It’s Alcohol Awareness Week! This year’s campaign runs from 3-9 July on the theme of Alcohol and cost. Alcohol Awareness Week is managed and hosted by Alcohol Change UK. Alcohol Change UK wants to see a Britain with alcohol but without serious alcohol harm. This vision of a healthier, happier country is within our grasp if we embrace some changes.
Alcohol and Cost
The focus of this year’s Alcohol Awareness Week campaign is alcohol and its costs.
The average drinker in the UK spends around £62,899 on alcohol in a lifetime, based on a new estimate from Alcohol Change UK. We might expect that, for this amount of money, the benefits would be huge. But this brings with it many additional personal costs.
The most obvious personal cost of alcohol is to our health. Alcohol damages our bodies in multiple ways: our heart, our liver, our brains, our skin, our liver and our cells – causing seven forms of cancer. Most people who die from alcohol are not fully alcohol-dependent – they’re more likely to be heavy drinkers who had no idea quite how dangerous alcohol is.
Alcohol also often has a hidden but major effect on our relationships including contributing to domestic violence, family breakdown, alcohol-reliant friendships, or simply not being fully present with our family or friends.
Another personal cost is time. Alcohol can leave us with low energy, very poor sleep and more time recovering and less time living; and can even lead to whole evenings in which we forget what happened. So, it doesn’t just risk shortening our life, it also removes parts of the life that we have. One of the most common things reported by those people who have used alcohol heavily and taken back control of it, is how much more time they have.
Click here to find out more about the personal, financial and societal costs of alcohol from Alcohol Change UK.
Find out more about the impacts of alcohol and get tips for cutting down
To find out more information about the range of impacts which alcohol can have, or to find tips on cutting down on your alcohol consumption, click here to visit the Alcohol Change UK website.
Get in volved in Alcohol Awareness Week 2023
Alcohol Awareness Week is an opportunity for charities, local authorities, GP surgeries, businesses and more to think and talk about alcohol harm with their communities. To access more information on Alcohol and how you can get involved, click here to visit the Alcohol Change UK website.
