Alcohol

This series reveals modern Britain through the eyes of the emergency service that gets to know us most intimately, following ambulance staff across the country who know that every 999 call they race to could be a matter of life or death. Paramedics and call handlers speak powerfully and frankly about the challenges they face, and the Britain they see, while patients and their loved ones reveal the stories behind their calls for help. This episode demonstrates the shocking effects of alcohol. In the UK, 1.6 million people are dependent on alcohol, and alcohol misuse directly costs the NHS £3.5bn a year, with admissions to hospital due to drinking doubling in the last ten years. Up to a fifth of ambulance call-outs are alcohol-related, but one paramedic reports that some weekends three-quarters of his patients are affected by booze. Sometimes ambulances are called simply because the patient is too drunk to remember where they live or want a taxi ride home. And middle aged, middle class professionals are at as much risk of ending up in an ambulance thanks to drink as the young and irresponsible or long-term alcoholics. Cases include a middle-aged executive who's drunk so much he's become incontinent, covering himself, the paramedics and ambulance in urine and faeces; a woman who's passed out after a day at the races; a 28-year-old who's lost everything through drinking; and a woman having a psychotic episode brought on by chronic and long-term alcohol abuse.