~ ~ Many of you will have already have read my opinion about my own battle with the illness of alcoholism, and how I eventually managed to achieve a lasting recovery from this "hell of all diseases", through joining Alcoholics Anonymous back in 1979. I have been sober ever since, for over 22 years now, a day at a time. It's not my intention in this opinion to revisit old ground; if any of you are interested enough then my own experience is fully documented in my opinion called "To Hell And Back", which you'll find somewhere in my op list. The question I want to address here in this opinion is one that I am asked constantly by people ...  Read the complete review

Medical students have a reputation for being heavy drinkers. Within my first week at Medical School, in 1992, I discovered why... Many students drink. Actually, why limit it to students... many people drink. A lot. I can remember getting absolutely hammered on a regular occasion at the student bar, which was conveniently 2 floors above the lecture theatres. After 2 weeks, I drank so much "Green Monster Punch" (God only knows what was in it, but it was served from a huge bucket...) that I ended up throwing up all over the bar floor, almost gaining the year's first ban. Rag week (a rite of passage with the feeble excuse of raising money for charity) ...  Read the complete review

Last week I received a phone call from a friend of mine to tell me his ex-wife had died. I hadn't seen her for some years as she moved away from London after they divorced but she is someone I remember as a vivacious, bubbly and very funny lady that I used to meet regularly in the pub, back in the days when my social life revolved around the place. Once she divorced my friend she re-married and the last time I saw her was before my daughter was born but she was happy and seemed healthy then. When I was last visiting London just a couple of months ago, I met up with my friend and his daughter and I obviously asked after her mother. She told me she ...  Read the complete review

To say that alcoholism is a crippling disease which destroys not only the alcholic but also his or her family, is a sweeping understatement. I speak, sadly, from bitter experience. It is many years now since I divorced my alcoholic husband, but the years leading up to the divorce were some of the saddest and most stressful in mine and my children's lives, not least because I was helpless to save someone I genuinely cared about, someone moreover who was hellbent on destroying himself and his family for the sake of the next drink. This was a man who was a graduate engineer with a high salaried job, clever and intelligent but with his finger firmly on the ...  Read the complete review

Alcoholism is an addiction that has affected my family and something that must be one of the hardest habits to kick as alcohol is all around us in society, on our TV screens, in many social venues and in the culture of this country which promotes getting smashed as the key to having a good night out or as a sign of maturity, the drinking culture in this country certainly seems to be out of control and it is so easy to access alcohol and get cheap drink. Alcoholism is a dependency on alcohol to function on a daily basis, there are all sorts of data out there that define it by number of units per day but my experience of two family members was that they could ...  Read the complete review