Category: Professional help

Ask About Alcohol the new alcohol awareness campaign from the HSE was launched earlier this month there’s a website, videos and radio ads.

Ask about alcohol aims to raise awareness that the majority of Irish people who drink are drinking in a way that harms them. Incredibly, it’s the very first time the HSE has produced an offical  website which is devoted to alcohol only. It’s incredible because alcohol kills far more people than  suicide or road accidents as you can see below.

(Note, We’re not an official government service, but our information is reliable and comes from reputable sources such as WHO, HSE and the NHS)

Ask About Alcohol has nice features

As a first step the ask about alcohol website is very welcome. It’s well designed and provides plenty of easy to read information for parents, women and men. There’s also information for health care professionals.

There’s an easy to use drinks calculator which allows you to quickly calculate whether your drinking is a problem.  The calculator results also show you how many calories you’re consuming and the number of burgers and teaspoons of sugar this represents.  It also shows what you could buy if you were not spending money on drink. E.g. a high definition TV. They’ve obviously done the research on what motivates people to reduce their drinking

There’s a search feature where you can find treatment services which have been screened by the HSE. (We’re included)

Ask About Alcohol videos represent real life

The videos supporting the ads are well designed, to the point and represent real life. I really like the one where the woman reducing her drinking to control her weight, gets  really negative vibes from her friend. We find this is a common reaction from friends. (You can see the video here) Already the video has  70,000 plus views.

The video about the young footballer being hung over on the football pitch and substituted is good too. But it’s only got 7,000 views. Perhaps confirming all the research that women are much more motivated to take action on their health. One of the reasons we decided to develop this website to help women first.

The negatives in Ask About Alcohol

There’s a few  misspellings in a couple of places and some graphics have the wrong title. In general they avoid shaming and blaming people for drinking too much. In some places though they refer to the “high functioning alcoholic” or “chronic alcoholic”

As regular readers know we hate this term, as most people see this as hitting rock bottom, being homeless and having a lifelong alcohol problem.  There’s so much stigma around it. Stigma that prevents people from seeking help. For a website that’s aims at raising awareness in the 1.34 million people who drink harmfully this may put people off.

The medications list misses a few key drugs

Although there’s a link to prescription medications that can cause problems with alcohol, the information provided is not complete. For example, getting drunk is very dangerous when taking warfarin, a common drug used to prevent heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots because it increases the risks of bleeding.  (See here ) The most complete list we’ve found is here, but it’s American so some of the drug descriptions  used are different.

The helpline only operates during office hours

The helpline 1800 459 459 only operates during office hours. Worse when we tried to ring it during the weekend we just got

“You are through the HSE helpline, please stay on the line while we try to connect your call”

And then we got promptly cut off both times!

From our experience, peak time for people looking for help is Sunday, so a helpline operating on Sunday would be useful.

Overall Conclusion

If  we were really serious about tackling the alcohol abuse problem, Ask About Alcohol would also include

• An online personalised treatment  service (we have short courses available here )
• Opt in notifications – such as weekly emails, (you can join our email list here) text prompts and webinars. (Where you can join online chats)
• A calculator which allows you to track your drinking.  The research shows this really helps people to reduce their drinking. Lack of money means we can’t provide one but you can find a nice free calculator here.

There is a tiny team working on the alcohol issue in both the HSE and the Department of Health. This is despite the fact the alcohol abuse problem consumes over 10% of the health care budget every year.  These range from an increased risk  of breast cancer, chest infections to pancreatis.(You can see a quick video on alcohol harms here.You’ll probably be surprised about how wide ranging these problems are)

1,500 of our 11,000 hospital beds are occupied every single night by people with alcohol related illnesses. Reducing this by 30% would solve the trolley bed problem, so it’s disturbing how little attention the alcohol harm problem receives.

When you take into account the budgets they have, Ask About Alcohol is a very good step in the right direction. It will be interesting to see how long the radio ads and digital marketing will continue. Hopefully there is a decent budget for these. In Ireland radio is a very good way of reaching people. If the ads reach a large group of people, it might start a much needed discussion about our alcohol problem and start improving  our understanding  of alcohol abuse.

The big picture

Despite constant lobbying from the community sector to take more effective action on alcohol abuse, little has changed. Indeed our associate charity Dual Diagnosis Ireland had to lobby hard with other charities to prevent alcohol being taking out of the proposed new strategy on drug harms early last year.  The treatment sector is underfunded and it’s crazy that we’re still wasting time  revisiting key decisions already taken. This reduces the already limited ability of the sector to improve treatments.

Big alcohol has such influence in creating a climate of acceptance of alcohol harm. (see more here) They’ve encouraged watering down of legislation and prevented legislation to reduce alcohol harm being passed (see more here).  At the current rate of progress, it is unlikely we’re going to see much change for a few generations.

If you’d like to support our petition to change this, please click here.

We’ve had a few people asking us about alcohol treatments so we thought we’d do a post to bring together all the different posts we’ve done on alcohol treatments.

All about residential alcohol treatments

Our first post explains all about residential rehabs when you actually live in a treatment centre for a period of time. Depending on the treatment centre this can range from one month to three months. We explain when this may be helpful.The treatments offered by each centre differ so you need to check out what each treatment offers before deciding which treatment centre is right for you.

Click here for more details

How can an  alcohol treatment counsellor help you ?

Most people with an alcohol problem,do not need to go into a residential alcohol treatment. Seeing  a counsellor may be helpful. This post explains how counsellors work and the different types of counsellors. We explain what they do, how they work and issues to consider when choosing one

Click here for more details

Key questions to ask an alcohol treatment counsellor

So you’ve decided to see a counsellor and have the names of possible counsellors. This post gives useful questions to ask a counsellor to help you make the decision as to which counsellor is right for you.

Click here for more details

Remember you are unique and need a treatment that works for you

Unfortunately in alcohol abuse treatments, some services insist on a “sheep dip” approach where everybody goes through the same treatment. Everyone has different reasons for drinking too much so treatment should tackle these reasons rather than assuming every one is the same.

So it is really important to find a treatment approach that is tailored to you personally. Often this may be called “person centered” treatment.  So it’s useful to ask if the service has a “person centered” approach.

We provide a range of free and paid courses so there may be one that suits you. Click here for more details.

Ask us a question

If you have questions on alcohol treatments, please do email us and we’ll do our very best to help.

Click here to email us.

There are lots of different types of alcohol treatment. I’ve covered rehab and choosing a counsellor previously so this post  covers key questions to ask  when speaking to a counsellor. When you contact a counsellor don’t be afraid to ask plenty of questions. A good counsellor will welcome questions as they will want to make sure their alcohol treatment approach can help you.

 Ask about qualifications

In Ireland, there is no law to stop someone calling themselves a counsellor or therapist when they have no training or qualifications. This warning also applies to other treatments such as hypnosis. So do check the websites of the professional counselling associations to make sure your counsellor is qualified to practise. You should also know that some one can be a member of a professional counselling association but may not be accredited to practise as a counsellor. For example, a student member is not fully qualified to practise.  A listing of the main  Irish associations is shown at the end of this post.

Psychologists

A counsellor can also be called a psychologist, which is a term about to be protected by law.  You can check psychologist  registration on this website. There are many different types of psychologists. For example, an educational psychologist will probably not be trained in providing alcohol treatment. They focus on how people to learn.

If you decide you need a psychologist,  ideally a counselling psychologist with alcohol abuse training is best.  If you think you have an underlying mental health issue such as ADHD you may find a  clinical psychologist with alcohol abuse training helpful.

Different approaches in different countries

In England there are  voluntary registers for counsellors which can be found here.  The American situation is different again. A useful guide for finding alcohol treatment can be found in this book “inside rehab” by Anne M. Fletcher which can be found here.

 Cost

Find out cost from the very start. Cost can vary considerably, from free services to up to €150 per hour. Psychologists tend to be at the higher end of the range. The fee is usually per session and some counsellors offer a sliding scale according to your ability to pay.

To help you work out the cost, ask the counsellor if they can give you an estimate of how many sessions might be involved. Counselling is provided free within some public health services and most third level institutions offer student counselling services free of charge. A number of voluntary agencies also provide free counselling.

Some health insurance packages cover the cost of a limited number of counselling sessions. Ask your insurer to clarify the terms and conditions of cover.

If cost is a problem, this should be mentioned when making enquiries as some organisations may have sliding scales, low cost options or payment on the basis of a donation.

You might find these questions about approach useful:

1. Have you worked with people who misuse alcohol before?
2. What is your approach? e.g 12 step, harm reduction, person centered etc. (We’ll  have  another post on this)
3. What do you think is the goal of the therapy?
4. What methods do you employ?
5. What’s the number of sessions you think we’ll need?
6. Is the timing of these sessions flexible or do they have to happen at a regular scheduled time ?
7. What’s expected from me? (For instance, are there homework assignments ?)

You might find the questions below useful after the first session;

1. Did you feel the counsellor listened and understood your concerns?
2. Did you feel like the counsellor respected you?
3. Did you feel the counsellor saw you as an equal and did not patronise you?
4. Did the Counsellor seem like a real person or were they playing a role?
5. Was the counsellor passive (simply listening) or active (asking questions) in the session? What do you like better?
6. Does it seem like the counsellor will be open to hearing about all your feelings, including being frustrated or angry with the counsellor?
7. Do you feel the counsellor will not judge you if you have a relapse or continue to drink?
8. Did the counsellor have a positive outlook on life?
9. Did you feel safe expressing your thoughts, concerns and feelings?

If you are not answering yes to most of these questions, then this counsellor may not be right for you and you should consider trying another counsellor.

All the research shows the relationship between the client and counsellor is the key to success. Do make sure you feel comfortable with your counsellor. If you do not feel comfortable with your counsellor it might be time to try another counsellor.

Alcohol treatment

As you can see there are a wide range of issues to consider when deciding on alcohol treatments. Sometimes it can take a few attempts to find  an approach  that suits you.  So don’t give up if you don’t succeed the first time. It could be this was not the right treatment for you.

Finally we have a number of online courses both free and paid you might find useful that you can find here.

If you found this post helpful, you might find these posts useful

Can an alcohol counsellor help you?

Rehab when is it needed?

Irish Associations for Counselling and Psychotherapy

Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy

Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy

The Psychological Society of Ireland

Irish Council for Addiction Counsellors