Last orders

Know your limits? This is more than half a woman's weekly allowance

Britain is hitting the bottle as never before. And, with one in every 13 adults thought to have a drink problem, the chances are that includes some of your closest friends.

More than three million of us are so addicted to alcohol that we cannot get through the day without a drink, according to the charity Alcohol Concern.

Alcohol plays a part in one million admissions to casualty every year - and its longer term effects are thought to cost the NHS around £1.7bn annually.

More worrying still, women's drinking habits are rapidly catching up with men's. Stressed-out female executives are now more likely to develop a drink problem than their male colleagues.

Last orders: the week's coverage on Breakfast:

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Monday: the glamour

What's the allure of alcohol - and would an advertising ban go some way to lessening its appeal?

We debated the issues with Dr Vivienne Nathanson from the British Medical Association and Jean Coussins from the Portman Group.

Both felt more needs to be done to standardise labelling as units do not accurately record volume and strength. They also said we need to be responsible and give our bodies appropriate rests between drinking sessions.

We spoke to the Home Office Minister Hazel Blears. She said binge drinking is not only a problem for the individual but also the community:

"Binge drinking is bad for person and community."

The problem areas are the young people who go out specifically to get drunk, and the chronic drinkers who are increasingly ending up with heart and liver problems. Both lower productivity, cause pressure on the NHS and some create problems for the Local Authorities i.e. by breaking things and causing rubbish. We need a partnership with pubs, industry, government and people. We have been given greater controlling powers an can confiscate alcohol.

And we asked the French philosopher Alain de Botton and the author Kathy Lette why the English have different drinking habits to our European neighbours?

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Tuesday: the Bridget Jones phenomenon

Why are single women turning in ever increasing levels to drink? Are they fun-loving ladettes - or is life for today's twenty-something women simply too stressful?

A night out with the girls

Our volunteers will fill out a drinking diary for the week

We went out for the night with four Breakfast volunteers, who'll be filling in alcohol diaries for the week.

We talked to them about the amount they drink and we'll be submitting their drinking diaries to our resident GP on Friday's programme.

What's the harm in binge drinking?

If you take twice the recommended limit of alcohol units in a day, you're binge drinking, according to Professor Sir Michael Marmot, of University College London.

For a woman, that's four glasses of wine in an evening - or two double vodkas.

watch our interview with Sir Michael Marmot

Have things changed? We talked to journalist Eve Pollard and TV Presenter Sara Cawood about women's attitudes to alcohol

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Wednesday: men behaving badly

Alcohol plays a large part in violence and anti-social behaviour in many city centres.

Breakfast was in Manchester to find out what's being done to tackle the problem.

Our reporter Mike Sergeant was at Sinclair's - a pub which won the police's best pub award for providing a safe environment to drink.

Mike talked to Darren Coles, Sinclair's pub landlord , and to Sgt. Jan Brown.

Darren Coles said the onus is on the pub staff to tell customers nicely that they've had enough:

drinking has changed, people are drinking more to cope with stresses of life. Binge drinking tends to occur on Fridays when people want to let their hair down. We don't allow glasses outside the pub and we will tell people to go home, if they have had too much to drink.

Sgt Jan Brown said alcohol consumption has gone up:

We are dealing with the increased facilities for alcohol by developing a partnership with A&E departments, pubs, police and transport. We have tried to maximise the resources we have available. We recognised that there are more places for people to drink, and rise in alcohol crimes goes hand in hand. Having incentives such as the Good Pub Award can create a more responsible attitude.

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Thursday: alcoholism

The NHS spends around £1.7bn treating the effects of alcohol each year - from victims of violence, to detoxing alcoholics.

But does the treatment available for alcoholics really work?

We heard the story of one man, Martin Saunders, who's a recovering alcoholic.

"I ended up in a psychiatric hospital on suicide watch," he told us.

Eventually, he decided that drink was at the root of his problems - and he had to detox:

"I was flat on my back in hospital two days and gradually got back to walking and talking. In fact, it was some while before I felt well enough to walk.

We also heard from the family of one woman - a successful and popular solicitor - who died from the effects of alcohol at the age of 39.

Julia's sister Leonora died at 39 while waiting for a liver transplant

Leonora's family had no idea that she had a drink problem until 1998. In fact, she was drinking up to three bottles of wine and champagne a day.

Despite joining Alcoholics Anonymous, she simply couldn't stop - and eventually, in 2003, Leonora died while awaiting a liver transplant.

Her sister is raising money for a treatment centre in her name - the Leonora Trust

If you'd like to donate, the address is: The Leonora Trust, PO Box 5539, Northamptonshire NN6 6ZL.

Or you can email [e-mail]

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Friday: practical steps

Our guests consumed 70 units in a week

Breakfast's regular GP Dr Rosemary Leonard offered some no-nonsense advice on drinking safely.

We met our three drinkers from earlier in the week - Katie, Lucy and Kelly -they had been keeping a drink diary and we discovered that between them they had consumed 70 units of alcohol.

This was 30 units more than the recommended safe limit.

Dr Rosemary stressed the importance of making sure the women had at least one or two days a week when they didn't drink at all.

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Know your limits

To drink safely, you should consume no more than 14 standard units of alcohol per week if you're a woman - or 21 if you're a man.

Many people are confused about what that means in practice.

A standard unit is - a small glass of wine; one half a pint of normal strength beer; or one single pub measure of spirits.

Using this measure, there are probably eight standard units in a bottle of wine - although some New World varieties and dessert wines may be much stronger.

Export beers and premium lagers are also much stronger than standard British bitter.

And almost any shot of spirits poured at home is likely to be larger than a single pub measure.

So, it's very easy to clock up far more than your weekly intake, without really noticing.

Drinkline

If you need advice on a drink-related problem, you can call Drinkline for free, confidential advice from anywhere in the UK, on 0800 917 8282. It's open from 9am-11pm from Monday to Friday

Should there be health warnings on alcohol? If you'd like to register your views on this - and other questions about how the NHS handles other "self inflicted" illnesses like obesity you can take part in a special online survey for the BBC's forthcoming programme, Your NHS.

click here to go to Your NHS, Your Consultation