When you look at the reasons for that,
you see that it's because of the social harms.
The harms due to health costs, due to traffic accidents,
due to violence in the streets, and domestic violence
those are the things that make alcohol
in the UK the most harmful drug.
- Anybody that fools around with this, adult or minor,
is playing with dynamite.
The drug laws do not reflect the science,
they do not reflect the harms.
Therefore they are wrong, i.e. they are unjust.
Promoting that statement to society is
a necessary thing because unjust laws are bad laws.
What I've discovered was that the government
did not want that message.
As I was promoting this rational approach,
the politicians where saying
'this cuts right against the way we want to portray the world'
and eventually they got irritated and sacked me.
Do you stand by what you said in 2009 that got you sacked?
Well yes I do. And since then I've realised there have been
greater problems as a result of some of the
failure to be logical about drugs.
- It sort of implied that governments
can do whatever they like with scientists.
If they don't like the evidence,
they get rid of the scientists, shoot the messenger.
Science is critical to defining the scale of the problem
and finding solutions.
So if you're gonna get rid of people
who say things you don't like,
you will most certainly make the situation worse.
He hadn't done his homework.
It's those same weasel words he's sticking to.
They even bought and paid for his leadership.
Once again the Prime Minister doesn't know his facts.
I'd suggest a different line of questioning.
The question has been asked. Let's hear the answer.
Thank you Mr Speaker,
I know the Prime Minister will want
to thank all those fantastic NHS staff
who are rolling up their sleeves and doing everything they can
to reduce avoidable early deaths.
They're asking the PM for Minimum Unit Pricing
in order to help them do their job
and stop people falling into addiction in the first place.
Minimum Pricing is sitting nervously on death row,
will the Prime Minister give it a reprieve,
at least until we know the outcome
from the Sheffield report and the Scottish courts?
What we will be able to introduce is something
the last government never did,
which is to say it should be illegal to sell alcohol
below the price of duty plus VAT.
That is something in all the binge drinking problems
we had under Labour, they never managed to do.
My Lords,
Minimum Unit Pricing will not be taken forward at present
but it will remain a policy under consideration.
I think Minimum Unit Pricing is a big part of the answer.
So said David Cameron last year,
but when it comes to tackling cheap booze in England and Wales
it seems he doesn't have the support
he thought he had.
It's political suicide to start talking
about raising alcohol prices
and I think when Cameron came out in favour...
in fact, announced that this was going to happen,
it was quite a surprise for a lot of people.
The Government's own department in 2008
showed that increasing the price of alcohol
led to a step decline in alcohol consumption and
was the most effective way of managing it.
Why then has the Government changed it's mind?
It announced its intention to increase alcohol pricing
that was widely welcomed.
Why does it ignore the evidence
on something which is very urgent
and which can save lives, reduce hospital admissions
and reduce crime?
- What's happened to it since then is
a fairly familiar tale of
what happens to Government policies when
they run up against powerful interests
that don't want them to happen.
And what you have is
who's got the most powerful lobbyists
and how do they get their way?
It was interesting why there was so much
opposition to Minimum Pricing.
I feel that there's a lot more questions to be asked
than just the simple thing of Minimum Pricing.
The young people who go out every weekend
think nothing of spending 50 pounds or 100 pounds
with taxies and drink and everything else.
This is an anti competitive suggestion
which is only going to hurt the legitimate consumers.
There is an evidence base that Minimum Pricing works.
I mean, come on! It's quite obvious.
So, countries where it's happened
Canada is the most recent example
see a huge improvement.
The Libertarian argument about Minimum Pricing,
which is that people should be free to choose
is sort of taken away,
or mitigated by the fact that with alcohol,
people drink and the harm they do is not just to themselves,
it's to others.
SCREECHING TYRES
CRASH
Well, there's the result
just another victim of a drunk driver.
Part of the problem with alcohol is our drug policy drives up use
alcohol is too liberally available.
And the other drugs are too constrained.
My personal opinion on having drugs
illegal at this point in history,
is it's a Medieval mentality
practised by Medieval politicians
to punish an entire class of people.
I don't have a great deal of faith in Parliamentary politics,
so I went to speak to the Home Office Select Committee.
Hello.
Good morning Mr Brand, please have a seat.
Whether or not it had an impact, me talking at the
Home Office Select Committee I would doubt it.
I think these things are about display more than function.
For me, what's more significant, is the way
that we socially regard the condition of addiction.
It's something that I consider to be an illness
and therefore more a health matter
than a criminal or judicial matter.
And drug addicts don't give a shit if drugs are illegal.
It doesn't slow the process down.
No one's ever going 'Oh No!'
Being arrested isn't a lesson,
it's just an administrative blip.
You need to demonstrate an awareness of the situation
or you seem like you don't know what you're talking about.
- But the victims of crime...
We've talked about them!
You can tell what party they're in by their questions, innit.
'What about the victims of the crime!'.
The Government likes alcohol.
It likes the tax benefits of alcohol,
it likes to essentially continue with this image
that alcohol is a safe drug if used responsibly,
and it likes looking tough on other drugs
because that fits into this sort of attitude
that politicians are strong and can make hard decisions.
It's one of the great public health scandals
of the last century, that we do not properly take account
of what's happening in terms of alcohol and health damage.
The singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead at her flat,
the 27 year old discovered at her property in North London
by emergency services, at around six...
- We knew she was an alcoholic.
She'd been in rehab, her family knew about her problem
they tried to help her.
Why did the British public refuse to believe
that a women we saw as a walking train wreck for years,
that she did of alcoholism, 'Oh no she must have died of drugs'.
I'd been banging on
that she hadn't taken drugs for three years,
and everyone thought I was in denial.
I wasn't in denial, she hadn't taken drugs.
She was a tiny, tiny little girl
who drank like George Best on a stag night every night.
Of course she died of alcohol poisoning
but we don't want to see it
because it's too frightening.
We should be telling people how dangerous alcohol is,
and we should be using examples like her.
Like they say a lot don't they, that anyone can get clean
and that actually is really hard.
The first time someone said to me
'try to get to bed tonight without drinking or using',
I was like 'What?! What do you mean? It's seven o'clock,
there's too much day left for that amount
of consciousness and awakeness.
MUSIC
It's a strong drinking culture.
I think it's sort of expected, it's almost a rights of passage
getting older, your first pint.
I think it's something you're expected to do,
and I think if you don't drink you're outside of the norm.
FIREWORKS
Happy New Year!
Fucking drop it into 2k 14 in style!
It is incredibly entrenched.
The baby is born and you wet the baby's head...
the eighteenth birthday party.
It's part of life, it's part of everything.
It's so bound up.
It's a bit like the nuclear bomb, we've got it,
we are where we are.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask questions about it
and ask 'why are we here, and is it the right place to be?'.
I was trying to buy an eighteenth birthday card
for a relative of mine for last year,
that did not mention drunkenness and alcohol,
and I had to look at twenty five cards
before I eventually found one that was alcohol free.
And that sums it up.
We get wasted when we're happy,
we get wasted because we're bored,
we get wasted because we are excited, sad,
celebrating, getting married or divorced,
because someone was born, because someone died.
He turned water into wine,
it was important to Jesus that the ceremony went well,
and that guests had enough alcohol to drink.
Well these guests don't seem to be having any trouble with that.
This guy's got loads of alcohol.
The groom is drinking,
and so is the bride.
And him.
And her.
And that old man over there.
Oh wait, its time for the speeches! Shush be quiet.
I think I was less successful in convincing Lucy
that she wouldn't need
half a bottle of champagne this morning,
at home, before the church service.
I s'pose I should blame myself
for turning you into something of an alchie,
stumbling into the gutter on the way home from your local.
I'm absolutely desperate for a proper drink.
We always get there eventually... the pub that is.
Keep your eyes set on that goal, the great pub of life.
When in doubt or times of stress,
find comfort in the bottom of a wine glass.
Cheers!
- Yes, some real good advice there.
It's almost like this day was based around alcohol
and getting as drunk as possible.
Are you really going to that wedding
to watch Jack and Jill get married? No, you're not.
You're actually going because you think you have a free bar.
It's not about the ceremony at all,
it's all about what's going to happen afterwards.
For several millennia, the Christian church has used wine
as a symbol of the blood of Christ.
So it's part of what is I suppose
the major defining social cohesive group,
the church.
I often wondered what happened to alcoholics who were Catholic,
who had to go and have a sip of wine.
There wasn't an alcohol free...
so I think there is something there.
Alcohol is not evil which the bible doesn't teach that it is.
A Christian taking some wine
or alcoholic drink is quite legitimate,
as long as they are moderate and self controlled.
I think religion has a very big influence over people's lives.
So with that in mind
and all the references to alcohol in the Bible,
do you think Christianity plays a role
in the UK's alcohol problem?
Yeah alcohol in Christianity
is a little bit of a controversial subject
but I don't think it is anything to do with
Christianity in the UK.
You could go to America where
Christianity is quite prevalent and
you don't have the same problems there.
It's something to do with the mind set that we have here.
A lot of youngsters that I talk to,
especially here in our city and around our community,
have no aspirations, no visions,
nothing to aim for,
and their lives seem hollow and empty,
and they try to fill that void with all sorts and
it's drugs, it's sex and it's alcohol.
MUSIC
We live in a culture now where
in many other walks of life,
we're expected to consume excessively.
We're told consumption's a good thing
and we're supposed to desire things,
especially when they're cheap and pleasurable.
There's so much evidence of the psychological effects
of exposure to advertising of branded goods
which give you a sense of what it is to be an adult,
or a sophisticated individual.
I think it impacts on young people's attitudes to themselves
and their self esteem.
I think one of the most insidious changes we've seen
in the last twenty years
is the way the drinks industry has
tried to get to it's consumers younger and younger.
So the invention of alcopops, the marketing of alcopops
by the alcohol industry to attract a new type of drinker.
Designed specifically at getting young people,
particularly girls, into alcohol in their teens.
It's in the streets, next to schools, on our televisions.
It's advertised around sports.
Gerrard! He's got it!
Oh Steven Gerrard!
We know that it does get through to young people.
We recently did a study of ten and eleven year olds
and asked them to recognise different
types of brands and logos,
and ninety five percent of the ten and eleven year olds
recognised Fosters and Stella Artois,
but they didn't recognise cake and ice cream brands.
Even we at alcohol concern were surprised by those results.
I just see a pattern where in countries
where advertising's banned
and the advertising industry behaves more responsibly
in the marketing of goods,
young peoples lives are less commercialised,
they're less exposed to those influences
and they tend to behave in a more responsible way,
with regards to alcohol, consumerism, and other products.
FRENCH ADVERT
In France, you're allowed to advertise alcohol products
but you can't have all of the imagery
and exotic nature surrounding the advert.
You can advertise on the basis of what's in the product,
where the product was made,
and the strength of the product.
But you can't have a story line and characters
and they also don't have alcohol sponsors of sporting events.
So the Heineken cup in France is called the 'H Cup'
and we think something similar should happen in Britain.
SPORTING CROWD AMBIENCE
Let's go fucking mental, la la la la!
Your point is to stop drugs and alcoholism
by people never starting?
You two believe in this fantasy of addiction
in which people lose...
- Fantasy of addiction?
Oh a complete fantasy, in which people
lose all power over themselves and
become victims of this terrible, frightening disease.
I'm a person that if I have a drink I can't stop,
and so if I follow your ideology I'm choosing to do that?
That I'm choosing...
- That's exactly my, not my ideology it's my belief yes.
You do choose.
It's an obsession of your mind and an allergy of your body,
so this is what happens to me, I start thinking about alcohol,
I can't stop thinking about it.
- What's the objective physical proof of this inability to stop?
I think it's very difficult for people who aren't alcoholic
or don't have a problem with alcohol
to see what it's like to be an alcoholic.
It just looks stupid, it looks ridiculous. It's like
'just stop it'.
It won't happen to everybody, it happens to a minority of people.
I think that is why it's difficult
for people it doesn't happen to to get their heads round it.
I have an obsession of the mind that compels me to drink,
and when I do drink I have a physical allergic reaction
which manifests itself in the phenomenon of craving.
I was a cheat, I was a liar, I was a thief.
I was full of resentments and I was full of fear.
If you are the person who is dependent,
who has to wake up every morning
and your first thought is
'I feel ill,
I feel shaky,
and I know what will work is if I have some alcohol
I will immediately feel better'.
That's in some ways quite a simple existence,
but it's really frightening.
People who you might imagine are pillars of society
are often hiding all sorts of stories.
The only way we can even get a hint of that
is in the kind of confessional,
either of the church or the therapy room.
Images like this have become synonymous with our country.
But there's a whole other side
to alcohol abuse that we don't see.
SIGH
Fucking hell man.
This is my uncle John.
So I'm probably an alcoholic.
Probably.
Yeah I've got a bit here, but that's it.
It's just a sip.
What is that? Is that whisky?
That's whisky yes.
Do you want some?
No.
LAUGHING
OK, no problem.
I used to drink wine and beer
and all kinds of fucking rubbish.
But I don't anymore, I drink just a little bit of whisky,
that's all.
But I'm just a sipper,
I'm not a swigger.
I just sip,
you can see
I've hardly touched it.
Whether he sips it or not,
he gets through two bottles of whisky every day.
This comes to about eighty units of alcohol,
which is twenty six times his recommended daily limit.
He's been diagnosed with Wernicke's Encephalopathy,
also known as 'The Disease of Alcoholics'.
It affects me in many ways,
I haven't left the house
in more than six months.
I can't.
I can't even get to the corner shops these days.
All right, so... Yeah, Yeah, I, I've...
I don't wear shoes anymore,
there's no point.
Maria, my wife has to go out and do all the shopping.
And my son...
COUGHING
has to go to school by himself.
But that's OK. It's working.
Everything's working.
What, so sometimes he's better than this,
and sometimes he's worse?
So how long have you been like this?
God.
COUGHS
Quite a long time,
quite a long time.
I would say about maybe a year.
I just fucking lost all comprehension
of everything.
Maria would come in with some food,
which meant nothing.
I didn't understand it.
I'd look at it
and I'd have not a clue
what I was supposed to do with it.
I could still drink some whisky,
that was OK.
But I couldn't understand food
at all.
I couldn't understand anything.
So you didn't eat for quite a long time?
Yes, a very long time.
Do you eat now?
I'm trying.
Trying to force feed myself,
trying to learn how to
eat again.
Here you are! - Here we are, yes.
John, are you going to come eat with us?
No, I'm OK. I've got some whisky.
I couldn't fucking figure it out,
I had no idea what the hell was going on,
and that's when I went to the hospital.
To Liverpool hospital.
God it was horrible.
How long where you there for?
Nine days.
They found a little bit of brain damage,
not much.
Then one of the nurses said
'everything you've taken in your life
has caught up with you',
which I personally don't believe.
It's some kind of
God knows what.
SPITS
Urm...
Christ...
It was a...
COUGHING
fucking hell... I can't remember
what it's called.
What happened to your face?
Last night,
I had a fall in the bathroom,
a bad one,
fucking blood everywhere.
I've broken my nose,
which is OK, it's straight
so that will heal by itself.
COUGHING
So I'm not worried about that.
I'm starting to get a bit drunk, so that helps.
That helps does it?
Yes, it does.
I spend most of my time in bed,
in here.
I'm living down here in bed
so I can get to the bathroom,
because I have to go about twenty times a day.
Sometimes it's not possible to get to the bathroom.
That's pretty difficult.
I normally wear,
not jeans but...
bathroom...
what do you call them?
Pyjamas?
Pyjamas, yes.
That's what I normally wear,
because it can fall through
onto the floor and then I can clean it up,
which is not very nice.
You know, having to do a shit on the floor
is not that easy,
but I'm sort of getting used to it.
Just poo comes down here.
How does Patrick feel about your drinking?
Err...
nothing.
I don't know, I really don't know.
Ouch. This is really hurting.
Do you think you'll ever get better?
I don't know,
I really don't know.
I have no idea.
It doesn't look good.
I really don't think it looks good...
MUSIC
My uncle hasn't always been like this.
This was the first time I'd see him in three years
and it was shocking to see how much he had changed,
but for me the most disturbing thing of all
is the lack of treatment available for people like him.
Access to treatment is a huge issue.
Compared to drug treatment, alcohol is way down the list.
Well this is a political issue really.
I think the Government has focused on opiate users
heroin, cocaine and that sort of class of drugs.
I think there's a real stigma still
in accessing treatment for alcohol.
It's still perceived to be something to be ashamed of,
something that people are afraid to admit to themselves
and to others that they've got a problem.
- About 1.6 million people in England are alcohol dependent,
yet only about 6 percent of people
with an alcohol dependency problem
are receiving treatment.
That's not because the other ninety four percent of people
don't want to receive it
there is very little alcohol treatment available.
In this town, and its only a small market town,
there is us who deal with drug and alcohol problems.
Next door there's a sort of drop in, fuck about, play pool,
don't change your drug use, come in and do something,
load of bollocks.
But there is that facility
which is being funded by the Government... for drug problems.
There's a Methadone distribution centre,
where you can get your Methadone script
and various other bits and pieces,
which is staffed by about twelve people,
which is managed at county level by the local drug action team.
For alcohol, there is one person that works up the road there.
Actually, I think there's two now.
And they deal with the entire alcohol problem of the county.
It's ridiculous.
But for drugs, which isn't even half of the problem!
Thousands of people die of alcoholism, thousands.
Hundreds die from drug dependency
but we've invested everything in drugs.
APPLAUSE
It's really nice to see you all here,
for what is a celebration of recovery and
I suppose the one reassuring thing is that we are still here.
A lot of rehabs have closed
one called ARA,
which had been around for twenty years closed last week,
and small independent rehabs are closing very rapidly indeed.
So it's getting harder and harder,
and those people who have been funded through treatment
you are getting luckier and luckier,
because it's becoming something that's
gonna be very difficult to do in the future.
Focus12 taught me to ask for help,
and to not be ashamed.
It doesn't make you a bad person,
it makes you a stronger person
by having the strength to ask 'I need help'
and to be able to do that.
You know the last rehab I went to
they were tucking me up in bed, reading me a bed time story
it didn't make sense.
But at Focus12, there's something unique
about what Chip has formed in that treatment centre
that just seems to work.
They just made me believe that I can do it.
90 percent of the counsellors have been through it themselves.
There's just something about Chip, he is very persuasive.
He will look you in the eyes and say 'I did it. You can do this'.
What you have all independently achieved is an incredible thing
and the more people you tell the better.
Having had a previous experience of alcoholism
is incredibly important in this work.
This is a condition that responds
very well to being treated
by somebody who has had the condition.
I wanted to use every single day,
and I don't think there was a day in eighteen years
when I willingly went without a drug.
There were days when I did
because I was locked up in a prison cell
or police custody or something like that,
but never willingly.
Anecdotally, Chip was an armed robber,
in and out of nick all the time
I hope you don't mind me telling them this...
What's interesting when you see Chip and Noreen,
people who seem immensely capable,
and who have had an incredible impact on countless drug addicts
and alcoholics, is when we listen to their stories,
both of them were fucking hardcore nutters weren't they?
Chip sometimes, when he reminds me of his using,
I always think
'remember to include that when you take his advice
that you're listening to a mad man'.
I have been put in front of psychiatrists, psychologists,
probation officers, various drug workers, alcohol workers
all these people, and there was always a part of me that felt
you don't really understand what it's like
to live on the street.
You don't understand what it's like finding somewhere
to sleep every night.
You don't understand that you've got to steal sometimes,
you don't get that at all.
So being able to talk to somebody who you knew
had that experience, made being open and honest about it easier,
because you knew you weren't going to get judgement back,
you were going to get somebody having empathy for you.
- You don't feel as weird or
as ostracised by society when you're
surrounded by like minded junkies.
Before I was at Focus, my life was absolute hell.
I had an awful childhood growing up.
I grew up in a family full of addicts,
it just seemed like the normal thing to me.
Focus has completely changed my life and I'm ever so grateful.
I'm grateful to Chip. Thank You.
APPLAUSE
There is still a perception in this country that an alcoholic
stereotypically sits on a park bench in a dirty mac,
and just sort of mumbles hysterically into their beard.
Crazy drunk drivers.
I hate the term 'functioning alcoholic', but I was one.
I had a good job, lovely house, lovely kids, lovely wife...
but I was an alcoholic,
I couldn't do without a drink everyday.
Ironically, I gleamed some form of success in my career,
but by that stage I was already a full blown alcoholic.
I lost everything my marbles, everything,
I ended up in a hostel, had this tooth knocked out by someone
because I asked them to turn their music down.
I was picking up butts off the street.
I was picking some butts off the street around Oval station.
I had this trick of bending down, tying up my shoelaces
and picking a butt up and pocketing it,
and doing the same trick because everyone was passing by.
I had just picked a butt up and put it in my pocket...
and I was still quite presentable in a way,
and somebody said 'Oh excuse me'. I went 'oh hello'
and thought 'oh fuck they've seen me pick up a butt',
and he went ' are you the guy in The Office, and I went
'oh yeah'.
Well if he doesn't mind us laughing at him
what harm's been done?
I went through this whole game of shaking his hand
and I just thought 'oh my God, if he knew the truth'.
Do I look like an alcoholic? God no.
Do I look like I'm recovering from alcoholism?
Probably not actually,
but what are we waiting for? Who the hell does?
If I don't look like an alcoholic who the hell does?
Who are we waiting for?
Who is it that's got the big sandwich board saying
'party time'?
Nobody looks like that.
It's delusions like that that we have to cut through.
- We use terms like 'regular drinker'
when we mean 'alcoholic', we always try
to minimize the possible
understanding of the harms of alcohol,
while we maximize our perception of harms of other drugs.
When I talk about the person I was when I was an alcoholic,
it feels like I am talking about a different person.
The life I have now compared to the life I had while drinking
is incomparable.
I don't look the same,
I don't recognise myself when I see photos.
Everything about my life has changed so much.
I'm very happy now, life is bigger.
I see things now, I experience things.
I have interests which aren't inside of a pub.
The personal transformation that I've undergone
from being a hopeless, hapless, ridiculous drug addict
with no future, no chance, and no hope, to being
an equal, valid member of this community
is perhaps something we can spread.
You all know what it was like when you were out there using.
Even those of you who aren't junkies or drunks,
you know people that are, and it seems desperate,
it seems hopeless.
It's horrible when someone in your life
is suffering from this disease.
There doesn't seem like a way out.
Well there is, through the practice of certain principles,
and the support of other addicts,
there's a way out of it.
I ended up coming to Alcoholics Anonymous.
I saw guys in their teens, I saw girls in their teens,
in their twenties, their thirties,
men and women from all walks of life,
and these guys seem to have a solution
and I was attracted to what I saw.
I don't know why I'm an alcoholic but it's not relevant.
The thing that is relevant is that I found a solution.
I know that my story isn't unusual at all,
because I set a website up and I
talked about the really grim, horrible things that happened
to me in an average day, and it went crazy.
It went insane.
I had emails from
places I've never been, people I've never seen
saying 'that's how I feel'.
I'm shocked by the 21 year old girls
who email me, and boys saying
'I've been an alcoholic 5 years, my parents don't know,
I live at home'.
I'm shocked by the 22 year old girl that says to me
'this is my third go in rehab.
I'm gonna die but my parents aren't taking it seriously'.
I always think 'oh nothings going to shock me today',
and then I hear another story.
We're facilitating alcoholism,
we're killing our children, we're killing our young people,
and it's fine
because for one person to admit they have a problem,
is for everyone to admit that
we all have a bit of a problem.
It's crazy we're in such denial
when it's all around us.
The UK is not alone when it comes to problems with alcohol.
But there is something about British culture
that seems to foster illogical attitudes to drinking.
- I think drinking in this country
is seen as something that's very humorous.
The first time I got drunk,
I was nine at a new years party.
My relatives just thought it was funny.
LAUGHING
It's become a cultural thing now you know
'lets go out and get pissed'.
INCOHERENT CHANTING
There's a lot of pent up aggression in people,
and it's a way of releasing it isn't it?
Oh she fell over, she's been drinking way more than us.
- The damage alcohol does to British society is immense.
It's the biggest public health disaster we face.
SIRENS
I think there are a particular group of factors
about the UK that aren't instantly linked, but
when put together you kind of
understand why we are where we are.
A large part of it is actually to the British stiff upper lip
not talking about our feelings.
We're not taught to open up and just cry...
or hug your dad!
Or show your emotions. It's all kept in,
and the only way to release it is through drink and drugs.
SHOUTING
To me I think a lot of it has a lot to do
with that British attitude to life
to Britishness. And that strength and that steel.
- This is England, the mighty powerful Britannia.
We're so proud, Britannia rules the waves.
If there's a pre existing emotional or spiritual condition
like if you're a bit unhappy,
alcohol can easily be seen as something to fill that gap.
- I think that we're bored. I think we're depressed.
I think we're scared, and I think
as a nation we're medicating.
If you looked at the British media
you would get the impression
that drunkenness is completely unacceptable.
We're obsessed with how awful it is,
and youth anti social behaviour is a major focus.
But I would say that by focusing on it, we have glamorised it.
Current policy in Britain seems to be largely the strapline
'drink responsibly'.
Yet everyone knows that alcohol takes away
that sense of responsibility.
- It's embarrassing if anyone really believes that's a policy.
Until we take on the drink industry
and their vested interests
we will not see the problem resolved the way we need it.
- Who in this room would like to see prohibition?
Were we suddenly to remove alcohol,
there would be an awful lot of people
who would be really struggling.
Prohibition in the United States created more
death and murder in American history
than at any time other than the civil war,
so prohibition is certainly not the answer.
A lot of people are just stupid.
Put some antibiotics in the water, get rid of it all.
It's not going to go away.
We have a love affair with alcohol.
Alcohol is a lubricant. It's like the blood in our veins.
Drinking is absolutely embedded in culture.
It's kind of everywhere. It's part of our religion.
It sounds silly but I think weather is a big part of it.
There is often bad weather and people socialise inside.
There was a time where the pub was probably
the only place on the street that was warm...
...and that had amenities
that you would associate with socialisation.
Greater state intervention, higher taxes,
more commercial restrictions
do not address the societal attitudes that we must alter.
We aren't teaching our kids how to be responsible around alcohol
because we aren't responsible around alcohol.
Who's going to teach us?
- I think the way forward is one of education,
to help people understand the damage caused by alcohol.
I think there's a lot more that we could be doing
in honestly educating people about drugs.
It's no good just going into schools
saying 'drugs are bad, stop it'.
People seem to need to take drugs and drink
one way or another.
We need to provide these people the support that they need.
It's one of the easiest areas to cut funding,
and no politician is going to stand up
and propose for greater care of the addicts and alcoholics
in this country.
We can't be judgemental, we can't be pejorative,
we shouldn't be punitive.
Until we have a compassionate, empathetic approach
we won't solve the problem.
- That's enough, it is enough now for us to say stop.
If anybody could come up with a solution,
you'd be a millionaire.
How many more people need to end up
like my uncle?
How many more people need to die?
Britain has an alcohol problem,
but what's it going to take for us to admit it?
To put down that bottle,
to wake up,
without a hangover.