The Telegraph has published a harrowing report on the increase in the number of dependent drinkers as a result of lockdowns which highlights the fact that, while the amount of alcohol consumed in the U.K. decreased during the shutting down of regular life, the number of deaths from alcohol abuse reached a 20-year high. “The physical and psychological impacts,” it says, “could take years to remedy”.
It was two months into the first lockdown when James Roberts, 45, received an ultimatum from his partner. Ever since he set up a travel firm aged 29, Roberts had used alcohol to “self-medicate… to control the stress that comes with running a business”. His career took him to most countries in the world; almost all of the trips involved heavy drinking. But his boozing worsened considerably after Covid hit last March. Cooped up inside his home in the Scottish Highlands and panicked about the economic climate, he turned to the bottle as a source of emotional pain relief.
“I just drank to drown out everything that was happening in the world,” Roberts remembers now. “It was almost like a numbing effect.”
Eventually, his partner told him to seek help – or their relationship was under threat. Roberts was driven to Cheshire to start a four-week residential rehabilitation programme at Delamere Health Ltd at a cost of £15,000. He hasn’t touched alcohol since. Roberts now counts himself lucky: with the steadfast support of his partner, as well as the funds to pay for professional help, he is firmly on the road to recovery.
But not everybody is so fortunate. Doctors are becoming increasingly worried that 14 months of pandemic life have created a dark legacy of alcohol abuse. Whilst overall alcohol intake decreased in the U.K. during each lockdown (probably because of the closure of pubs and restaurants), at the extreme end of alcohol abuse the numbers of deaths shot up.
More than 7,400 people died from alcohol misuse in England and Wales over 2020, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics published earlier this month. It was the highest figure for 20 years, even once adjusted to population. About four in five of those deaths were caused by alcohol liver disease, with a smaller number killed by accidental alcohol poisoning, and mental and behavioural disorders linked to alcohol abuse.
Even among those not diagnosed with alcoholism, alcohol intake seems to have shot up, way beyond the 14 units per week recommended by Public Health England, according to mostly anecdotal reports from doctors and alcohol specialists, who stress that systematic research is needed.
These “Covid drinkers” seem to be concentrated among the middle-aged, including many in stressful high-level jobs.
Just as the cancellation of routine medical appointments has created a worrying backlog in cancer diagnoses, experts worry that successive lockdowns might have created a new generation of dependent drinkers still mostly hidden from the NHS’s view. For some lockdown proved a catalyst, tipping them into the category of “problem drinker”. Others had already been diagnosed with alcoholism long before 2020 but saw their recoveries swing into reverse.
The physical and psychological impacts could take years to remedy – as could the burden on the NHS, which already spends £3.5 billion each year on treating alcohol-related illness in England.
Worth reading in full.
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Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Pubs shut – Supermarkets open and packed with cheap booze. Who would have thought lots of drinking at home would occur. Another sensation from the Office For Stating the Obvious.
the supermarket shelves selling alcohol in my locale were stripped of alcohol just as much as loo roll in the early days of the ‘pandemic’ – another consequence of the fear porn dished out by the government and published by the print and broadcast media. If you tell people “we are all going to die” then they will try to numb themselves from that kind of pain. I saw a lot of it.
Thanks, that reminds me, I’ll need to do a booze cruise over the border tomorrow.Thank hell England has retained a semblance of normal prices….I’m told the ASDA at Saltney/Chester does a lot of trade in spirits, esp. lately.
Doctors are worried, are they? About bloody time.
They didn’t do much bloody worrying about real people with real problems while they kept their surgery doors bolted and hid under the bxed in craven terror.
But, just as happens in reports about what ‘MPs’ (etc) think, what they actually MEAN is that SOME doctors are worried! (With the hidden fact that MOST doctors don’t give a damn!)
The answer should be obvious to the libertarians in control, just ban alcohol
Expect Michael Gove to call for it
Err…being polite – Do One.
Impolite – Fuck Off.
They conspicuously included the sale of alcohol as ‘essential retail’ from day one of Lockdown last March probably because they thought lockdown would fail altogether if they didn’t.
Now I’m not so sure, there are still Daily Mail comments, heavily downvoted, along the lines
“So you don’t care if thousands more people die in the Indian variant Covid 3rd wave just so you can get a drink and waste your furlough on fags ? My cousin works in the NHS and she cries herself to sleep every night because of selfish people like you !”
I think prohibition will come in under cover of the planned social control via vax passport without you calling for it.
Yes I thought meat would be first but they are pushing for alcohol to be banned
If getting pissed saves just one life
It takes years to do enough damage from ‘problem drinking’ to cause death so to blame a sudden 20% increase in alcohol related mortality on Covid/lockdown is just bollocks, bar alcohol induced fatal accidents or violence.
Maybe this is more dry tinder: people whose livers were already shot to pieces, succumbing a bit earlier than they otherwise would have?
Alcohol like most drugs is used to self medicate.. depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, autistic spectrum disorders, pain, schizophrenia…
More failures of the NHS. It misses so much. GP’s particularly.
I am awarding my “comment of the day” prize to you. You have no idea of the conditions which the NHS fails to diagnose – the list is endless, but it is a job well done if you can put everyone on statins and/or antidepressants.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/951852
Large Vessel Stroke Linked to AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine
UK finally waking up to it being more than just CVST, and that clots can form in any vessel.
Also this:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/951820
‘Breakthrough’ COVID Found in More Than 10K Vaccinated Americans: CDC
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers report that more than 10,000 fully vaccinated Americans have experienced “breakthrough” COVID-19 through April 30, 2021. They note that the figures are likely an underestimate.
The 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections were reported from January 1 through April 30 in 46 US states and territories. About one quarter of affected people, 27%, were asymptomatic. Two percent, or 160 people, with breakthrough infections died, preliminary data reveal.
2pct you say? Isn’t that higher than the normal death rate In unvaccinated people?
According to the Yellow Card scheme, which as we know significantly underestimates adverse effects, there have been 86 recorded strokes following the AZ vax and more than 40 after the Pfizer one. We can probably multiply those numbers by 10 to get the correct figures…
I’ll drink to that!
“Not to get technical…but according to chemistry, alcohol is a solution.”
LOL