This was an incredibly powerful programme presented by Alastair Campbell (@campbellclaret). Anne Robinson says she nearly died. I nearly did too – on June 1st 2007 I was admitted to the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Hampstead, having sustained an aystolic cardiac arrest and epileptic seizure. I then stayed in a coma for six weeks in ITU due to proven acute bacterial meningitis.
Nick Lessar, paramedic, remarked that he thought that people who’d fallen victim to alcohol excess on the streets of London were mainly professional people, and this observation apparently is confirmed by the Office for National Statistics. Alastair describes how he started off as a problem drinker, before he started drinking to excess. He described how felt he was good at hiding it, and indeed I have found from my own experience that alcoholics tend to become expert liars.
Like Alastair, I have never bought the argument that 24/7 style drinking works. My late father was the first to agree. Like Alastair, I also believe that this licensing is to be lame. I used to drink at home on my own, after a full day’s work; I don’t think as a professional I am the first or last to have done this. Furthermore, alcohol is cheap from supermarkets, so like as explained by Prof Ian Gilmore, former President of the Royal College of Physicians, proponent of the ‘Alcohol Health Alliance‘ I feel a safer environment was provided by traditional pubs.
Alcohol problems cost the country £2.7 billion last year. 41% of professional people apparently drink more than the recommended limit. My concern is that the legal and medicine professions are full of them. Many City firms are within a stone’s throw of pubs. Lawyers with problems need to know where to get help, and fast. 9,000 people a year die of alcohol-related disease.
One person describes that her life was “spiritually and morally bankrupt”. I recognise this aspect of many alcoholics.
I paid a very high price. Not only in terms of my working life so far, I ended up in a wheelchair. I learnt how to walk again, thanks to the wonderful help of the physiotherapists and occupational health therapists at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. I learnt how to speak again thanks to the wonderful Speech and Language Therapists there. My late Father witnessed the worst of it, but thankfully he lived long enough to witness the beginning of my recovery. And, for the record, I now walk and talk absolutely normally.
I have, originally from a wheelchair, completed my Bachelor of Laws. I then did a LLM by distance learning in international commercial law. Last year, I completed a MBA, and I am now doing the Legal Practice Course. I had a two hour interview with the Solicitors Regulation Authority in December 2010, having disclosed I had a previous problem with it. By that stage, I had been only 3 years in recovery. Now I am four years in recovery. I know that if I have another drink I’ll keep going, and I’ll be dead.
Drink does endanger work, health, relationships and their lives, as explained by Alastair. Like Alastair, I went to Cambridge, and my gut feeling is that alcoholism is far from simply only a working class problem. In fact, one might say that universities like Oxbridge have a formidable drinking culture, with numerous drinking culture and the notorious ‘Suicide Sunday’ at Cambridge in May Week. The professions need to have a strong attitude to getting professional away from harm’s way in being near the public. Someone though has to pick up the pieces to ensure that these ill people get help. I picked myself up.
Well, never mind, you live and learn. I’ve met, though, some wonderful people on the way, and they know who they are. Like Alastair, you spend ages pretending you’re not an alcohol, until you finally have to give up the pretence. I agree with Alastair’s Psychiatrist, though – I don’t think it’s safe for people like me to drink at all.
The author is the Shibley, President of the BPP Legal Awareness Society, a student society for all BPP students to promote the understanding of law and regulation to corporate strategy. He tweets at @legalaware.
