Alcohol Awareness Week 2013

Alcohol Awareness Week started on Monday 18th November and runs until Sunday 24th November. This year’s theme is Conversations about alcohol.

Research shows that many people drink too much. While Saturday night binge drinkers make the news, most drinking takes place on sofas at home in front of the television. Having one or two glasses of beer or wine every day and then a bottle of wine at the weekend can add up to over 30 units of alcohol, which is more than men or women should be drinking.

Around one in four people in England drink too much alcohol every week and are putting their long-term health at risk. Alcohol consumption causes many serious health conditions, including cancer, high blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease and stroke.

Events are being held all over the UK to highlight the dangers of alcohol abuse. North Devon Hospital is running an event to raise awareness about the calories in alcohol and is explaining to visitors how reducing alcohol consumption can improve general health, sleeping patterns and wellbeing.

Waltham Forest is highlighting Identification and Brief Advice (IBA). It has 105 frontline staff trained to identify risky drinking patterns in individuals and provide short, structured ‘brief advice’, which hopes to encourage heavy drinkers to cut back for their health and wellbeing.

IBA is a little controversial and some people argue that it is not real advice; however, it is an economical way to spread the word about the dangers of alcohol and hopefully to reduce the number of ‘risky’ drinkers.