For all my US friends and friends from around the world who did not have access to UK television here is the link to “I’m An Alcoholic: My Name Is…” documentary on alcoholism which aired last night on Channel 5. Well worth checking out.
It was like a “collective” experience strength and hope (to use 12 step terminology) and will hopefully have highlighted the progressive nature of alcoholism as well as highlighting that there is treatment for and recovery from alcoholism. It was a message of hope. I’m sure it will be a useful starting point for many in “identifying” with other alcoholics to help in the process of self diagnosing.
It was great to see a documentary in the UK address alcoholism and recovery “from the horses mouth” – too often in the UK alcoholics are marginalised or absent in informing the public, by telling their story, of their alcoholism.
It was informative also that we could see the progression of this condition via all the interviewees regardless of how they later described or named their condition, how they “treated” it themselves or described their “recovery” from it.
So at least we can all agree, it starts in a seemingly innocuous manner, gets worse, then a whole lot worse, then chronic and life threatening, causes untold emotional damage to loved ones and requires both acute and long term therapeutic redress. Sounds a bit like a disease state to me that but each to their own.
As long as we all pass on the message, you can stop, you can recover from your present condition. There are lots of help in various places, in different organisations, thousands of people who suffer from the same condtion as you. They want to help you too, and you can even recovery to such an an extent that life becomes more fulfilling than anything you could ever have imagined. All the things you “treated” with substances and behaviours can be “treated” via recovery, this will happen and a whole lot more it you put the effort in.
Just click the image.
The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism 
I would love to watch this but when I click the link, it says that the video is not available.
Are you in the UK or US?
I don’t have any problems linking to it from here? Anyone else have any problems viewing it?
I’m in the US
Unfortunately the producers have not uploaded it to You Tube or Vimeo so I can’t even copy and paste the embed code onto this blog!? How disappointing and more than a little annoying.
Yes, too bad! I hope we can get it eventually.
If anyone in the US gets access, please post.
if it gets uploaded somewhere I can embed the code then it should be possible for you to view it then.
I agree – a wonderful documentary showing a wide range of people, coping with their alcohol issues in many different ways. Well worth a watch!
me too – there are different paths in recovery – some are also pretty complementary too has a close look.