Shock news as we prepare to welcome in the new year. The number of young
people prosecuted for being drunk and disorderly has risen by almost a third
in two years. If it was up to me, all teenagers would be locked up until
they had proved they could be in the same room as a bottle of Malibu without
drinking it. But before you shout “hear, hear” and head off to your
civilised new year parties, be warned.
The government, in the shape of health Obergruppenführer Dawn Primarolo, has
decided its anti-drinking target is not the yoof tearing up our high
streets. It’s me. And probably you.
Dawn, while denying that relaxed licensing laws have made binge-drinking more
of a problem, insists that “middle-aged, middle-class drinkers drinking at
home . . . is where the serious and dramatic harm is increasing”. Her
argument is that drinking more than your 14 units a week, ladies, and 21
units, gents, is costing the NHS billions.
In a recent study by Liverpool John Moores University, harmful drinking was
defined as 50 or more units a week and was more common in poorer areas. But
the greyer area of “hazardous drinking” – 22-50 units for men and 15-35
units for women - is where the leafier, pinot noirish parts of the country
come in. In Runnymede, Harrogate, Surrey Heath and Guildford, more than one
in four people are classed as “hazardous drinkers”. My train back to Kent
each night is a drinking den on wheels. And this is why Dawn’s steely gaze
is resting upon us.
But what is 22-50 units a week? Is it zig-zag-home, vomit-in-the-car-park
excess? I spent the past month drinking at the upper range of 45 units a
week to find out what (if anything) happened to my liver, my heart, my
various other organs. Last week I pushed it up to 60.
At the start and the end, I subjected myself to blood, urine and
electrocardiogram tests. Here are the results. Please read on, Dawn. You
might find it useful.
The main drawback to being an alcohol-infused guinea pig is the need to be an
alcohol-free one at the start. The doctors estimated two months of total
abstinence would allow my liver to recover from my usual drinking habits.
I managed seven weeks of less than five units a week – no fun at all. First,
there were the withdrawal symptoms. In a typical week, I would have had a
thank-god-that’s-over whisky after a day in the office and half a bottle of
wine with dinner. Variations would have included the occasional pub lunch,
the odd party at the weekend and the increasingly infrequent
“I’m-still-young” weekend bender.
The end of abstinence couldn’t come too soon, which is probably why the month
of hazardous alcohol intake got off to such a flying start.
Week one: 43 units. After medical tests had established that my liver,
kidneys, heart, lungs and blood were all consistent with being a fit
thirtysomething with no characteristics of a heavy drinker, I drank two
rather good glasses of Barolo (four units) after work on Friday, a G&T
on the train (3.3 units in one tiny can, but you’re weird on my train if you
aren’t drinking) and a bottle of Grolsch (1.5 units) when I got home. That
was 8.8 units before 9pm and not even tipsy. An excellent start, so I had
nothing with dinner.
Some friends came to stay for the weekend. On Saturday, we shared a bottle of
champagne and two bottles of red with dinner, and the men chased it with
whisky. That was 9.25 units for me because I was aware of my intake, 14 for
my friend who wasn’t. The wives were hovering irresponsibly around the
seven-unit mark, well over double their daily maximum.
Would Dawn be happy to destroy the Sunday walk to the pub? I bet she would.
Two pints of bitter: five units. All the counting made our friends panic.
The husband had consumed 22.5 units in less than 24 hours and was trying to
defend himself: “If you think of what you used to drink when you were a
student . . .”
On Monday, I could have done with a drink but I’d already drunk 23 units in
three days so I abstained. On Tuesday, lunch with a long-lost friend (one
large malbec, three units) then a pub quiz (three pints of Czech lager,
eight units), which we won, unexpectedly (two glasses of champagne, three
units). I was by far the most abstemious member of my team.
Nothing the next day. Then, needing to drink three units on Thursday to make
the 40 mark, I popped into Waitrose for an on-train G&T – to find a
three-for-two offer on Gordon’s. Obviously I bought three. Obviously I drank
them all (six units).
It was a great surprise to see how easy it is to neck more than double the
government maximum. One fairly tame weekend, a few glasses of midweek wine
and a pub quiz and, bang, I’m a hazardous drinker. Without a single
hangover.
The truth is that the 21 and 14-unit limits, first introduced in 1987, are
arbitrary. They have no basis in science whatsoever. You can pick your
scientific evidence to suit your argument. One study found that men drinking
21 to 30 units a week have the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another
found that beer-drinking Germans have less exposure to heart disease than
non-beer-drinking ones.
Week two: 46 units. On Friday a glass of wine after work, a whisky at home and
a good viognier over dinner all seemed terri-bly civilised; but it was nine
units, triple the daily maximum.
I woke on Saturday with a clear head – beer then wine is fine, as we know; but
wine, then whisky, then wine is even finer – and proceeded to London with my
wife in a rare day off from parenting. Lunch at 32
Great Queen Street (four stars from AA Gill): glass of red, glass of
white. Cocktails at the hotel where we spent our wedding night. Ahhh, sweet,
but 13 units for the day without even trying.
Mercifully, I had a hangover on Sunday. My wife had drunk the same and felt
fine.
Isle of Wight for the next few days, holed up in a storm-battered cottage with
nothing to do but drink and argue about the best ways to light fires. The
closest I came to anything resembling inebriated was when, after a couple of
glasses of wine, I tried some of my son’s cough medicine to check it wasn’t
too strong. Clearly it was. I was retrieved from the sofa three hours later.
Nevertheless, another 24 units were imbibed by the end of week two.
Week three: 47.7 units. Once a year I’m allowed to go mountain-biking with
equally domesticated mates. As such, it is something of a release. Not this
time. By having to stick to a mere double the maximum government guideline,
I found myself spreading fear and mistrust.
“Why aren’t you drinking?”
“I am. I’ve had three pints.”
“That was three hours ago. Are you pregnant?”
“Yes. Now leave me alone.”
But when a pub shimmered into view at the top of a particularly painful hill
and it was open and it had a warm fire and a bottle of Jägermeister, I
forgot momentarily that I was supposed to be holding back.
Back home on Sunday night, counting the cost of a 25.2 unit weekend, I was
facing two Christmas parties and a long-haul flight over the next four days
on a limit of 20 units. I managed it but only by sipping my way through
party one, abstaining for the whole of the next day, drinking spritzers like
a girl at party two and then pretending I was on Tokyo time (already Friday)
from the moment the flight took off from Heathrow on Thursday.
Week four: 60 units. At 12.01am on Friday morning Tokyo time (3.01pm on
Thursday afternoon London time), I had a bloody mary followed by three
titchy glasses of wine and a whisky. I then slept, got a bus to my hotel in
Tokyo, slept again and went out for a meeting (two weak cocktails because
that’s what they drink in Tokyo), a visit to a Japanese pub (one Asahi lager
because that’s also what they drink) and dinner (three glasses of wine
because, frankly, they’ll drink anything). This completed a long 18-unit
day.
In my role as a travel journalist, I spent the next three days checking out
the city. But in my role as someone with jetlag, I spent the nights propping
up various bars trying to work out whether to stay awake until I got back to
London or to find a pharmacist selling horse tranquilliser.
Then my flight home was delayed so I missed another night and couldn’t work
out what time of the week – let alone day – it was, so I drank my way across
Siberia to Heathrow.
On Tuesday I drank nothing because evening felt like morning and, with three
whole days to go, I was already on 46 units. On Wednesday a long lunch added
another 10. And another four units the next day because I was at home with
my wife for the first time in ages. The only way she wouldn’t divorce me was
over a nice civilised dinner. With wine.
Sixty units. Almost three times the limit. And it didn’t hurt a bit. Well, a
little bit. But was that alcohol, jetlag or insomnia? It gave me an excuse
if the doctors found my liver had packed up and left the building when I
took my tests next morning.
First the electrocardiogram. This involved running on a treadmill for as long
as I could with 12 wires attached to my chest measuring how my heart was
doing. The month’s boozing had not had the slightest impact.
The blood and urine tests had more interesting results. My mean corpuscular
volume (MCV), or average red blood cell size, increased in the month from
90.7 to 92.4. Elevated MCV is a sign of alcoholism but this increase was
negligible and within the range considered okay (80-100). Still, there was
an increase.
The same was true for the liver function tests. My bilirubin (the stuff that
gives bile and bruises their yellow colour) increased from 18 to 22. I have
no idea whether this would make my bile yellower, but the fact that there
was more of it floating around my blood is an indicator of liver imbalance
(though again, this increase was not enough to cause even a raised eyebrow).
The three most sensitive blood-indicators of liver problems are AST, ALT and
Gamma GT. You (and I) don’t need to understand why, beyond the fact that
these are the liver-dwelling enzymes responsible for breaking food into
molecules that power the rest of the body. They’re important but you don’t
want more than a certain amount of them in your blood.
My AST stayed the same, ALT rose from 19 to 20 and Gamma GT, the most
party-pooping enzyme of the lot, rose from 12 to 17. It sounds worrying but
when I pop on to the net, land of hypochondriacs, to see how worrying, I
find plenty of lost souls asking if their Gamma GT level of 170-plus is
really all that bad.
Four weeks of what I think is civilised drinking did have an effect on my
liver function. But none of the laboratory results was even close to being a
problem. One month, of course, is not long enough to ruin your liver, your
kidneys, your heart or your lungs with alcohol; but it is long enough to
spot subtle changes that might, if I was to continue in the same boozy vein,
cause health problems.
I thought back to the results of the first set of tests – before my month of
drinking dangerously. Having diligently measured my alcohol consumption over
a month, I can now confirm that I must have been drinking not far off 40
units a week for the past 15 years. Yet, after only a few weeks off the
sauce, my internal organs were fighting fit. Moreover, I met nobody in my
alcoholic journey who did stick to the 21/14 weekly limit. I’m not sure how
you could and enjoy a nice drink with dinner.
When I asked the Department of Health how Dawn managed to stick to 14 units a
week, it replied the following day: “You requested a quote from Dawn
Primarolo on alcohol consumption – just to confirm we’ll be declining the
bid on this occasion. Best wishes and a merry Christmas.”
And a happy new year. Cheers.
The telltale signs of overindulgence
As the nation heads for its new year hangover on Tuesday, many people may be
worrying about their level of alcohol consumption.
The government guidelines on the amounts that are thought to represent safe
and healthy drinking for men and women suggest just three to four units of
alcohol a day for men and two to three for women. But keeping track is a
challenge for many drinkers.
A pint of ordinary beer or a 175ml glass of wine counts as about two units. A
pub measure of spirits is one unit, but a pint of strong lager counts as
three.
The problem is that glass sizes and the alcoholic strength of wines and beers
can vary widely. Many wines now have an alcoholic strength of 13%-14%,
making it hard to keep a mental running total of how much you are drinking.
Moreover, people come in all shapes and sizes and react to alcohol in
different ways.
For those unsure how much they drink but concerned at their consumption,
experts suggest taking a test of 20 simple questions (right).
If you are worried your alcohol intake is too high, the Department of Health
recommends that you see your GP or contact Drinkline, a free, confidential
helpline on 0800 917 8282.
Are you an alcoholic?
Ask yourself the following questions and answer them as honestly as you can.
1. Do you lose time from work due to drinking?
2. Is drinking making your home life unhappy?
3. Do you drink because you are shy with other people?
4. Is drinking affecting your reputation?
5. Have you ever felt remorse after drinking?
6. Have you got into financial diffi culties as a result of drinking?
7. Do you find yourself in bad company or in a bad environment when
drinking?
8. Does your drinking make you careless of your family’s welfare?
9. Has your ambition decreased since drinking?
10. Do you crave a drink at a definite time of day?
11. Do you want a drink the next morning?
12. Does drinking cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
13. Has your efficiency decreased since drinking?
14. Is drinking jeopardizing your job or business?
15. Do you drink to escape from worries or trouble?
16. Do you drink alone?
17. Have you ever had a complete loss of memory as a result of
drinking?
18. Has your doctor ever treated you for drinking?
19. Do you drink to build up your self-confidence?
20. Have you ever been to a hospital because of drinking?
If you have answered YES to any one of the questions, it is a warning that you
may be an alcoholic. If you have answered YES to any two, the chances are
that you are an alcoholic. If you have answered YES to three or more, you
are in all likelihood an alcoholic.
(These questions were compiled by Dr. Robert V. Seliger for use at John
Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, in deciding whether patients are
alcoholic.) Copyright © Recovered Alcoholic Clergy Association, 2000
