MORE people are admitted to hospital because of alcohol-related problems in the North East than any other region, new figures have revealed.

But other figures showed that less crime was linked to alcohol in the region than anywhere else.

Leading alcohol campaigners last night called for action after alcohol- related hospital admission numbers soared in every part of the country.

In the North East, there were 2,406 admissions for alcohol per 100,000 people compared with a national average of 1,743. This was up by almost 900 compared with five years ago.

The director of Balance, the North East Alcohol Office, called for Government action to stop the worrying trend.

Colin Shevills said: “We need the Government to provide the right kind of action to help people reduce their drinking.

“Alcohol needs to be priced more sensibly, promotions need to be restricted, as does advertising. Alcohol is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week which is adding to the problems we are facing.


“The region has had the highest alcohol-related hospital admissions for some time, so these latest figures are no surprise but worrying.

“The fact is that there are too many people drinking too much, too often.”

In our region, the highest rate of hospitalisations was in the local authority area of North Tyneside, with 2,654.

The report, from the North West Public Health Observatory at Liverpool John Moores University, showed there were 1.1 million admissions in England relating to alcohol in 2009/10 – 879 more per day than five years previously.

North Tyneside was also ranked as the area with the most estimated binge drinkers in the country, with research showing 33.2% of people are considered to binge on alcohol.

Other detail, drawn from official crime statistics, shows that nationally there were 7.6 crimes per 1,000 people committed that were linked to alcohol.

The North East had the lowest figures for any region though with an average of 5.7.

A MAN died after suffering brain damage caused by drinking too much water

A MAN died after suffering brain damage caused by drinking too much water, his family have claimed.

Matthew Ellis, 29, downed at least 20 pints of water after a night out before collapsing at his father’s home.

His heartbroken family believe his drink was spiked with ecstasy, leaving him desperate for “pints and pints” of water the next day.

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They said the liquid he drank caused salt levels in his body to dive, bringing on a rare brain condition called extrapontine myelinolysis.

Matthew, from Gleadless, Sheffield, collapsed the day after a Boxing Day night out last year and spent 32 weeks in hospital before dying of a chest infection on August 4.

An inquest into the heating engineer’s death has been opened and adjourned.

His grieving mum, Maureen Ellis, 62, said: “He never took drugs. We are told drinking lots of water is good for you but what happened should be a warning.”

A sweeping new definition of addiction stakes out controversial positions that many, including the powerful psychiatric lobby are likely to argue with.

If you think addiction is all about booze, drugs, sex, gambling, food and other irresistible vices, think again. And if you believe that a person has a choice whether or not to indulge in an addictive behavior, get over it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) blew the whistle on these deeply held notions with its official release of a new document defining addiction as a chronic neurological disorder involving many brain functions, most notably a devastating imbalance in the so-called reward circuitry. This fundamental impairment in the experience of pleasure literally compels the addict to chase the chemical highs produced by substances like drugs and alcohol and obsessive behaviors like sex, food and gambling.

The definition, a result of a four-year process involving more than 80 leading experts in addiction and neurology, emphasizes that addiction is a primary illness—in other words, it’s not caused by mental health issues such as mood or personality disorders, putting to rest the popular notion that addictive behaviors are a form of "self-medication" to, say, ease the pain of depression or anxiety.

Indeed, the new neurologically focused definition debunks, in whole or in part, a host of common conceptions about addiction. Addiction, the statement declares, is a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” illness characterized by (a) damaged decision-making (affecting learning, perception, and judgment) and by (b) persistent risk and/or recurrence of relapse; the unambiguous implications are that (a) addicts have no control over their addictive behaviors and (b) total abstinence is, for some addicts, an unrealistic goal of effective treatment.

The bad behaviors themselves are all symptoms of addiction, not the disease itself. "The state of addiction is not the same as the state of intoxication," the ASAM takes pains to point out. Far from being evidence of a failure of will or morality, the behaviors are the addict's attempt to resolve the general "dysfunctional emotional state" that develops in tandem with the disease. In other words, conscious choice plays little or no role in the actual state of addiction; as a result, a person cannot choose not to be addicted. The most an addict can do is choose not to use the substance or engage in the behavior that reinforces the entire self-destructive reward-circuitry loop.

Yet ASAM pulls no punches when it comes to the negative consequences of addiction, declaring it an illness that “can cause disability or premature death, especially when left untreated or treated inadequately.”

The new definition leaves no doubt that all addictions—whether to alcohol, heroin or sex, say—are fundamentally the same. Dr. Raju Haleja, former president of the Canadian Society for Addiction Medicine and the chair of the ASAM committee that crafted the new definition, told The Fix, “We are looking at addiction as one disease, as opposed to those who see them as separate diseases. Addiction is addiction. It doesn’t matter what cranks your brain in that direction, once it has changed direction, you’re vulnerable to all addiction." That the society has stamped a diagnosis of sex or gambling or food addiction as every bit as medically valid as addiction to alcohol or heroin or crystal meth may spark more controversy than its subtler but equally far-reaching assertions.

The new definition comes as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is undertaking a highly publicized, decade-in-the-making revision of its own definition of addiction in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—the bible of the mental health profession. The APA’s DSM will have a larger effect on public health policies that guide addiction treatment, largely because insurance companies are mandated by law to use the DSM diagnostic categories and criteria to decide which treatments they will pay for.

 

More than a third of British adults who own a smartphone have admitted they are "highly addicted" to it and cannot bear to put it down, not even in the toilet.

Research for the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has found new evidence of how devices such as iPhones, Blackberrys and Androids affect our behaviour.
Smartphone users are more likely to have their phones switched on 24 hours a day and would wake up in the night to answer or use it.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have also lead to owners cutting down on their TV viewing and reading.
Six out of 10 smartphone users aged 12 to 15-years-old, or 60%, said they had a high level of addiction, compared to 33% with a regular mobile phone.
The Ofcom communications market report for 2011 says 18% of users will use their device in a theatre or cinema despite knowing it should be switched off - this compares to 10% of other mobile phone users.