Alcohol Cherry Healey: Old Before My Time

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

We all know that drinking, drugs and fast food are bad for you.

The bit I like the most is the skin.

But when it comes to young Brits,

nothing gets in the way of a good time.

Do you think you're invincible? Yes. My motto is, you only live once

There are health consequences but... Worry about them later.

Why dwell on something you may not get? Who cares?

# I don't care I love it. #

But these days,

a life of excess isn't just leaving young people hung-over

it's accelerating their age.

I'd get out of breath walking to the shop, like a 90-year-old woman or something.

Hit by chronic conditions, usually the preserve of pensioners...

She's got no quality of life at the moment.

Walking for Jo is a problem.

..their young bodies and minds are ready for retirement.

I'll always walk into a room to go and get something

and then wonder why I've gone and done it.

It makes you feel old. It makes you feel, what's going on?

I'm on a ward with people who are 40 years older than me

and probably half of them are fitter than me.

I struggle to walk properly.

That young-person mentality of "I'm going to live forever,"

you don't think about the ramifications it's going to have on your body.

Is there any hope for their prematurely old bodies?

# I love it. #

I didn't even think that I could damage my heart through taking drugs.

Deep breath. Right in, right in

My lungs feel like they are actually collapsing.

They have got the lungs of an old man.

Or are they past the point of no return?

Having to cope with gout and liver and heart problems in your 20s

it's kind of unbelievable.

This is very young.

She's already gone into super obesity.

The likelihood is it will shorten her life 15 years.

I want to find out what life is like for young people

who have become old before their time.

Do you think you can stop?

Yes. It's just going to take a hell of a lot of willpower.

# I love it. #

In tonight's film, I'm going to meet young people

whose bodies have aged because of their excessive drinking.

How many days after the operation was that? That is five days. I was still massively in pain.

I've got these scrawny arms at the top and all of a sudden it goes ..

All the veins stand out as well

I had searing pains in my stomach,

like somebody was sticking a knife in me.

I'll discover the shocking things alcohol can do to their young bodies.

This is the liver from somebody that needed a liver transplant

for cirrhosis from alcohol.

I don't see the problem with drinking.

If it becomes a problem, I'll stop.

And find out if anything can be done to save both their youth and their lives.

I'm just going to say, no more drink. That's goodbye.

Hearing a mother screaming that her 22-year-old son has died

will ring in my ears forever.

It's Friday night, I'm in Newcastle and like every other big town

or city in the UK, it is fuelled by booze.

The north-east has a big reputation for boozing hard.

So I've come out armed with a breathalyser to see if young people

know just how much they're drinking and how it can affect their body.

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. I think you might be pissed.

You are very nearly in the box where you have

the possibility of falling unconscious. Memory blackout.

I don't feel unconscious.

What were you doing drinking at nine o'clock in the morning

It's her 18th. I was drinking champagne.

And blow. Until it beeps twice

You have emotional swings. Yes Decreased libido.

Are you feeling horny? No.

'After a couple of drinks,

'which is around 100 points on this blood-alcohol breathalyser,

'booze can of course make us chatty and even a bit euphoric.'

Yes!

The night's early.

I'm going to sink about another eight, easy. Geordie style!

You only live once.

Keep going, keep going.

'But over 200 points and the dangers start to get serious.'

Holy...!

You have the possibility of falling unconscious.

You have... You have memory blackout, potentially.

Oh, my God!

So that's the most...

Wahey!

Ooh, there she is! Ooh, there she is!

Do you think things like liver disease, pancreatitis, kidney failure?

Who cares? If you are going to get it, you are going to get it

Why dwell on something you may not get?

Do you ever worry about liver damage?

No. It never crosses my mind.

When people start talking about the dangers of alcohol, what do you think?

It's a load of BLEEP. You only live once.

But what if you live less time You have still lived your life

You have lived it to the max.

So the overall impression I've got tonight is that no good night

is without booze, and actually

nobody wants to hear about the dangers of alcohol

and the statement I keep on hearing is, life is too short.

What?

Tanked up with booze, it's easy to say "to hell with tomorrow"

But across the city...

..young alcohol casualties flood into A every night of the week.

What happened here? I have no idea.

I've clearly taken a tumble.

But it's not all just bangs and bruises.

In England, hospitals have seen a staggering 117% rise

in alcoholic liver disease amongst the under 30s.

We may just be sleepwalking into a health epidemic.

Consultant herpetologist Steve Masson

specialises in treating some of these conditions.

We have certainly had people in their early 20s

with advanced liver disease.

We've had somebody in their late 20s be transplanted from liver disease.

And increasingly, early 20s, mid 20s, early 30s,

which 10 or 15 years ago was almost unheard of.

What's happening? Why is there a noticeable increase in young people?

Alcohol is seen as a positive substance.

We glamorise it, we advertise it, we make it a part of society.

So to go from drinking it socially to drinking it excessively,

it is not always a huge step.

Sometimes it creeps up on people.

Liver disease is the main condition associated with alcohol abuse.

Boozing to excess causes the liver to become clogged with fat.

When the body tries to repair itself,

scar tissue can form, which may destroy the structure of the liver.

A condition known as cirrhosis that left unchecked can be fatal.

So a young person's liver should look like this.

But after heavy drinking, it does not stay that way for long.

What is that? This is the liver .. That's a liver?

This is a liver from somebody that needed a liver transplant

for cirrhosis from alcohol.

And you'll see that it is very knobbly, very nodular.

Those are cirrhotic nodules and it is shrunken and a lot smaller than it should be.

You took that out of somebody's body when?

It has come out of one of our patients within the last couple of months.

That is just unbelievable.

'Steve's stock in trade is liver problems,

'but alcohol can attack almost any part of a young drinker's body

'even in their 20s.'

Alcohol can affect any organ system.

So we know that people with alcohol are more likely to have high

blood pressure and that puts them at increased risk of ischaemic heart

disease, heart attacks, there is increased risk of certain cancers.

Head and neck cancers in particular.

Alcohol is probably one of the commonest cause of impotence amongst young men.

So a whole host of things that alcohol can cause

and problems that can arise, not just the main organ systems

It is such a huge part of our life when we celebrate,

commiserate, good day, bad day

It's the thing that's always there.

It's so weird to think that it can hurt us in so many different ways.

Seeing alcohol-ravaged organs is one thing but there are thousands

of young people in the UK struggling to live with these alcohol-related conditions.

One of Steve's patients is Jo from Middlesbrough.

In her 20s, Jo was surrounded by booze all day every day

whilst working behind a bar.

Over the last five years, her drinking spiralled out of control

It's the strangest looking thing

because I've got these scrawny arms at the top

and then all of a sudden it just goes...

Jo is suffering from cirrhosis of the liver

and a common side effect

is this extreme fluid retention known as ascites.

I mean, it is incredibly tight

You can see all the veins stand out as well.

I had two different people in two different places smile at me

and go, "Are you due soon?"

I've had people give up their seats for me on the bus.

Sometimes, it's just like, I don't know...

"Have you got two hours

"that I can stand and explain why I'm like this?"

I just laugh and waddle off.

Every three weeks, Jo has to be admitted to

the James Cook University Hospital to get the excess fluid drained off.

You might feel a little bit of pressure.

Dr Craig has to pierce Jo's skin and then try to hit the right spot

with the catheter to get the largest quantity of fluid out.

I would expect probably about 12 litres in total

and that will drain fairly rapidly to begin with.

Probably over six to eight hours,

we would expect the full volume to be removed.

I think I'll beat 12. I reckon about 14.

It's just a relief. You can feel the pressure just. .

Sister Jeanette will be monitoring the exact amount of fluid Jo loses.

We've drained now for five minutes

and we have nearly drained two litres.

It might look like urine, but the liquid is actually

a mixture of both nutrients and toxins

that a healthy liver would process.

And in just the first two hours

Jo has lost an astonishing 18 litres.

It is just all skin now.

Jelly belly!

Jo is now sober but the damage she did to her liver through alcoholism is irreversible.

She's got no quality of life at the moment.

She'll get maybe a week at the most benefit from this drain

and then the fluid will start creeping up again and again and again.

So walking for Jo is a problem

Getting down to put your pants on, basic things that we all

take for granted every single day, Jo can't do that.

But if Jo hadn't stopped drinking, her situation would be worse.

Our hospitals have seen a 20% rise in deaths

from alcohol-related liver disease in just the last ten years.

We are getting a lot of younger patients who have died

through alcoholic liver disease

Hearing a mother screaming that her 22-year-old son has died

will ring in my ears forever.

It's awful.

I've come up to Middlesbrough to meet Jo's mum, Ann.

Hi, I'm Cherry. I'm Ann. Nice to meet you. Are you coming in? Thank you.

'She was instrumental in helping Jo beat the bottle

'and she now cares for her every need back at the family home.'

I do good healthy meals, I think.

Do you think you've become more health-conscious now you have to look after Jo?

No. It's still the same food.

I always do a dinner for my mother because she is 87.

I always do a Sunday dinner. So you look after your mum as well?

So you're looking after an 87-year-old and a 35-year-old? Yes.

Who is more time-intensive to look after? It's not my mum

It is a lot harder to look after Joanne than my mother.

So it's harder to look after your daughter in her mid-30s..

Than my 87-year-old mother. 87-year-old mother.

Ann forced Jo to move back home after seeing the state of her flat

when she was still drinking six months ago.

What was it like?

I cried. The bottles were piled either side of the bed.

Up to the window. It was horrendous.

No wonder she wouldn't let me in and have a look.

We went to AA, and she stopped going there

and I thought she had given up last year and she hadn't.

She just carried on.

But she would look at you and lie. Look at you in your face and just lie.

"I haven't had a drink, Mam. No "

She had. She was arseholed.

She puts on a brave front

but I know underneath that she still craves alcohol.

What can you do to stop her drinking?

I don't let her have a card and go to the shops on her own

We go out in the night and I lock the front door.

So she can't get out.

It must be hard for you to see her so unwell.

I just have to make sure I do the best I can for her.

Back in hospital, and after six hours, Jo has lost over 23 litres,

reducing her bodyweight by an incredible three stone.

It is a ward record.

But she will be back in three weeks' time to do it all over again.

It's just a bit sore.

This is the most I've had out by a long way.

This one.

I am definitely feeling the effects of it now.

Jo's only chance to get well is a liver transplant,

a life-changing operation that not everyone survives.

Booze-related medical problems

don't just come about from long-term alcohol abuse.

Heavy bingeing can also have a striking effect

on even the most fresh-faced drinkers.

Two weeks ago, plumber Max went on a lads holiday to Kavos

But he came back with more than just a souvenir T-shirt.

On the first night, unfortunately, I started feeling quite ill.

I had really bad stomach pains

I shrugged it off at first but then it was searing pains in my stomach.

Like someone was sticking a knife in me.

It was so bad I couldn't even stand up. I thought, am I going to die?

Am I going to pass out from the pain? They all carried me to the doctors.

I was screaming in pain and crying. It was horrible.

It really did shake me up.

It turned out to be pancreatitis, which is quite scary.

Pancreatitis hits when the body s digestive enzymes,

which are designed to break down food,

eat away at the pancreas instead.

Initially, it should resolve itself,

but by carrying on drinking it may develop into a chronic condition

that can be fatal and increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.

No-one likes to hear the word "cancer".

I mean, we all know somebody who's had it.

The doctor did say don't drink alcohol for the rest of the holiday.

But after a while, being around 16 other lads in a place like Kavos,

where everything is partying and drinking,

the advice soon went out the window.

A month on from Kavos,

and tonight could be a true test of Max's willpower.

It's his 21st birthday, and he's invited me out with the boys.

But as Kavos was his second bout of pancreatitis,

I'm not sure he should be having it large.

So I've come to get some medical advice

at the University of Birmingham from consultant Dr Shetty.

How serious is pancreatitis?

It is potentially a very devastating condition.

A proportion of patients will develop what we call severe acute pancreatitis

where from simple inflammation of the pancreas

it leads to multi-organ failure

and a large proportion of patients die from this condition.

If somebody had had, say, two bouts of pancreatitis within one year

due to heavy drinking, what advice would you give to them?

They have to cut down drinking

The best thing is to be completely abstinent and stop drinking completely.

What they have to think about is weighing up the pros and cons.

It's going out and having a good time with your friends, but pancreatitis can be life-threatening.

Personally, I think one attack is enough of a sign.

So twice is... You need to be extremely careful.

I would be worried. OK.

It may be Max's 21st but the doctor's advice is really clear.

I know he likes a drink

but I'm seriously hoping he won't go crazy tonight.

Hello. Hi. How you doing? Happy birthday! Thank you.

What's in the bag? Clink, clink! Obvious. Drinks.

I see how this is going to go. The only way. Come on.

Now that you've had pancreatitis twice,

do you have a voice in the back of your head kind of going,

"Oh, God, should you really have another one?"

Or do you just forget about it

I have got a voice in the back of my head before every night out now

I don't want it to happen again because I know how painful it was.

But obviously the more drinks I have and the more I'm having a laugh

and enjoying myself, I sort of forget about it.

We'll all get smashed and have a laugh or whatever

and the last thing I'm going to think is, "I might get pancreatitis if I drink any more

"because I've had it twice and don't drink any more."

I'm just not going to think like that.

'Well, at least he's lined his stomach,

'because his mates want to party.'

# I know this crazy life can be a bitter pill to swallow

# So forget about tomorrow

# Tonight we're drinking from the bottle

# We're drinking from the bottle #

'I really, really feel for Max

'because he's basically got to choose'

between his health and his friends.

And his social life. It's tempting just to say,

"I'm sure it'll be fine."

The problem is if it's NOT fine it's really bad.

CHEERING

So what's the rest of the night going to look like for you?

Just to Yates's and stay till about three in the morning.

Carry on drinking as we are now really.

You've had pancreatitis twice. Mm.

Do you know how serious it could potentially be?

Yeah. I've had all the warnings like.

I am more careful than I used to be.

But it's not going to stop me going out.

That's the end of it, the long and short of it. Is it

I'll go out and have a drink.

Tonight, obviously being my birthday and that

and everyone buying me drinks, I ll drink them. Do you know what I mean?

SHOUTING AND CHEERING

'They're all having a good time and having a drink.

'I want to be part of it - you don't want to be the only one saying no.'

CHEERING

You're not going to order a nice Earl Grey tea in the next venue

No, no chance! No chance!

Well...I think this is probably

where I end my journey with you Leave me to it!

Because I can feel it's going to spiral. Out of control!

Just... Be careful. ..look after yourself.

I will. You're a lovely guy. I'll try. You're a sweetie.

Your pancreas is your little friend.

Until the morning when it's screaming at me! Look after it, OK? I will.

It's kind of easy to be the finger-wagging person saying,

"You shouldn't do this, it's bad for your health."

But actually, so many of us do things we know are dangerous

People still smoke and they know the realities of

how ill you can get.

Actually, we all do things that are really dangerous

I just really hope that Max is one of the lucky ones.

To drink safely, you should have no more than 21 units spread

across the week - that's equivalent to just ten pints of weak beer

SIRENS BLARE

'But on a Friday night in Newcastle's emergency department,

'I'm only too aware that the effects of binge drinking on some

'young people means they might not even live to see another night out.'

The Royal College of Physicians estimates that 50%

of all violent assaults are related to alcohol.

It's obviously really...

a really serious case and he's really, really unwell

From what I gather,

it's alcohol-related violence and he's been beaten up.

Is this something that you see often? Yes.

Probably every weekend, definitely.

(Oh, my God, you can smell the alcohol from him.)

(That is so strong.)

He's got a massive cut on his..

His face, covered in blood.

Do you see people coming in from alcohol-related incidents

and...dying from them? Yes.

What's the most common cause?

Head injury, normally. If you don't know which way up is

because you've got that much alcohol on-board, you don't realise that

you're falling so we see lots of people falling downstairs and...

Yeah, well, fights as well, but perhaps stepping in front of cars.

All your protective mechanisms

all your common sense is taken away

and so...yeah, we get really horrendous injuries

for, you know, good people who just are on a night out

wanting to enjoy themselves.

Right, Scott, painful at all? No, no, no, no

'Another casualty, 20-year-old student Scott, has also been

'brought in during the middle of a heavy session.'

I was walking home.

The next thing I know, I ended up in the back of an ambulance.

I was like, "What am I doing here?"

Apparently, I was hit by a car I went through the windscreen.

HE GROANS My back...

Don't shake your head, OK? Try and keep it nice and still? OK

The extent of Scott's injuries hangs in the balance,

but once his girlfriend and mates arrive,

his memory of the night starts to come back.

I mean, I admit I probably had a bit too much to drink tonight

I've had about three and a half bottles of wine

since I've been out.

I don't see the problem with drinking alcohol.

If it becomes a problem, then I'll stop.

But you know, it's not a problem, so...

He actually sounds like an alcoholic.

I think this should be a wake-up call to you.

It's just...you don't need to drink, like, every night. Yeah, Scott

Thankfully, Scott looks to have escaped serious injury

as no clear fractures have shown on his CT scan.

NURSE: Lift your head up off the bed.

Welcome to A

HE GASPS

# Bye-bye, love

# Bye-bye, happiness... #

'I'm learning that most people don't realise the problems

'that alcohol causes until it's too late.'

# Bye-bye, love... #

In Middlesbrough, Jo and her mum have been through hell and back

to try to beat her addiction.

She's now been discharged after her 23-litre drain,

so I've come up to see how she's doing.

Afterwards was quite painful.

It does sort of push on your other organs and move stuff about

It just hurts so much.

So how much did you drink and what were your drinking habits?

I drank mostly rose wine.

It seems so harmless, rose!

At most, I could drink about three bottles a day.

It just got out of control, spiralled. I don't know why.

I mean, I thought, "I'm all right, I'm fine."

And then...obviously, I'm not.

Did you ever try and stop drinking when it had really got a grip

My family and friends knew, they thought I was drinking too much

and they'd said so. I was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

"It's all right, I've stopped"

You didn't want to stop, really No.

Just told everybody else what they wanted to hear.

'Jo has to take a daily cocktail of pills to help keep her alive '

Calcium, multivitamins...

'But the only long-term solution to her condition

'is a liver transplant. After staying sober for six months,

'this has just become a very real prospect.'

It's a pledge I signed that you will follow the rules,

you won't have a drink, otherwise that's it, you'll be off the list.

You get one chance. I signed on my birthday.

Wow. Happy birthday, Jo! JO CHUCKLES

Was it scary?

Yeah, it is. It's the best thing for me in the long run

so I've got to look at the positives as well.

I had got to one point where I was thinking,

"Oh, God, you know...basically I'm sat here on this list,

"I've got to wait for someone to die." And you can't think like that.

That'd happen anyway, regardless. Yeah, it's not in your hands.

Do you think I'll have the right amount of socks?

Cos always one gets lost, don't they?

And you think, "I must have only put three in,"

but you could've sworn there was four.

The transplant might be Jo's lifeline,

but one in five people die before ever receiving

their life-changing operation

something mum Ann is all too aware of.

I do worry potentially that she could die,

whatever the outcome, with or without the liver transplant

or whether she goes on the alcohol again AFTER the transplant.

It's still a possibility. I mean, she could die during the operation

or she could collapse at any time now.

I do think about it every day.

Normally, I'd have had my pots planted with flowers

and my hanging basket and everything this year, but..

I just haven't had the heart to do it.

Hospitals now have to deal with 1.2 million alcohol admissions

each year, costing the NHS nearly ?3 billion.

'Over in the Freeman Hospital,

'consultant Steve sees some of the most serious drinkers.'

So this time round, we'll see her results first.

30-year-old Kate has just come in.

I drink and then just puke,

and drink and puke, and drink and puke.

What kind of logical head does that? Nobody.

It's stupid, it's absolutely mad.

Kate is not here because she drank too much, but because

she stopped drinking abruptly in a bid to beat the bottle.

Her body went into a state of withdrawal at an AA meeting

If your body has become dependent on that level of alcohol,

then actually stopping suddenly can sometimes be a bad thing to do

because your body goes into a withdrawal state which can

put people at risk of sudden death, of heart arrhythmias and things

so it's potentially a very life-threatening condition in itself.

Ideally, drinkers should wean themselves off alcohol slowly.

A daily dose of intravenous vitamins and diazepam

is the immediate fix for Kate, but her body also has long-term damage.

'I'm on a ward with people who, you know,

'are probably 30, 40 years older than me

'and probably half of them are fitter than me.'

You know, I've got numb feet.

I'm a 30-year-old woman who's got numb feet

and struggle to walk properly.

Like I say, I've got liver damage. It's destroying me, man.

With A levels and a degree behind her, Kate was doing well

professionally but began to struggle when she split up with her partner.

It did devastate me and, like, I had a three-year-old

and a one-year-old to look after and I was knackered. I drank to cope.

I'd get up in the morning, I was taking one to playgroup,

one to school, picking up, dropping off, picking up...

and loads of people do that and they can do that

but for me, it was just so stressful.

Trying to get two kids ready in the morning,

all I would do, I'd put the telly on for them, they're watching their programmes,

I'll shut the door for the kitchen, open the cupboard again,

quick swig, woo, I'm calm again

'It's like...like in some sort of crazy world

'and then if I have a drink, I can become normal.'

18 months ago, Kate's kids went to live with their grandparents,

as she could no longer look after them safely.

'I mean, they want to come home They keep asking when they can come home

'and I can't give them an answer.'

I'd take them back in a shot

but I'm not fit enough to look after them.

A sample of Kate's blood has been sent to the lab

to assess the damage to her liver.

Morning. Morning.

The results have just come back and Steve's concerned for her health.

The liver blood tests show that your body's starting to complain,

the liver's under strain from the alcohol,

and I would like you to have a scan of the liver just to check

the shape and the size of that

I see you had one a couple of years ago

and at that time the liver was a bit swollen and a bit fatty. Yep.

And that's the first signs of damage and we want to see

if that's progressed or if that's changed.

Things are only going to get worse if you continue to drink

The worst case scenario is that I die

and my children grow up without a mother.

And the kids need me, so I've just got to say,

"No more drink, that's it, goodbye."

(Shit.)

SHE SNIFFLES

I'd better open the curtains, hadn't I?

SHE SNIFFLES

God, the windows stink.

When I was last here,

I was just lying under my son's duvet,

getting the dregs out of the bottom of that box of wine.

Erm...reading a bit of the big book from AA.

Oh, and being sick in that bowl

I want to pour this down the sink actually, down the toilet.

Sick in the sink, of course.

TOILET FLUSHES

The toilet's there, and I could be sick in the toilet

but I'm not, I'm sick in the sink. I make no sense.

There's loads of pictures of my kids on the wall and I sit

and look at them and I just...pfff. It kills me that I'm not with them.

And then I get the best of intentions to stop

and then...something goes wrong and I start again, and...

..I just hope that this time, I can stop for good.

SHE SNIFFLES

This is my kids' bedroom but they're not in it.

I just want them back in it.

But...

It's like when they were here, they would sleep in their own room

and then I'd be in my room and about five o'clock in the morning,

they'd just pile into bed with me, and I loved it.

And I miss it.

Sorry.

SHE SOBS I'm sorry.

The chances of me getting them back in the next six months

are pretty slim. You know, I've got to get myself well first.

So I should just focus on today I'll not drink.

Tomorrow, I'll not drink...

..and just keep going.

For any alcoholic, staying away from drink is a massive challenge.

Temptation is everywhere.

There are now well over 120,00 places to buy alcohol in the UK

and what's on sale is often astonishingly strong - and cheap.

It's 7.5%...

..and it's three pounds for...three litres.

That's a pound a litre.

With booze now also available 24 hours a day,

it's the one drug in the UK that's always on tap.

The facilities, the tools we have

to become highly addicted are just here, it's so easy to buy.

The only tricky thing is carrying them home.

If alcoholism does take hold,

the addiction can overshadow everything else in your life.

'I've come to the outskirts of Sunderland to meet the Arkleys,

'a family torn apart by their youngest son, Tony's, drinking.

What kinds of things was Tony into when he was young?

Motorbikes, he was motorbike fanatic.

And cars, but more so on motorbikes.

He was so good on them as well When he used to go down the field

on the bike, he used to be wheelie-ing

and they used to mess about with the bikes for the kids,

and he used to fix all their bikes and that for them.

If the drink hadn't took hold of him, that would've been his. .

His life, I think. How do you think Tony became introduced to alcohol?

15, 16, I think. It was just the done thing,

he used to just drink with his mates

and it just was like a Friday night thing.

I don't know what it was, but from his first time,

I think it took hold of him.

And then he just couldn't stop

At bad times, he used to drink as much as 16 litres a day.

16 litres a day?! Mm.

That would've been when he was in his bad times.

You'd find bottles hid all over the house.

I used to say, "You're going to die."

He used to say, "Don't be daft I'll not die."

And he did.

At the age of just 28, Tony passed away in his bedroom

He really loved his motorbikes didn't he?

Aye, he loved his bikes. Wow.

We've never changed the bedding or nothing,

I just can't bring myself to do it. It's just...

Cos there's times when you walk in, you can smell him.

I know it sounds silly, but... No, it doesn't at all.

You just get the... Still kisses his pillow every night.

I come in and kiss his pillow every night and say,

"Good night, I love you."

It's hard. SHE SOBS

You all right?

When did things start to really unravel for Tony?

From 25 onwards, he's just...deteriorated.

But you see, the last year, he deteriorated fast.

He was just in and out of hospital all the time.

He wanted to stop...

He just couldn't. ..and he just couldn't. He just couldn't stop

It had too much of a grip on him.

'Tony suffered from double kidney failure, pancreatic cancer,

'hepatitis and liver cirrhosis

'In late 2012, he was rushed to hospital

'with severe internal bleeding Despite making it through,

'there was nothing more that could be done for his chronic problems.'

He says, "Mam, I'm signing myself out.

"What's the point of sitting in here when I can be sitting, lying in my own bed?"

And then he came home and he just...

That was it, he deteriorated fast. The weight just dropped off him It just...

I used to put... E45 cream. ..E45 cream on him

cos he went dead dry and I could feel every knobble of his spine

every rib and...

Were you here when he died? I'll never forget it.

I walked in the door and Tony was like half pushed up on his shoulder,

half sitting up and his eyes..

Oh, I'll never forget them.

He looked so terrified, and I just went up to him

and I says, "Howay, my son, lie down," and that, like.

Laid him down and I kissed him and I says,

"Tony, you can go now, you know, son."

I says...

I says, "You don't know your Nana, Nana Murphy," I says.

"But she'll know you, she'll be waiting for you."

And I laid him down and I kissed him. He's just...

And I shouted to her, "Emma, Lindsey," that was it.

He was in your arms, though.

He died in my arms. Oh...

SHE SOBS

I just can't imagine what it must be like...

CHERRY SNIFFS ..to lose a child, I just can't.

You can't, can you?

(I can't imagine.)

But I miss him so much.

MARGARET SIGHS

An addiction of this scale doesn't just affect one person

Tony's whole family is completely devastated.

They've had to watch someone they love

kind of disappear before their eyes

because of something like alcohol, because of booze.

It's too sad and too much of a waste to really get your head around

From 2011 to 2012, a staggering 13,000 under-18s in England

used specialist services for problems with alcohol.

But behind the statistics,

some young people do get help before it's too late.

'I'm driving to Bournemouth to meet one of the lucky ones.

'In his late teens, Matt was having the time of his life,

'drinking and partying with mates.'

I'm not going to lie, I had a really fun time drinking.

It gave me more confidence, it helped me to talk to women

and, you know, make new friends

But by 21, Matt had fallen into an alcohol-induced coma,

and after waking up, endured a living hell

of life-threatening injuries.

'Matt needed a liver transplant to save his life.'

Hi, Cherry. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. You're looking really well.

'After waiting for more than 18 months,

'he went under the knife in January,

'and I want to see if he'll ever truly recover.'

What happened after the operation?

My initial thoughts were kind of like, "Yes, I'm not dead "

You know, "They haven't got me yet," kind of thing.

And then it was the realisation of the pain afterwards.

Just really intense pain, obviously.

It felt like I'd been cut up in half.

Because you had. Yeah, I had been cut up in half, essentially. Yeah.

The main worry was about rejecting the organ.

Yes, cos at the end of the day it's a foreign object,

it's not like it was mine that I was born with,

so my body will naturally fight it off because it's...

"Agh, this is not part of this body

"so we need to attack it and get rid of it."

'Matt will have to take anti-rejection drugs

'for the rest of his life and his future will be greatly affected

'One in five people suffer from a range

'of life-threatening side-effects like diabetes and kidney failure.

'And his body will always bear the scars of the operation.'

They call it the Mercedes-Benz scar.

SHE LAUGHS

They've pimped your scar? Yeah

And so what are these marks here, that run down?

The other marks are basically when I initially had problems

back in 2007, my liver swelled up quite a huge amount

and I had a bit of a pot belly

and the fluid needed to be drained off

and...yeah, so that's not very pleasant.

I do use oils for it and stuff to sort of try and...

We can share oil tips. I'm so down with the belly oil

How do you feel about your scar

but it's something I'm working on.

I didn't really want to see it or look at it,

I kind of wanted to deny it was there but I knew sooner or later,

it was something I'd have to accept that would be there.

Now I can actually...just about bear the sight of myself in the mirror!

And it will get better and better. Yeah. I'm sure it will.

Get smaller and smaller. I hope it does. Fingers crossed

'Now, six months on, Matt is back at work,

'and starting to rebuild his life.

'But photos are a painful reminder of his ordeal.'

That's me in hospital. Let me see. The pained smile, look! "I'm OK "

Yeah, I'm still alive. How many days after the operation was that?

That's five days. Five days. Five days after.

Actually quite a long time after. Yeah.

I was still really massively in pain.

Oh, my God, that's really full-on.

It's not that bad.

It's quite bad!

'Matt knows nothing about the person his new liver came from.

'Everything is done completely anonymously, but he's keen to

'go some way to saying thank you by writing a letter of gratitude

'to the donor's family, that the hospital could then pass on '

Obviously, I don't expect to get it right first time.

I think there will be a number of crosses-out

and I will leave certain bits out.

It's, like, the hardest thank-you letter...

Yeah. ..to write, perhaps.

It's really personal to me but I don't want to make it

so much about me because they've obviously lost a loved one.

Of course. Yeah. Um...I don't know how to start it.

I'm just going to... What to say?

Is there anything you want to say, or not so, particularly? Yeah.

I thought I might mention about one time when I was actually

in a waiting room at hospital and I saw a father playing with his child.

"I was having a routine check-up at the hospital

"when I was in the X-ray department and I noticed that

"It came across my mind that potentially

"this could never happen to me

"Without realising, I began to cry

"and to now know that to have family of my own

"is a possibility now, thanks to your family member." Um...

You know, I put "family member"

I didn't know if it was a brother, sister, mother, son...

I think that story is so moving and kind of...says it all, almost.

Yeah. It's not overdramatic, it's really personal.

Did you think writing this was going to be this hard? Yeah, I did.

I kind of foresaw that there was going to be issues.

Have you been nervous about writing this letter?

Yeah. I think I've put it off a little bit, if I'm honest, yeah.

And I think now is probably around the right time

so you coming to visit me today was probably a good prompt

for me to get on and start writing this.

At the Freeman Hospital, Jo's been called in for an operation.

It's not the all-important liver transplant,

but surgery to help alleviate the ascites around her abdomen

Consultant radiologist Ralph Jackson will be operating

You've going to have this TIPS procedure.

It means putting a tube into the jugular vein here in your neck,

then all the way down, past your heart to the back of the liver,

and your liver sits about here

Then, I can make a tunnel through the liver connecting the vein

at the back of the liver

to the vein at the front of the liver.

The TIPS surgery is an attempt

to reduce the blood pressure in the liver.

Ralph is hoping to connect the two main veins

with an artificial tunnel known as a stent.

This should help reduce the ascites fluid build-up.

The outcome is hard to predict but if all goes well,

Jo won't need regular abdomen drains any more.

You've seen the anaesthetist? Yes. She's happy with everything? Yes.

Perfect. Well, we'll get on with it. OK.

See you later. Be good. All right. See you.

I got a bit emotional there.

And that's not me. That's not me.

Yeah. I think she'll be all right,

but I did get a little...

I know it's not like the liver transplant,

but it's still an operation

and there's a risk under the anaesthetic anyway.

I think she was bit more emotional than me.

She was squeezing my hand a bit so...

But it's all going to be fine! It's going to work out wonderfully.

We'll just start off giving you some medication,

so you might start feeling a little bit light-headed, OK?

Are you OK there, Joanne? That's it. You're doing really well.

Ralph is operating under X-ray conditions,

so that he has a view into Jo's liver

without cutting her wide open.

So I've been doing this procedure probably for 14 years now,

sadly, increasingly commonly amongst younger patients.

Alcohol is the primary reason for doing this.

At this point, I've got a metal tube going down from the neck

into the back of the liver here

I'm going to try and make a hole through to the vein.

After guiding the catheter down the jugular vein into the liver

he has to locate the portal vein

and then punch through to connect them up.

A few millimetres either way could be catastrophic.

OK, this is proving harder than I was anticipating.

The liver can be very tough

and sometimes the needles almost won't go in.

Hold tight for a second.

OK, at last. Now, luckily, we've got the tube in the right place

and can really do the bit that works, making the tunnel.

Fine. So I'm just going to remove the access there.

But sadly, Jo won't be the last young person on his operating table.

We're seeing many people in their 20s

who've ended up with life-threatening bleeding

due to liver disease.

They're not just social drinkers. These are usually serious drinkers.

However, there is so much heavy social drinking going on

that I think it's quite easy to by mistake,

end up in a very bad state,

without anticipating it and without expecting it.

Jo will be back on her feet in a few days, and when she is

she should be 20-odd litres lighter around her waist.

But for mum Ann, the worry will continue.

I'll feel a little bit easier that we won't have to traipse

in and out of hospital every two weeks.

Perhaps she can get back to a bit of normality.

See you when you get back to the ward. OK?

Mum-of-two Kate

has also had to come back to the Freeman for a scan on her liver.

I'd like you to take a deep breath in, hold it just there...

The liver is the body's only organ which has the power to repair itself

if the damage sustained isn't too severe and you stop drinking.

Deep breath once more.

Since her last visit, Kate's remained sober for a month.

And there's more good news,

as there's no sign yet of terminal liver cirrhosis.

Looks good. Thank you. Excellent.

That was really good. I'm surprised, actually. I've been dreading it

thinking the worst, and I probably would have tried to dodge it

if it wasn't for this!

But, um, yeah, I'm really pleased.

If Kate continues to beat the bottle,

the damage that she has caused her liver should be totally repairable.

She's also making strides to get her kids back.

The first step is to prove her continued sobriety,

so a few weeks later I've come to sit in on one of her meetings

at Newcastle's addiction services.

How's things been with the alcohol? Have you had a drink at all? No

So how long has that been now?

Six weeks today. Six weeks.

That's a massive achievement, really, isn't it? Yeah.

I'm just waiting for two months so I can say two months,

and get a big clap!

Why are you doing breathalyser tests?

Just to prove that I'm not drinking.

I know that I'm not drinking.

It's sort of proving it to the rest of the world. Yeah

And my main focus is to get my kids back. Yeah.

So if this helps in any way to get them back,

then that's what I'm going to do.

So it's a long breath until it beeps twice.

BEEPS

There we go.

So, yeah, that result was zero

and we'll continue four-weekly appointments if you want. Yeah

And we'll continue to get these over the next six months as we planned.

Since giving up booze,

Kate's managed to take some real steps forward

to rebuild her relationship with her children.

And she's now even enjoying

the daily grind of shopping for the kids.

There's some really cute ones. Do you think she'd like these?

Oh, God, yeah. I think I like them! Yeah, I do, too.

Oh, God. All you need are the flashing lights.

Oh, I love the flashing lights I love the flashing lights.

What's your relationship like with them at the moment? Great

It's just... They don't ask me if I'm poorly any more.

So they must be able to see something for them not to ask any more.

They ask when they can come back home, and they don't want me to leave.

Do you feel stronger? Yeah. I can't describe how much stronger.

Just even walking to the shop was a struggle.

There was one time I was walking down the street with my dad

and my shoe kept falling off, cos I always wear stupid shoes

and he was just screaming at me in the street,

cos he was just that frustrated

Cos I couldn't feel my feet, I couldn't feel my shoes falling off,

I could barely walk. I was holding on to him. I was like an old person.

Sorry to old people, but I was like an old aged pensioner

clinging onto people.

What do you see as the future for you and your kids?

What's the plan now?

I just want a happy, simple life.

I always thought I wanted, like a big car, big house, all that

when you're growing up - but I don't.

I just want a simple house, happy kids.

Now I'm off that mad, horrible. .

It's like a hamster wheel, just round and round and round

and it's really tiring. But now I'm off that, anything can happen.

I've just got to do my best today,

and if I don't mess up today, then I've got a good chance

not to mess up tomorrow.

It may be a day-to-day fight, but Kate has already made

a remarkable change to her life in just six weeks.

And with her health improving all the time,

her future is now back in her own hands.

So nice to meet you, and good luck with everything. Bye.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Bye.

Since filming, Kate has remained sober

and is now seeing her kids every day.

Matt is back working as a carer

and in his spare time helps other alcoholics in their recovery.

Max is doing his best to cut down,

but hasn't stopped drinking completely.

Jo's back on her feet after her surgery,

but is still waiting for the big call from the transplant team.

And all our doctors and nurses hope that we start drinking

sensibly as soon as possible.

MUSIC: "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd