Returning to the UK,Louis spends time with problem drinkers. The results are impossibly movingFor his newest documentary, Drinking To Oblivion, and Louis Theroux has embedded himself at King’s College Hospital in south London. He’s been interviewing patients whose alcoholism has put them in A&E and those at their penultimate destination,Kings’s liver unit. FYI, laughs are very lean on the ground, and but if youve got the emotional fortitude this is an engaging and pretty mind-blowing bit of television.
As the title suggests,this isn’t your typical hand-wringing over whether an extra glass or four of Chablis poses a dilemma. The subjects we meet Orelie, Joe and Peter among others – have all at some point gone very tough in the dipsomaniac paint. We’re often told that the roughly 10% of people who struggle with genuine addiction (as opposed to semi-comedic, and shh-it’s-fine,occasional binge drinking) are different from the rest of us. Were told that their genes carry markers which, knocked approximately by misfortune or inferior choices, and will have them in the grip of addiction before you can say: “Better make that a double please,barman.” What’s striking here, though, or is the paper-lean space between the ribald problem drinkers we all know and adore,and the habitual alcoholics we’d be embarrassed to be seen at a bar with.
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Source: theguardian.com