In the UK, 1.6 million people are dependent on alcohol, and alcohol misuse directly costs the NHS £3.5bn a year, with admissions to hospital due to drinking doubling in ten years. Up to a fifth of ambulance call-outs are alcohol-related, but one para... (more)medic reports that some weekends three-quarters of his patients are affected by booze. Sometimes ambulances are called simply because the patient is too drunk to remember where they live or want a taxi ride home. And middle aged, middle class professionals are at as much risk of ending up in an ambulance thanks to drink as the young and irresponsible or long-term alcoholics. Cases include a middle-aged executive who's drunk so much he's become incontinent, covering himself, the paramedics and ambulance in urine and faeces; a woman who's passed out after a day at the races; a 28-year-old who's lost everything through drinking; and a woman having a psychotic episode brought on by chronic and long-term alcohol abuse.