Drinking 5 bottles of wine a day for 10 years.

[One Love]

It's pretty much the same with smoking. I have just come back from a boating holiday on The Broads with a group that included 3 teachers and a novelist. 6 out of 7 in the party were smokers and I was the only non smoker. People were chatting about career paths and self determination and taking control of one's destiny etc etc. There was plenty of booze flowing too and we all had fun. I was just amazed by the fact that such intelligent and clever people were fighting over fag papers and scrambling around for filters and stubbing butts out in sugar bowls and abandoned drinks glasses. In the morning the main cabin floor was covered in ash and ripped up Rizla packets.

Not having looked at fag packets and baccy pouches much recently I was shocked to see the images of lung cancer and heart disease printed on them yet they were all abjectly ignored as " someone else's problem ". On a stop at a little village one of our group complained that the local shop was so small it did not sell " Additive Free " tobacco ! This stunned me after being told that this is tobacco without so many pesticides and preservatives etc sprayed on it. So it seems that additives are bad but tobacco isn't ? It just amazed me that otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable people can't see that they are killing themselves without a care.

That is an incredible story.

Do they smoke like that in their normal daily lives or just when you lot get together?

 

[Nibble]

As just about all my mates are Albion fans alternate Saturdays are always good fun.

Would be nice but I no longer live in Sussex and am travelling for work most of the time. Can't even get games on the radio anymore.

 

[One Love]

In May of this year I was hired to play the part of an Iraq war veteran that had become an alcoholic, playing a character that was an amalgam of 4 real people . As part of my research they had allowed me access to their medical and psychological files. Hells Bells! Some truly jaw dropping reading. It wasn't so much the amount these guys drank but the, in hindsight, obvious and tragic way in which their habits had developed over about a year for most of them.

What struck me was the benality of their condition. They were rarely going out and going to clubs, downing shots and enjoying revelry, it was just a relatively slow trudge of incorporating alcohol into their normal lives. One guy managed to stay off the booze until about noon most days, then he started with some beers, would still leave the house, get back have some more beers in front of the telly, a stroll to his local where he had a beer and some vodka. Within 5 months he wasn't leaving the house at all except to pick up cheap vodka, which was now the only thing he drank, neat every day, all day.

He described how he would sit, relatively sober but hungover in the morning and make lists of things to do. He would get through maybe one or two items, such as his laundry and a hoover round. He would then flag and to reward himself would start drinking early, this went on for months.

He says it just crept up on him to the point where it was inconceivable to him to stay away from the bottle. His entire social life, friends, family just slipped away from him. He didn't make a deliberate decision to drop out, it was just he had no time for anything else in his life. He died about a month ago.

Edit: as an aside, I talked to a lot of doctors that worked with alcoholics and all of them said one of the problems is we just don't know what is a safe amount to drink and few of us agree on a safe amount. Some doctors see 4 bottles of wine a week as excessive, some wouldn't even raise an eyebrow to someone drinking ten bottles a week. Therein lies a problem.

In the last few years I have known three people who have drunk themselves to death.

It is shocking to see someone have their own will destroyed and be subservient to alcohol. They get given the challenge " stop drinking or never see those that you love (including kids they adore) ever again" and they fail. So sad.

 

[vegster]

That is an incredible story.

Do they smoke like that in their normal daily lives or just when you lot get together?

I don't know all of them that well and I think that some usually smoke more than others. But it seemed that instead of having to stand outside under a tarpaulin or in a beer garden, the chance to sit down in relative comfort and smoke was too good to miss. Excuse the pun but it seemed to be a rolling habit where when one lit up everyone else did too, there was at least one fag alight constantly and there was constant exchanging of papers/lighters/filters.

 

[vegster]

In the last few years I have known three people who have drunk themselves to death.

It is shocking to see someone have their own will destroyed and be subservient to alcohol. They get given the challenge " stop drinking or never see those that you love (including kids they adore) ever again" and they fail. So sad.

Drinking and smoking are pretty much the same for that. However, it is possible to drink sensibly and not overdo it. There is lots of support out there for quitting both but if you don't have the will power to try then it's useless. Ultimately, you can look at George Best who had a second chance with a liver transplant, but could not stop.

 

[Nibble]

In the last few years I have known three people who have drunk themselves to death.

It is shocking to see someone have their own will destroyed and be subservient to alcohol. They get given the challenge " stop drinking or never see those that you love (including kids they adore) ever again" and they fail. So sad.

It's a headspace I would not want to be in. Terrible.