Alcohol Help

Alcohol charity Drinkaware has appointed internationally renowned alcohol expert Professor Paul Wallace* as its Chief Medical Adviser. Taking up the newly created role at the charity earlier this month, Professor Wallace will support Drinkaware’s mission to influence consumer behaviour by providing accurate information and facts about the effects of alcohol on people’s lives and lifestyles. As Chief Medical Adviser, Wallace will review the charity’s health and medical communications, advise on campaigns and act as a media spokesperson.

Wallace, who specialises in epidemiology and primary care, is Professor of Primary Care at University College London and a General Practitioner. Having pioneered studies on the detection and management of patients with excessive alcohol consumption in general practice, Professor Wallace continues to take an active interest in alcohol research. He is also the chief investigator on the trial of DownYourDrink.org.uk, an interactive website designed to help heavy drinkers to moderate their alcohol consumption.

As Drinkaware’s Chief Medical Adviser, Professor Wallace will be supported by an eight-strong medical advisory panel with experts in specialist areas including liver; mental health; accidents and emergencies; breast cancer; oral cancer; digestion; adolescent health and public health.

Paul Wallace, says: “Public education plays a key role in helping to shape individual attitudes to alcohol consumption. In my general practice I often see the reality of what happens when people regularly drink too much, so I’m delighted to team-up with Drinkaware to provide consumers with rigorous clinical information to help them protect their health and wellbeing.”

Chris Sorek, Drinkaware’s CEO, says: “As an epidemiology and primary care specialist, Professor Wallace is perfectly placed to offer insights into the effects of alcohol on public health and society. His wealth of experience and expertise will ensure that Drinkaware continues to be a trustworthy and credible source of information for consumers who are concerned, or simply curious, about the effects of alcohol on their health.“

Drinkaware aims to change British drinking culture by giving consumers information to make informed decisions about the effects of alcohol on their lifestyles.

Drinkaware

Swansea Coastguard have been engaged this morning in the search and rescue of a drunk man who was spotted in the water by two officers from the Avon and Somerset police. He was wearing jeans and a t shirt and is in his late 30s.

He was spotted at just after 1.00 am swimming in Weston Bay near Marine Lake after wading into the water and was seen drifting towards Knightsone Island.

The Weston Super Mare Coastguard Rescue Team were immediately sent to the area and the Weston Super Mare RNLI in shore lifeboat was requested to launch at the same time. A rescue helicopter R169 was also scrambled.

A radio request was made for any vessel to come and assist whilst the police maintained radio contact with the Coastguard from the shore and kept the man in visual contact. The two police officers also entered the water with a lifebelt in order to assist.

The man was seen to go under the water several times and thrash around and a police helicopter was scrambled to keep a track on the casualty from the air.

The RAF rescue helicopter from Chivenor also used its searchlight to guide the lifeboat to the drowning man.

By 1.45 am the man had been pulled from the water by the crew of the RNLI inshore lifeboat and was taken to the shoreline for onward transmission to hospital. He was vomiting and had clearly been drinking heavily.

Bernie Kemble from Swansea Coastguard said

“We understand the man has made a good recovery in hospital and is talking with those around him.

“To enter the water when clearly inebriated is utter madness. If he had not been spotted by the police he may have been lost forever. We are all aware of the loss of the two men from the same area just a few days ago. Despite the fine weather we are enjoying, cold water shock, and the effect alcohol has on the body dramatically reduces the chances of survival. In this case the man is very, very lucky and probably owes his life to both the people who spotted him and the rescue crews who saved him.”

Maritime And Coastguard Agency

Commenting on the article published today in The Lancet which claims that worldwide, 1 in 25 deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption, Alcohol Concern Chief Executive Don Shenker said:

“This worrying situation is unfortunately reflected in England, where we have seen deaths caused by alcohol increase almost a fifth since the beginning of the decade.

“While the main cause remains alcoholic liver disease, it’s also important to remember that alcohol can contribute to a range of cancers, strokes and heart problems. This is not to mention its role in accidents and violence.

“On both a national and global scale we’re facing a disease burden of huge proportions. There is no longer any doubt that if a society drinks large amounts of alcohol, we’ll see high levels of harm as a result.

“Many countries are investigating new ways to cut deaths and disease and reduce the burden on health services by using the price of alcohol to lower consumption. As the Chief Medical Officer has identified, putting a stop to the irresponsible sale of low cost alcohol would be an effective step in the right direction.

Alcohol Concern

The first step to recovery for someone struggling with an alcohol problem is to undertake a detox programme. It’s vital to get rid of the accumulated alcohol in their body, before they can embark on the emotional and behavioural work that recovery demands. But during the first critical hours or days of abstinence, withdrawal symptoms can be physically painful, damaging, and in some cases, downright dangerous.

These can include:

• Nausea

• Tremors

• Sweats

• Powerful cravings for alcohol

• Anxiety

• Convulsions (in a small number of cases)

That’s why it’s vital that a detox programme is medically supervised by alcohol treatment specialists, ideally in a residential setting. But how can you find an affordable detox treatment, at a time when most households are having to budget?

It’s true that the costs of residential detox treatment are as diverse as the number of available programmes and treatment providers. When considering the costs of a programme, it is essential to know what the provider includes, its approach to detoxification and its success rates.

But residential detox isn’t only for the very wealthy. The Linwood Group, for example, was founded on the principle that affordable alcohol help needn’t involve any compromise in quality. With that in mind, it prices its services at a level that cannot be beaten on a like-for-like basis anywhere in England.

"We pride ourselves in offering an excellent treatment service and it makes sense to us to increase the affordability of that service, so that it is accessible to as many people as possible," explains Linwood Group resesearch director Sue Allchurch. At Linwood, she adds, clients usually undertake a detox programme of around a week, before moving on to several weeks of counselling and therapy.

The group is so confident in the effectiveness of its services, she adds, that it is prepared to refund any difference in costs if someone that comes to it is able to demonstrate that they could have received the same treatment in facilities of the same quality elsewhere in the UK.

Cheaper options – including self-detox – simply don’t work. From a statistical vantage point, the vast majority of drinkers who try to detoxify themselves on their own will be unsuccessful. There’s four main reasons for that:

1. The addict has to overcome the physical, social, and emotional grounds for their addiction.

2. The addict has to deal with and adjust to the modifications in the way the brain functions.

3. The addict has to experience the uncomfortable and painful withdrawal symptoms that commonly occur after refraining from the drug of choice.

4. The addict has to fight the cravings for the drug to which they are addicted.

Medically trained specialists, working in a residential setting and able to prescribe drugs that can help combat withdrawal symptoms and cravings, are well equipped to guide people suffering from alcohol dependency through this difficult period.

And as Sue Allchurch points out, the costs for residential detox – and a further programme of counselling and therapy – may be a small price to pay, when you consider the 33,000 people in the UK who die every year from alcohol-related accidents.

Linwood Manor

A coalition of leading UK public health organisations have joined forces to call for a ban on the advertising of alcohol sold on promotion. The Alcohol Health Alliance, which includes Alcohol Concern and the Royal College of Physicians, wants to see an end to all adverts which promote alcohol on the basis of low cost. This would include discounted alcohol, multi-buy promotions and buy-one-get-one-free special offers. The Alliance hopes that such a move would reduce competition between supermarkets to sell alcohol cheaply and below cost in order to increase consumption. The Alliance wants the ban to include advertising by supermarkets, in which alcohol on promotion is one of a number of products advertised.

In their submission to the Advertising Standards Authority’s comprehensive review of advertising codes, the Alliance requests that ‘advertisements must not include alcohol sales promotions and must not imply, condone or encourage immoderate drinking’. The Alliance believes that the advertising of alcohol sales promotions encourages competition between retailers to heavily discount alcohol products and encourages below-cost or ‘loss leading’ sales, in turn leading to higher alcohol consumption and an escalating public health crisis.

Other European countries, such as France and Norway, have a total ban on all alcohol advertising on television and billboards.

Alcohol Concern Chief Executive Don Shenker said:

“Supermarket price wars played out in the media are pushing the costs of alcohol down and presenting alcohol as an everyday household item.

“By promoting heavily discounted alcohol, retailers are encouraging bulk buying and contradicting the safe drinking messages the Government is trying to promote, and which they claim to support.”

Royal College of Physicians President Ian Gilmore said:

“As a society we know we have a drink problem and to allow alcohol to be marketed like soap powder is simply not acceptable.

“We have the evidence that young people are influenced by marketing and know that other countries are taking firm action. We must follow suit.”

Alcohol Concern

Society is squeamish about female alcoholism, preferring to see it as primarily a ‘male’ problem. But it’s time to rethink that misconception, according to a May 2009 study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The research finds that binge drinking among women has almost doubled since 1998 and that the ‘alcohol gender gap’ is narrowing fast. The proportion of women who binge drink rose from 8 per cent in 1998 to 15 per cent in 2006. Among men, by contrast, binge drinking increased only slightly over the same period, from 22 per cent to 23 per cent.

Among alcohol treatment specialists, the knock-on effects of women binge drinking is all too clear. More women than ever are seeking help for problems with alcohol dependency, as a result of drinking habits that have spiralled out of control.

"More women are coming into treatment, year on year," agrees Sue Allchurch, research director of alcohol treatment specialist Linwood Group. By 2010, she predicts, the male/female patient balance will be equal. "As women increasingly compete with men for equality, they increase their drinking, too."

That’s a dangerous game for women to play, she says. Once alcoholic, women are more likely than men to experience severe health problems relating to their drinking. In fact, she adds, they are between 50 per cent and 100 per cent more likely to suffer an alcohol-related death including suicide, an alcohol-related accident, heart disease, a stroke and cirrhosis of the liver.

So how can women define and identify the signs of binge drinking? In general terms, it is typically defined as consuming on at least one day a week more than twice the safe limit recommended by the government, which is three to four units of alcohol for a man and two to three units for a woman.

With the rise of female binge drinking, it’s at least a positive sign that women now feel more comfortable asking for help with the disease of alcoholism. More women of all ages, however, need to take a good, hard look at how alcohol is affecting their lives.

Across Britain, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found the ­average consumption of women aged 16 to 24 rose from 7.3 units a week in 1992 to 10.8 in 2006. The biggest increase in consumption was among women over 65, rising from 2.7 units to 5.1 a week. There’s clearly a long way to go in addressing – and tackling – this issue.

Linwood Manor

Alcoholism affects many people and is notoriously difficult to treat. However, the recent launch of a book by Dr Olivier Ameisen has again fuelled the debate for a ‘miracle-pill’ for curing alcoholism and addiction. Obviously, medical opinion is divided on the benefits, or not, of this particular cure, but it again raises an important question: is there a short-cut cure for alcoholics on the horizon?

Although Dr Ameisen’s claim that a drug commonly prescribed for muscle spasms helped to make him indifferent to alcohol, the drug in question has not undergone any clinical trials and he had to take dangerously high levels of the medication to have the desired effect. So, at present, there is no scientific substance to Dr Ameisen’s claim. However, a recent drug that is making the headlines in the US, that has undergone scientific testing is a migraine and seizure drug , topiramate. This particular drug was tested against a placebo in a 14 week clinical trial on diagnosed alcoholics and the results announced in June 2009.

The aim of the trial was to see if it would reduce the sample group’s craving for alcohol. The results were encouraging. On average, patients in the topiramate group experienced a 54 percent decline in their craving and obsessive thoughts about alcohol. This was compared with a 33 percent reduction in the placebo group. The drug also did a better job of lowering liver enzymes, cholesterol, body mass index, and blood pressure-which reduces the risk of serious health conditions. However, the side effects included numbness or tingling sensations, altered taste, weight loss leading to anorexia, and difficulty with concentration.

As can be seen from even just these two examples, a ‘miracle-pill’ cure for alcoholism, is not a reality at present. Even those drugs that can assist the process have to be weighed compared to their accompanying side-effects. The triggers that lead a person to becoming alcohol dependent are not straight forward and a person deciding to stop drinking will need to seek professional help to guide them through the process.

Sue Allchurch, director of Linwood Group, explains further: "Apart from the physical aspect of alcohol dependency, withdrawal from alcohol also brings up and out the underlying problems that began the whole drinking pattern in the first place. When a person begins to seek help for a drinking related problem, it is important that they don’t just become fixated on finding a ‘wonder-pill’ that is an alcoholism cure, but see their decision as a journey to getting well emotionally as well as physically."

There are a range of treatments available for those looking to seek help for an alcohol related problem. The key is to choose the type of treatment that best suits the individual and is most likely to lead to a positive resolution to the addiction. The most recognised programme for long-term alcohol recovery has to be the Alcoholics Anonymous organisations 12 Step model. This is based on acceptance, letting go of the past and dealing with problems as they arise, combined with having continued self awareness, not only of negative behaviours but also of the positive successes achieved in each day, to ensure long-term recovery.

However, for many this programme of change cannot be implemented without some initial focused help in the form of a residential stay at a rehabilitation centre. If the first thing that springs to mind is that rehab centres are just for A-list celebrities, think again. A wide range of treatment centres are now available throughout the UK and offer safe and professional environments in which to begin the process of recovery.

Linwood Manor

Just one drink can quickly go to your head. Researchers in Heidelberg tested this well-known adage. Only six minutes after consuming an amount of alcohol equivalent to three glasses of beer or two glasses of wine, leading to a blood alcohol level of 0.05 to 0.06 percent, changes have already taken place in the brain cells, as the scientists in Heidelberg proved using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Previously the only available data was from animal trials.

Metabolism of brain cells affected

The brain reacts quickly to alcohol. “Our study provides evidence for alternative energy utilization upon alcohol ingestion, i.e. the brain uses an alcohol breakdown product instead of glucose for energy demands,” explains Dr. Armin Biller of the working group for cerebral metabolism at the Department of Neuroradiology at Heidelberg University Hospital (Medical Director: Prof. Dr. Martin Bendszus). The harmful effect also sets in quickly. During the experiment, the concentration of substances such as creatine (energy metabolism), which are attributed with protecting cells, decreases as the concentration of alcohol increases. Choline, a component of cell membranes, was also reduced. “That probably indicates that alcohol triggers changes in the composition of cell membranes," says Dr. Armin Biller.

Is all consumption of alcohol harmful for the brain? “Our follow-ups on the next day showed that the shifts in brain metabolites after moderate consumption of alcohol by healthy persons are completely reversible,” says Dr. Armin Biller. “However, we assume that the brain’s ability to recover from the effect of alcohol decreases or is eliminated as the consumption of alcohol increases. The acute effects demonstrated in our study could possibly form the basis for the permanent brain damage that is known to occur in alcoholics. This should be clarified in future studies.”

Drinking for science / No differences between men and women

Eight male and seven female subjects participated in the alcohol experiment. While lying in the MRI scanner, they drank the specified amount of alcohol through a long straw. The goal was to reach a blood alcohol content of 0.05 to 0.06 percent – a level that impairs ability to drive, but does not induce severe intoxication. In the MRI scanner, the nuclei of atoms in brain tissue were stimulated by a high-frequency impulse and the signal transmitted during the return to the initial condition was received. The spectral properties of this signal can be analyzed, allowing conclusions to be made as to the contents of various products of metabolism in the tissue examined. This study found no differences between the results of male and female individuals – the brains of female and male subjects reacted to alcohol consumption the same way.

What substances cause a “hangover”?

In other studies, the researchers examined what a “hangover” does to the brain – magnetic resonance spectroscopy can possibly enable us to find out what substances in alcoholic beverages bring on the familiar “hangover”.

University Hospital Heidelberg

There’s no doubt that a stay in an alcoholic residential centre can make a major difference in getting someone who is struggling with drink on the road to recovery. Having treatment in a residential rehab centre offers the chance to address the issue in privacy, away from temptation and in the care of professionals trained in providing counselling, therapy and support.

"Time away from the usual routines at home or familiar drinking partners will make a big different when getting sober," says Sue Allchurch, research director at the Linwood Group. "We give our clients the chance to rediscover their old selves, the people they were before alcohol took its toll, and to break the well-worn habits and behaviour patterns that have led to their problems."

But going into an alcoholic residential centre is a big step, she adds, so it’s not surprising that prospective clients have questions to ask before taking that decision. Here, Sue answers the three questions that she and her team are most commonly asked.

1. Does it work?

Much depends on the client themselves. Successful rehabilitation depends to a very large extent on how committed the patient is to recovery and the effort they put in to achieving that goal. Trained specialists at the rehab centre can do much to enable a problem drinker to re-establish emotional, mental and physical well-being within a relatively short space of time – but only with their co-operation. And once the client has left residential rehab, it will be up to them to use the new tools and behaviours they have learned there in order to remain in recovery.

2. How does it work?

First, clients undergo a medically supervised period of detoxification, during which they will be prescribed drugs to help them deal with withdrawal symptoms. Once the alcohol has been cleaned from their systems, the daily regime of counselling and therapy – on both a group and one-to-one basis – can start. In many cases, the centre will aim to involve the client’s family so that everyone caught up in the problem can begin the healing process. During this time, the client will also learn how to stay sober once they leave the residential centre.

3. Is it expensive?

Residential rehab help isn’t only for the wealthy. Linwood Manor Group was founded on the principle that affordable residential alcohol help needn’t mean any compromise in quality and prices its service at a level that cannot be found on a like-for-like basis anywhere in England. And if residential help is what it takes to avoid being one of the 33,000 people in the UK who die each year from alcohol-related accidents or illness, it may be a small price to pay.

Contact Linwood Group for more information about choosing an alcoholic residential centre or for professional and confidential help for any alcohol problems you or a loved one may be experiencing.

Linwood Manor