Beating the booze

STEPHEN LEWIS reports on one York man's battle against drink - and looks at the support that is at hand.

CHARLES Kennedy is a "brave, brave man", says Graham Hogarth.

Okay, the politician's drink problems were going to come out anyway, he agrees. "But the bravery to stand up there and say 'I've got a drink problem'. That's hard enough for people in ordinary day jobs, let alone those in the public eye."

Graham knows all about the demon that is drink. It very nearly destroyed his own life, as well as breaking up his family.

It transformed a gentle husband into a violent brute who hit his wife and made his youngest son hate him. It turned him into a thief - and left him with permanent brain damage and hallucinations.

That, however, is nothing compared with the hell that his life had become, he says. "When I think back to how I was, it terrifies me."

Graham's drink problem crept up on him. The Clifton man was already drinking when in 1971 he met his future wife, Sue.

It got worse when he became a bus driver. "I would not like to think how many times I would have been driving buses full of passengers around town and been way over the drink-drive limit."

It got worse again when he switched jobs and became a Rowntree's Kit Kat shift worker. "That gave me even more time to drink and more money to do it with. I was working their 10pm to 6am night shift, that would see me drinking cans of beer while my kids were having their breakfast."

By the early 1990s, now a Rowntree's fork lift driver, he was unable to get through a shift without a drink and was smuggling booze into work. In 1994 he resigned before his employers had the chance to sack him - and devoted his life to drinking.

A consultant at Bootham Park who diagnosed him as an alcoholic when he was admitted on the verge of a nervous breakdown didn't help. "That was my excuse to tell myself it was not my fault," Graham says. "I was an alcoholic. I had to have a drink no matter what."

His life degenerated into one long blur. He would go to the shops in the morning for a paper and disappear for days on end in a drunken stupor. If he couldn't buy drink, he'd steal it. His name was constantly in the "In Court" section of the Evening Press. At one point his parents wrote telling him to "change his name or change his ways". People who knew him crossed the road to avoid him, his youngest son grew to hate him.

However, his wife, Sue, stood by him - even when he hit her.

"He attacked me on a couple of occasions," she says. "But that wasn't Graham. I always thought the bloke I married is still there, somewhere.

"When he was sober he was lovely and gentle. It was when he had a drink that he turned into something horrible, violent, nasty."

Because he was so drunk, Graham can't remember most of those incidents. He can't even remember the time his youngest son attacked him while trying to defend his mum.

"Graham had started to hit me," Sue recalls. "I phoned my son, he came running around, and he hit Graham. Graham ended up in hospital."

Eventually, Sue's youngest son gave her an ultimatum. "He said I had to make a choice. It was either Graham and his drinking, or him."

She chose Graham - believing that still, somewhere inside, was the man she had married. She also knew that if she left him, he would drink himself to death.

He very nearly did so anyway. He tried to stop, Graham says. He went to the York Alcohol Advice Service, and to Alcoholics Anonymous. At one point his GP even referred him to Sheffield for a year of rehab. But always he relapsed.

In despair, he tried to kill himself more than once - gassing himself with his car and taking drugs overdoses - but was so drunk he even bungled that.

Then, one day six years ago, he and Sue arranged to go out for the day. "And Sue said she wouldn't go if I was going to drink all day and spoil the day," Graham says.

He agreed not to drink that day - not believing he'd keep his promise. But he did. And he didn't have a drink the next day, either. Or the day after that.

He's not had a drink since.

He can't explain why he was able to give up then, when he'd failed so often. "I've no idea," he says. "I just went from day to day."

Alison Tubbs, of the York Alcohol Advice Service, says one of the key things when working with someone who has a drink problem is never to give up on them.

Graham's story demonstrates that, she says.

Yes, he had been to the service for help in the past, but he had never been committed to giving up. Then, suddenly, for whatever reason, he was.

It is up to the drinker, Graham says, to face up to the problems they have - and also to face up to the problems they cause to those near them.

It is about taking responsibility for your own situation.

Even now he knows he's not "cured". His liver may not have packed up like footballer George Best's. But he has suffered permanent brain damage which has left him with impaired memory, a horror of going out on his own, nightmares and hallucinations.

And he knows he will have to battle the craving for drink every day of his life.

"One taste, and I would be right back there," he says.

Stopping teenagers drinking their lives away

It's not only adults who drink too much. Increasingly, young people do too. Children as young as 13 are being treated for alcohol problems in York, the Evening Press revealed recently.

Karen (not her real name) watched in horror as, for three years, her bright-eyed, bubbly daughter Rachel seemed to be drinking her life down the drain.

Rachel's problems began at 16. She had just started college - but fell in with the wrong crowd.

She started staying out every night boozing and lost interest in her college work. The bright, bubbly girl became pale and hollow eyed, her once shiny hair dull and lank.

Karen, who lives in a village near York, could not talk to her, because every time she tried Rachel just grunted or accused her of "getting at" her.

One day, Rachel disappeared - and was found three days later in a drunken stupor in a flat with other youths who had left home.

She had given up caring about anything, and Karen was in despair.

Karen thinks two things saved her daughter. One of Rachel's friends died as a result of drugs abuse. And her grandmother became ill and had to go into hospital.

"Rachel asked 'oh, granny, what can I do to help you?' and her grandmother said 'just stop doing what you're doing'," Karen says.

Karen had already been to her GP, and had left leaflets about drinking scattered around the house. One day Rachel herself approached Paul Coxon, a young persons substance misuse worker attached to the York Alcohol Advice Service.

She met Paul at a drop-in event in Acomb, York - and it was the turning point. Today, Karen says, 19-year-old Rachel is back to her bubbly, lively best - and has started training as a ballet dancer.

Paul Coxon can visit young people in their own homes, at clubs and even schools to offer confidential counselling and advice on how to break patterns of damaging behaviour.

Paul also offers advice to parents on where to turn for help - and how to talk to young people with a drink problem. Phone York Alcohol Advice Service on 01904 341628.

What help is there?

More people in the United Kingdom than ever before are drinking themselves to death.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the number of men who died of cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol rose by more than two thirds in England and Wales, according to The Lancet medical journal.

The number of women dying from the disease rose by almost half over the same period.

So where do you turn if you - or someone you love - is battling the demon drink?

York Alcohol Advice Service (YAAS)

The YAAS offers one-to-one and group counselling, which includes "motivational interviews" in which a drinker is encouraged to come face-to-face with uncomfortable truths about the ways in which their behaviour is affecting those they love.

The YAAS can also offer hypnotherapy, and runs a service users group and a relapse prevention group.

Confidential advice and information is also offered to relatives who are worried about a family member's drinking.

For more information, help or advice, phone YAAS on 01904 341628.

Community Addiction Team (CAT)

The CAT is funded by the primary care trust, and includes psychiatric nurses who can work with people who have drink or drug problems compounded by mental health problems.

The CAT can also arrange for detox programmes, both in a patient's own home and as an in-patient.

Most clients are referred to CAT by the health services or the alcohol advice service.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

AA holds regular meetings in York. To find out more, phone the national helpline number, 0845 7697555.

Updated: 09:10 Wednesday, January 11, 2006