Drinking Yourself To Death

Dispatches examines how successful this approach will be, investigating the new drinking patterns in the UK which involve far more alcohol being drunk at home and the recent lobbying activities of the alcohol industry.

Reporter Deborah Davies investigates the switch in alcohol consumption from pubs to homes, examining the pricing of alcohol in supermarkets versus pubs, the huge increase in wine purchases and the emergence of pre-loading - drinking at home before heading out for an evening.

Dispatches investigates the medical profession's warnings of a liver disease time bomb by organising a unique experiment - using cutting edge technology not yet available on the NHS to test the health of people's livers in London and Birmingham.

In all, 70 passers-by take up the opportunity to have the test - with shocking results that suggest the incidence of liver disease is even higher than doctors had feared.

Dr Rajiv Jalan, who supervises some of the testing is astonished by this snapshot of the liver health of the nation, saying: "I'm stunned. We are looking at an epidemic that's going to face us in 15/20 years which the health service will find impossible to deal with."

With hospital admissions for alcoholic liver disease doubling in the last ten years, Deborah attends a liver transplant operation - the only hope of survival for many patients. She speaks to the beneficiary of the healthy liver, a social drinker whose cirrhosis crept up on her - by the time she knew she was ill, her only chance of survival depended on the transplant.

Liver specialists at hospitals across the country tell Deborah they are seeing a surge in young professional patients with severe forms of alcoholic liver disease - people who don't consider themselves to be heavy drinkers.

One doctor says: "We're seeing more and more people who work in the City or work busy jobs who drink socially, with meetings, entertaining clients, come home in the evening, have half a bottle of wine or more just to relax after a busy day's work. They're not getting drunk, they're not dependent, they have high-profile, high-powered jobs and yet they get liver disease."

Paul, an accountant in his fifties with alcohol related liver disease is one such patient, he says: "You always know in the back of your mind that you're drinking too much, but you just sleep walk into this."

Related links

For more health information about liver disease and the effects of alcohol:

www.britishlivertrust.org.uk

For information on units of alcohol in drinks www.drinkaware.co.uk

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