Addiction brings Addiction, Suffer the Little Children

Well I never the charity Addaction have made a startling statement.

1 in 4 children have parents with drug or alcohol problems and they are SEVEN yes 7 times more likely to develop the same problems as those parents.


This is not new news but 2.6 million children in the UK living with a hazardous drinker is a time bomb waiting to happen. And the study claims that a third of social workers have no understanding of this. A third! they're being generous I think. I have reviewed Social Work training in the UK and to be quite frank there appears to be no mandatory training in undergraduate courses on substance abuse. Lots on the law and Social Work, lots on reflective writing but virtually nothing as far as I can see on alcohol abuse.

I am absolutely convinced and I shall be always convinced that if you want to change the culture of any society then you have to make that society want to change and that starts with an individual being educated. Simply telling people to change is not going to work you have to inspire change.

With the government looking at a minimum pricing strategy as it's focus on dealing with alcohol challenges it shows how little they listen. Even their own MP, David Burrowes who chaired the commission looking at this would appear to be saying it's about treating the cause of the problem not the treatment post problem that matters.

What you do with addicted parents if you drive up the price of that addiction is make them poorer or drive them into crime and ultimately make their children suffer as you do not stop the addiction. David Cameron's minimum price strategy is therefor likely to see a detrimental effect on nearly three million children and what will that do for the long term health and wealth of the United Kingdom?

We can make a change and we can make a difference but for goodness sake get the politicos out of the loop. They are only interested in the next election, not the next generation. Help us who work tirelessly to educate and make a difference by providing us with the resources and we shall show you change. It will not be in an election cycle it will be generational but if we don't start now we cannot hope to protect those children. Stop thinking about votes and start thinking about people.

Inspiration not castigation, education not thought control.    

 

A few more drops

For those who know me they know my motto:

Enough small drops together make a tidal wave.


This particular part of my blog I would like to dedicate to all those people who have helped in making a difference in peoples lives when it comes to alcohol.

You cannot make someone change but you can support them as they effect the changes they have decided upon.

It is that support that is vital. Alcoholism is a lonely place. No where in this world are you more in a crowd yet eerily isolated from that crowd. You could shout all day and all night but the chance of someone hearing you is slim.

So I would like to pay tribute to those that I have known who work so tirelessly, and selflessly to help others. And to that crowd of people I would like to welcome someone new, my twitter friend Mike Andrews. Here is someone with no knowledge of the world of pain that alcohol brings who saw someone on the street and decided to get involved. He made a courageous decision because most people would have walked on by. He chose not to and although I have counselled him at great length of the pitfalls that he faces he still took that first awesome step to help someone else.

Please read Mike's blog (he's new to this as well) http://helpbarney.blogspot.co.uk/  and offer him the encouragement that he will need. For the task he has undertaken is a tough one. He knows that I am there to support him in anyway that I can but the more drops we can bring together the greater the impact.

One thing I love about the ability to blog and to tweet in an invisible world is the power that has to bring together so many people with so many skills who can help move things forward.

If we are truly going to effect some kind of culture shift when it comes to alcohol then it cannot be done by minimum pricing, prohibition or the drunk tank. It has to be done by people coming together, learning together, supporting each other and moving the goalposts.

Reflections on a Friday Night

Well today has been long and involved. First of all 6 hours of lecturing followed by various interviews about alcohol followed by catching up with some of the stories on the news.

The Government apparently is going to consult about the minimum price of alcohol. I doubt that very much. This policy has been rushed out to avoid the obvious embarrassment that the so called Granny Tax has caused in Georgey Boy's budget. Also it is an olive branch to the hospitals and physicians who were castrated by the health bill.

Here's a question. How many OAP's enjoy a bottle of sherry or wine at home? Are they down the pub? So add the extra price created my minimum pricing onto the already frozen personal allowances and rise in fuel duty, couple that with the loss in disability benefits and the rising cost of home care and you hit pensioners every which way.

Now what about those raging alcoholics?  If they can no longer afford their drinks will they steal, or will they turn to meths again? Or hand wash in the hospitals?

And the young ones. Why spend £20 on two or three pints when Johnny drug dealer will sell you a line of coke for that price?

This minimum price of alcohol was designed to get people thinking away from the budget. Does the Prime Minister really think that we are stupid. I said that the Government would claw back the losses through alcohol and I think I am going to be proven right. After all I'm long enough to remember when we doubled the rate of spirit duty to pay off the loan we had from the IMF back in the early eighties.

This Government no more wants to consult about alcohol as I want to go skinny dipping in a pool of crocodiles. This Government thinks it is bigger than the electorate. If it believed Labour was using nanny state policies then this is the biggest of them all.

Education now to our children, education now to our parents and inspire people to give up binge drinking for prohibition never worked.......unless of course you were Al Capone!

Smoke and Mirrors

So David Cameron is to announce a minimum pricing strategy for alcohol in the UK.

Fool if he thinks it's over.


Essentially this is just a way of George Osborne recouping the money he so called gave away by raising the income tax thresholds and lowering the upper limits. No Government truly reduces the tax burden on it's people they just hide it better.


Two things happen with minimum pricing:

1. People will not stop drinking but will look for ways of reducing cost, e.g. The Booze Cruise. In Sweden where alcohol is expensive it is very easy to nip across to Denmark where it is relatively cheaper! Home Brewing always rises in the UK when prices become unmanageable. The classic argument is that we're winning the war on smoking by increasing prices. Absolute nonsense nicotine is 1000 times more addictive than heroin and the rise in black market  sales of tobacco have made it HMRC's number one target due to loss of revenue to the Treasury. In reality the number of smokers in the UK has started to climb again particularly in young females. The law of supply and demand will win out over the law of the land always.


2. Young people will look to get high. In the 1980's and 90's when alcohol was relatively more expensive there is no coincidence that there was a rise in the use of drugs such as ecstacy. It is an absolute truth that the young will do it as cheaply as possibly and if drugs become relatively cheap then this will happen all over again.

The way that you win the battle against serious health damage is by serious education.

And as the alcohol industry is key to the economy of the United Kingdom then this is not going to be done!

A little more time, a little more knowledge

This time of year is difficult for me. Although Mother's Day changes from year to year it will always be ingrained in my memory as the day my dad died.

Now those of you who follow this blog or read it from time to time know that my father was an alcoholic. It was the discovery of this that started me upon my journey of knowledge. Discovering at the age of 13 that your father loved a whisky bottle more than you was devastating. Discovering the first name off his lips was Johnnie or Grant rather than Tracy was as if I didn't exist. Why was I even there? The pain of the realisation of your own insignificance was to say the least traumatic.

The journey I have taken could fill a thousand volumes of my favourite book, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and one day maybe I will write it all down rather than give you snippets in blog form. Yet this Mother's Day for the first time I really think that I will remember my father with fondness. It is almost like a veil has lifted. My own struggles with life, love, children and health have taught me many important things. Not least of all I am normal.

I decided a while back that it was time to let the resentment go, time to remember the man for who he wanted to be and ultimately underneath who he truly was. Only then you see would I gain release from the trauma of the past. I always kept blaming myself you see, thinking that it was somehow my fault that my father didn't love me, but that was the wrong way of looking at it. I was really blaming myself for the helplessness I felt at my inability stop my father drinking.

The professional in me knows that the person has to want to change and change cannot be forced upon someone, the son in me was just missing his daddy.

So if you find yourself out there in a world of misery due to alcohol either from over drinking or from seeing yourself over drinking please remember that change is inevitable. Sooner or later people begin to understand that when alcohol is in the bottle you have total control yet when it goes into your throat it starts to control you. People are not bad because they drink however they are foolish if they do not learn about what drink really does to you.

On Mother's Day this year I ask you to remember that the faults of our parents are not the fault of the children yet the children must seek to understand, and forgive, the faults of the parents else they teach their children to be their parents.


Peace and Happiness to you all.