Alcohol: Adrian Chiles – Drinkers Like Me

Introduction

In this revealingly intimate documentary for BBC2, Adrian Chiles takes a long, hard look at his own love of boozing. He wants to find out why he and many others don’t think they are addicted to alcohol despite finding it almost impossible to enjoy life without it. Adrian, who drinks almost every day, decides to start a drinking diary and soon finds out his intake is way over the recommended limit. He decides to visit his parents to find out what it was that motivated him to start drinking as a teenager and reveals that sneaking into pubs underage was all about friendship and being part of something, and that the allure of the social side of drinking has never really left him since his teens.

So after drinking far too much for far too long, Adrian decides to get his liver checked out. The results come as a shock and after seeing an addiction therapist Adrian begins to realise that like many other people he needs to do something about his excessive boozing. His big question is whether he needs to quit completely or if he can drink more responsibly. His first port of call is old mate Frank Skinner. Frank was a Pernod in the morning bedwetting kind of drinker but quit 30 years ago. His advice to Adrian is unexpected. [Taken from BBC2]

Quotes

“Just because you’re not waking up in a shop doorway at 4:00 in the morning or not waking up with a complete stranger, or not drinking sherry in the morning, just because you’re not any of those things doesn’t mean you’re not alcohol dependent or have got some kind of dependency issue with alcohol.”

“A third of the people coming into the liver unit with alcohol-related liver damage do not meet the criteria for alcoholism … they’re just drinking more than they should. We’re trying to get a conceptual change now on how we view alcohol and we’re looking at this idea that it’s heavy use over time for a drug like alcohol – the more you use, the much greater impact. So, any reduction is good.”

“Research suggests that 16 to 24 year olds are now drinking less – it’s people of my generation with the real problem. Alcohol-related deaths in the over-50s have risen sharply since 2001.”

“The NHS defines binge drinking as, drinking lots of alcohol in the short space of time or drinking to get drunk.”

“With a Fibroscan score of 8.9, we would classify that as a mild or even moderate fibrosis of the liver and on top of that you’ve got significant liver fat, which we call hepatic steatosis, which is something that we also see with heavy alcohol consumption … You can’t carry on like this – you’re at risk of disease progression.”

“You associate those good times with alcohol and actually, until you know of stop and go back and start changing some of those beliefs, then you’ll always do the same thing.”

“The question is now, do I have to abstain completely or can I drink more responsibly, to use the world’s most boring phrase. Can I do it and still get the joy out of drinking while drinking a lot less?”

“You think you need beer in order to carry on your social life … for some strange reason you need some sort of handrail in your social life, something that takes you somewhere that makes you a person that you aren’t or you don’t feel you are normally. That’s the question you’ve got to ask.”

“I envy your relationship with alcohol – it may be a bit above the norm but it’s near enough to the norm not to sacrifice all the good stuff.”

“A lot of people … one of their fears about giving up drinking completely is, how will I be able to socialize, I’ll never be able to enjoy myself, I’ll never be able to do this, I’ll never be able to do that, and that’s what stops them taking that final step but it’s simply not true. [SMART Recovery Group]”