Walking through the centre of Doncaster:
Thursday morning, 
men sat in Weatherspoon’s drinking on their own.
9:23AM.

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In the UK, we have a massive drinking culture whereby alcoholism is essentially celebrated, with people who don’t drink being questioned/’looked down upon’, almost, more so than people who drink to excess.

As of 2023, an estimated 10 million people in England were said to regularly exceed the Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk drinking guidelines (no more than 14 units per week), including 1.7 million people who were said to drink at ‘higher risk’, and around 600,000 people who were deemed to be ‘alcohol dependent.’

Having been a huge issue for decades, the impact of alcoholism in the UK is rife, and only getting worse, with the number of people addicted to alcohol continuing to rise year on year…

According to NHS figures, over 7.5 million people in the UK show signs of alcohol dependence.

During the pandemic, already dangerous levels of alcohol consumption went on to increase.

Figures based on YouGov surveys highlight how 18.1% of adults in England were drinking at “increasing or higher risk” in the three months to the end of October 2021, which equates to 8 million people. This is significantly higher than that of February 2020, before the pandemic, when 12.4% (about 6 million people) drank at these levels, and even higher still than in October 2019, when 11.9% (about 5 million people), were drinking at this level…

When ‘self soothing’ becomes ‘self-annihilation.’

Alcoholism is the third leading (preventable) cause of death in the UK after smoking and obesity related diseases. It’s sad when the vices we turn to in order to ‘help us’ to get through life end up taking our lives.

There are ten million trips to the doctor each year due to drinking, with 2.1% of all hospital admissions in the UK being for alcohol-related conditions, something which costs the NHS an estimated £3.5 billion per year…

Not just a British problem but a worldwide problem- 3 million deaths (5.3% of all deaths) are recorded every year as a direct result of alcohol. 

And it’s not just alcohol either, but drug use too. In the year ending March 2023, an estimated 2.3% of people in the UK aged 16 to 59 years were frequent drug users (approximately 770,000 people)…

A Gender Divide?

Men are more likely to overuse both drugs and alcohol than women, twice as likely, in fact (for alcohol at least, where 20% of women compared to 40% of men, in 2019, were drinking at a level that would pose a risk to their health).

With men being less likely to speak out when they’re struggling, largely due to the stereotype of men being ‘tough’, and admitting to having mental health issues seen to ‘take away from their masculinity’ in some way, it’s unsurprising that men are disproportionately impacted by addiction, where addiction offers a, albeit false, sense of release from ones responsibilities- a source of escapism from the struggles that often constitute day-to-day life in a stressful society. 

The reason why it is a ‘false’ sense of escapism though is highlighted in statistics released by lead addiction centre, The Priory, which states that 60% of people in alcohol treatment also need mental health treatment… For, what starts off as a ‘solution’ to a problem often spirals, gaining more tract than the initial problem (i.e., the solution to the problem becomes the problem)…

While drink and drugs are the most obvious forms of addiction, people can, and do, become addicted to several things, including…

• Gambling

There are an estimated 1.44 million adults addicted to gambling in the UK and, tragically, 496 gambling-related suicides every year, with this figure aided by the fact that people who are addicted to gambling are 15 times more likely to take their own life… Similarly to drink and drugs, gambling addiction is also more prevalent in men than women (men are 5 times more likely to become addicted to gambling compared to women).

• Food (Eating Disorders)

Between 1.25 and 3.4 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder- a psychiatric illness that has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness. Not necessarily through undereating though, as one would associate when hearing the phrase ‘eating disorder’ (only 10% of people affected by an eating disorder suffer from anorexia nervosa), eating disorders can also see people overeating, something which could offer an explanation regarding statistics relating to obesity…

In 2021 to 2022, 63.8% of adults aged 18 years and over in England were declared to be overweight or living with obesity, with men being more likely than women to be overweight/obese (68.6% of men VS 59% of women). Women are, however, more likely than men to be anorexic (75% of women VS 25% of men). Ironic, when the pressures that society imposes on us is why many of us turn to food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, whatever it may be to ‘escape’ in the first place, yet those very pressures determine our ‘addiction of choice.’

Unfortunately, like every addiction, the prevalence of eating disorders is only getting worse, with UK hospital admissions for eating disorders having risen by 84% in the last 5 years…

Again, not just a British problem though, but a global one.

According to the National Eating Disorder Association, approximately 70 million people worldwide currently struggle with disordered eating. Rates are significantly higher in Western countries, with the UK coming in second highest behind the US (the US which amounts for almost half- 30 million– of all eating disorder cases worldwide).

• Sex

Notice how every addiction starts off as something ‘fun’, it’s how one becomes addicted (through the high that it provides), and sex is no different.

When addiction is characterised by one feeling unable to go about their daily life without being impacted by the ‘pull’ to do whatever it is that they are addicted to, sex is a prominent addiction in the 21st century, with statistics suggesting that an estimated 6% of UK adults (over 4 million people) are addicted to sex. Again, running theme here, another addiction which is more likely to impact men than women (80% VS 20%)…

So, evidently then, we’re a country, a world, of addicts. Whether we become addicted to more ‘traditional’ things such as drugs and alcohol, or to more ‘subtle’, supposedly ‘harmless’, often even praised things, like work and sex, we’re seeking escapism in any way we can…

But why?

Why are we running?

What are we so desperate to escape from?

It’s no coincidence that rates of addiction, of any type, have increased dramatically since the turn of the century, and that it is countries in the West, the most ‘well off’ (financially, evidently not psychologically), that are the worst impacted by addiction…

With the advent of technology/social media, and the subsequent disconnectedness that came with that/where virtual interaction replaced face-to-face human interaction, we are the most affluent that we have ever been, yet simultaneously, we are also the most unhappiest that we have ever been… 

In a constant state of wanting to consume more, we are ignorant, oblivious, to the fact that it is this very thing- 
consumption, 
capitalism, 
egoism- 
that is the source of humanity’s collective unhappiness in the first place…

We’ve all become so disconnected, not just from each other, but from Mother Earth herself.