Request from communications department at British Liver Trust

If you read the request correctly Mama12...it was specifically asking for those people with alcohol related liver disease...it is not suggesting at all that everyone with liver disease is an alcoholic!

This is not aimed at you Kimberly, I just used your comment as a base to make a comment.

The system - government, medical profession et al, does not really care about the alcohol problem. Having been through it myself (as many others have here, I'm sure), I have seen it first hand.

From having a prolonged hospital stay, to trying to get help from my GP, to using. ARCs (alcohol recovery charities). I had my GP lie about being able to prescribe a medication to help with alcohol addiction and when I contacted the APC (area prescribing committee) they told me my GP could prescribe the medication. So she stopped saying she couldn't prescribe it, to she wouldn't prescribe it (big difference).

One of the problems is that GPs don't get the funding for it, so they won't help - GPs are quite mercenary when it comes to salaries and payment. Alcohol problems come under mental health, I sometimes talk to a nurse who worked in that part of the NHS. He left in the end because he couldn't cope with the disappearing help for patients and he now runs his own private alcohol addiction clinic. The part of the mental health budget for alcohol problems is now given over to ARCs, which quite frankly have no understanding. And I speak from experience, having visited two and spoken with their director in London.

I did ask one of their employees, why they seemed to go out on a limb for heroin (and other drugs, but mainly heroin) addicts, but seemed to be indifferent to people with an alcohol problem and this is what he said. heroin addiction is funded by street crime, which leads to other crime. It takes up a lot of court time (these people ((ARC)) are at the courts each week dealing with people who have been given probation) and money and if they are sent to prison it costs them even more. So they will throw money at it.

Alcoholics are self funding, they tend to pay for their drug of choice out of earnt money that has had tax paid on it. They are very unlikely to rob or cause street crime. Therefore they cause little problem and can be left to quietly drink themselves to death, whilst being ignored by the system. Of course they are falling over themselves to hand out the daily dose of methadone for free. Of course if you do manage to force out a prescription from them for alcohol addiction medication, it is not free. Because heroin addicts will just rob and steal to get money and alcohol inflicted people will pay like the good citizens they are.

I often hear how much alcohol problems cost the NHS each year. It is often quoted as £3.5bn, but what is not often quoted in the same breath is, that alcohol tax/duty is in excess of £10bn. If they were to take a fraction of that money and spend it on medication and training the counsellors who are supposed to understand the problem, but know nothing about or really care.

Brilliantly put.

I'm not slating people with drink related problems, my ex husband was an alcoholic, he turned very nasty because we wanted to help him as we know it is an illness, he has now sadly passed away, they need to as you say educate especially teenagers the drastic effect it can have on your body, I'm suffering and I get angry with life because I don't want to live like this, I have survived cancer after 4 years, but this cirrhosis is something else, sorry , I feel I'm preaching, but I just get so down, then pick myself up for a wee while, I say I'm like a fiddlers elbow, up and down, lol, all the best for the future, xx

My ex husband was an alcoholic, his organs just packed in, I have lived with that for years, now I have cirrhosis by my DIABETEs, I just need to keep fingers crossed that I can see my grandchildren grow up, x

You may want to read the bit, where alcohol costs the NHS £3.5bn a year but duty and tax are in excess of £10bn a year. There is much profit in alcohol, much more than it costs. It is not unreasonable to ask that some of it be ploughed back.

As for charging people. Sure, if you want to give me the tens of thousands back in tax, then I will consider it. I also don't want smokers, obese or anyone that may have done anything in their life that could cost the NHS, like say, people with sporting injuries, women that got pregnant*, or anyone who knowingly did something that had a risk element to it or would involve a cost to the NHS.

PS I don't think anyone mentioned about education, it was about helping people to come off alcohol if they do get addicted (it is cheaper than treating them in hospital). It will be a sad society when we only want to treat certain people. I have earnt above average salary throughout my life, which means I have paid more into the system. Should I therefore expect better care? Although I am married, I do not have children, so why should I have to pay tax to educate other people's children. I am no Lefty or socialist, but that is a very rocky road that we go down, when we start to disregard people and only look out for ourselves and expect others to pay twice.

*That was just an example and not actually what I think.