Seeing Double

Today I have been talking about the physiology of alcohol and I in doing so I have come across a group of people who have clearly redesigned the human body.

What?

Well according to one person I have been working with has been told by an accredited drug and alcohol service that humans have two stomachs. One is for food and one is for drugs and alcohol!!!!!

Yesterday I had someone come to me to tell me that his daughter told her science teacher about synapses and the chemical 'switch' system called neurotransmitters. The answer she received back was that they don't exist and you don't need to know that rubbish!

Well I ask you how on earth can anyone fight that kind of utter incompetence? If accredited services don't understand anatomy and physiology and a science teacher who doesn't even understand basic nerve structure what chance do our children have?

Next week I have been invited to talk on another radio show. I am so happy to do this because this sort of thing needs to be highlighted.

That said it comes back to this:

The symbiotic relationship between the alcohol industry and the alcohol abolitionists and therapists continues. This is a game more large and more deep than Berne could ever have envisaged. It is almost as if the ordinary person with alcohol challenges or the man in the street seeking true knowledge are stuck between the scotch and the rocks. And they are certainly left seeing double! 

Video killed the radio star....Not

For those of you of a certain age you will remember the tag line from one of the 1980s most prolific songs. Ah the 1980s an era of yuppies and pre-defined hedonism. They say of the 1960s if you can remember them you weren't there well of the 80s not only was I most definitely there but I remember them with a clarity that cannot be described on this gentle blog.

However on the subject of alcohol it was the decade when everything really changed.

I was working last week on a lecture tour taking in the South East of England, primarily Kent, when on arriving back in my hotel room overlooking the wonderful and soulful River Medway I received an e-mail with an invite. It was an invite to a radio debate on the BBC during alcohol awareness week.

What week? I ask you say.

Alcohol awareness week I answer.

Never heard of it, comes your woeful reply.

Well you've probably never heard of it because when the massed ranks of the PR industry get to work with the millions supplied by the alcohol industry you're kind of going to be diverted. And those of us seek to educate are once again left drowning in the dregs of the barman's slops.

Anyway this radio star agreed to the debate and hauled his none too slim frame back up the M4 to Swindon to be involved in a lively mid morning debate on the virtues or not of alcohol. Mark O'Donnell and the team at BBC Wiltshire were brilliant as they always are when I work with the station and the enthusiasm shown tells me that the licence fee is worth every penny however the great shame was that we could not go on for longer because as it was Children in Need day someone needed to be interviewed naked in a bath of baked beans or the like.

And that is the point I wish to make here. Many of the Children in Need in the United Kingdom are in need because of the damage that alcohol is doing to their family. They have no idea what is going on but learn from the twisted environment in which they live. This means that when they are adults they will ultimately make the same mistakes that their parents made a generation before them. How I ask is that useful?

Those of you who know me know that I do not seek the abolition of alcohol. Anyone doing so is quite frankly living in cloud cuckoo land. Alcohol has been around since man first civilised so stopping it now is a non starter. What we can do is seek to influence the way in which people consume so that they do less damage to themselves and ultimately less damage to subsequent generations.

And we can only seek to influence through carefully targeted educational programmes that work on the psyche of both young and old. We need to seek out new frontiers and go boldly where... oh sorry I'll take off the Captain Kirk mask for a minute but you get my drift , don't you?

We need real education now on the subject of alcohol.We need it in our schools, in our workplace and in our homes. Otherwise we are in danger of losing yet another generation of children to the wastelands of the future. They are confused and there is no clear message so in the words of the great Ali G

Keep it Real!

If you're interested here's the link to the radio programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00lh7jw#synopsis

Voodoo Juice for all?

Another report on children and drinking, more horror stories for Halloween. Lock up your children now or they will succumb to the Voodoo Man's lethal juice.

Is underage drinking a result of availability? Not really, alcohol has always been available to children in some form or another. It was far worse of course in Victorian times which is one of the reasons that the abolitionist movement started to grow in the min 1800's. However simplification of the argument only leads us away from the real source of our problems, consumerism.

For those of you who remember go back to a teenagers bedroom in the early 1980s or late 1970s. What would you find there. Here's a list of possibles.

       Posters
       Old style mono record player with collection of 45s and 33s
       Mono tape recorder
       Games and Toys
       Books and magazines
       Clothes including possible hand me downs

Now forward to today

        Posters
        Flat screen TV
        Blue ray player
        iPod
        Laptop computer
        Mobile telephone
        Top quality designer clothing

Many of the items that were designed for business efficacy have somehow found their way onto a teenagers wish list.

So if the most advanced adult tools are available for every average teenager then it becomes blindingly obvious that children are becoming more adult sooner. This is a challenge because it means that children start to want adult things, particularly the big four taboos, drugs,sex, gambling and booze much earlier. Because children wish to prove they are grown up.

So it is not the availability of booze that has made the difference but the media's constant squashing of childhood.

Now add this to the fact that parents, who are responsible for the education of children have no real understanding of alcohol in their own right and it is all too obvious that we are in the scenario of monkey see. monkey do. So if a child sees their parents throwing caution to the wind they start to believe that this is part of being an adult.

And whilst I long for simpler days of long gone summers I am realistic to know that the only way we will see a change to drinking habits in children is if we educate the adults around them on how to be responsible with alcohol.

The fightback starts here.

Now that the dust has settled

The inquest about Amy Winehouse has been held. The verdict misadventure.

My question is why misadventure?

Put simply consuming the amount of alcohol that she did would not as the papers would have you believe automatically led to death. There are far greater complexities than that, The record for someone caught for drinking and driving on one of my courses is a reading over double of that of Amy Winehouse and according to the police report on that person they were driving normally down the road! So the mad press headlines that we have seen are exactly that - mad!

Now that doesn't mean I advise people that it's OK to drink a couple of litres of vodka but it does lead me back to my favourite old adage

Educate people now, not when it's too late

I've listened to addiction expert after addiction expert pop their heads out of their ivory towers and glittering spires and talk about cross addiction this and human frailty that, quoting some fantastic theorists and academic studies to sound grand for their Andy Warhol moment, and I am fed up.

I am fed up because none of this public fetish with celebrity and it's ups and downs will actually help young and old alike understand and deal with alcohol from an informed position.

There are solutions there is a better way, but the politicians are too scared, the alcohol industry has an obvious vested interest and the so called abolitionists would have no reason to exist if they didn't have the fight.

Let's get real let's do it now
  

My Dad

Happy Birthday Dad, you would have been 73 today.
You will never know what an inspiration you were to me.
You will never know how much you influenced who I am.
You never really understood how I looked up to you or how much I loved you,
I just wish I knew why you loved a whisky bottle more that your son.
I just wish I could understand what drove you to your self destruction
I long for those lost years
I long for less tears
I just wish you could have always been the man I knew at the end
For that was the dad and the grandad to my children I always dreamed of.
You were not bad but you were weak.
I have forgiven those weaknesses because I wonder if I could have been stronger
I just hope you are at peace
I just hope you will understand
I just hope that others who pass on this journey will pass the test better than I
I love you Dad, Happy Birthday

Oh No Mr Merson

Two well known people, two consecutive days, two stories about alcohol.

Yesterday Sarah Harding, today Paul Merson. Life can be very cruel sometimes.

Apparently Paul Merson was found to have given a positive roadside breath test however due to injuries sustained in the crash he had with a 40 tonne vehicle he was taken to hospital where blood tests were taken. Now the results of those blood tests will be pretty immediate. The ED doctors treating him will already know what his blood alcohol level was. They need that information so as to treat more effectively someone in the Emergency Department. The official reading will take up to 6 weeks.

And unfortunately this will be a case for strengthening Phillip Hammond's resolve to remove the statutory blood test for those people blowing between 35 and 50 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The accuracy of hand held portable devices and even the larger evidential intoximeters in Police Station is well documented as being questionable, particularly in the area highlighted above so what if Mr Merson's readings come back negative? Well it was just a time factor will be the answer from the makers of the intoximeter. Well they need to protect their market place don't they.

And all of this makes an excellent soundbite even if it is fundamentally the wrong approach to drinking and driving.

Now let me make this absolutely clear before all the finger waving starts at me: I loathe drinking and driving.

But I also loathe unfair systems!

If we are serious about stopping incidents like the Paul Merson situation then we have to get serious about what we are going to do. Draconian punishments should be part of the plan but they should be reserved for all those people who have basically stuck two fingers up at our society.

There is a solution to stopping drinking and driving that will have so many knock on effects on our country in terms of positive outcomes. It will help educate people, it will give people really great public transport and it will create jobs. And the irony is that the alcohol companies will not lose out either.

There is a third way, I know what it is but has Phillip Hammond got the guts to put it before his cabinet colleagues. I doubt it, he hasn't even got the guts to talk to me! Why? Because the politicians are only interested in the next 5 years, not our country's future!  

Rock Chick Sick

Sarah Harding has checked herself into rehab because of alcohol problems according to NME. Am I surprised? Not really because living in a fishbowl for 10 years is going to take it's toll on you. Is it going to mean mass hysteria? Possibly, well from the press at least as they all scramble for another story to heap more pressure on someone who is obviously facing some serious challenges at the moment.

Sadly Sarah is not the only one in this situation. In the UK alone it is estimated that 1in 20 or 5% of the drinking population is suffering from a serious issue associated with alcohol. Putting this into reality when you jump on your bus today carrying 70 passengers 3 of them will possibly be addicted to alcohol. In your child's class 3 parents are likely to be addicted. In an average school 2 teachers are likely to be addicted. In a hospital with 200 doctors then 10 of them are likely to be addicted and in every premiership match at least 1 footballer is likely to be addicted. That's what the stats would mean if they spread evenly across the board.

The problem is for those of us in the know is that the stats don't spread evenly and the more pressurised the situation the more likely there is to be abuse of alcohol and/or drugs.

We know the medical profession, the legal profession, the police force, the teaching profession and the military all suffer high levels of alcohol abuse whereas ironically manual workers who are often portrayed as being in the pub constantly do not.

The sad reality is that alcohol services in the UK are extremely overstretched. Not because there is a lack of money but because there is a lack of will by Government. No 11 know that if they go war on the alcohol companies that large amounts of revenue are potentially at risk and in an economy as fragile as the one we have at the moment the risk is simply too great. So the Government are happy to sit back on the advice of the Treasury, look as if they are doing something with smoke and mirrors but in reality are doing nothing. And this is simply not on.

The smoke and mirrors come in the form of the highly paid and overrated academics sat in their ivory towers who half the time wouldn't know a true alcohol problem if it hit them square between the eyes but have made a fortune out of "studying" the problem.

Addiction is not a research paper it is a cold hard symptom of a lack of education and symbiotic relationship between the Government, the alcohol industry and the prohibitionists.

Whilst I wish Sarah well in the journey to conquer her demons we need real funding, for real people to do a real job now! It is no good waiting until the dead bodies start piling up.