IN THE BARS: By Tom Shields

JACK Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland and one of the leaders of the campaign to curb our national over-consumption of drink, points to a graph showing the surge in Scotland in death rates from liver cirrhosis in the past 50 years. "The increase is much more marked than in the rest of the world. The upward curve in the graph is like the letter J. That's J as in jaikie."

On Wednesday, the National Health Service revealed that twice as many Scots as previously thought are dying through drink. There is an alcohol-related death every three hours in Scotland.

On a stroll through Glasgow city centre, Law points out that the tragedy is not just being played out by alcoholics in binge-drinking dens or by jaikies in al fresco shebeens.

Take, for example, the couple sitting in the sun outside a pub having a glass of wine. "A glass used to be 125ml. Now the typical measure is twice that. It's a small step to saying let's just have the bottle." The bar has rosé on offer at £4.99 a bottle and the women are on their second. That is six of their recommended weekly limit of 14 units gone in one after-work drink.

Outside a supermarket, Law mentions the deadly affordability of alcohol: "The average pocket money for a 16-year-old is £10, which is enough for a bottle of cheap spirits and a few cans of strong lager." As he speaks, a teenage couple exit the store with their purchase of a £7 bottle of vodka and some cans of Irn-Bru.

These two young people are being relatively sophisticated. Examination of shelves in the supermarket booze department shows they could have had a three-litre bottle of white cider for £3.77. At 7.5% alcohol strength this one bottle delivers a massive 22.5 units, more than the ration for a male for a whole week. There is a note on the label asking purchasers to drink responsibly.

Across the road in one of the many barn-like chain pubs which proliferate in Glasgow city centre, a bunch of lads are drinking pints of Deuchars at £1.29. Our glasses of diet cola, fizzy flavoured water from the gun, cost £1.45 each. "We are campaigning for a minimum price per unit for alcohol," says Law. "We also want pubs to offer water and soft drinks at lower prices."

In Hope Street outside Central Station a man who approximates the description of a jaikie is ranting at the world. He drops the umbrella he has been carrying although the sun is blistering from a clear blue sky. A young passer-by berates the jaikie although he too is obviously the worse for drink.

Nearby, customers are sitting at the pavement tables of McGinn's pub having a civilised drink. Bud is on offer at £1.50 and the bar is thoughtfully providing "complimentary rolls". Which is a welcome initiative in a macho drinking culture where "eating is cheating" and real men don't do lumpy stuff.

Jack Law tells of a recent visit to a supermarket where the elderly gent behind him in the checkout queue had a shopping basket containing a six-pack of lager, a bottle of malt whisky, and three tins of soup. "He told me his wife would kill him. She had sent him to get the three tins of soup. But the lager was so cheap and there was £8 off his favourite malt."

Casual observation of customers' trolleys in various Glasgow supermarkets confirms the ubiquity of alcohol. The three bottles of wine for £10 is a routine purchase. Where beer used to be bought in six-packs, a couple of cases is now the norm.

In the Maryhill Tesco, one lady's basket had no food. She had a large case of lager, a bottle of the £6.98 vodka, and a few cans of Coke.

It is this deluge of cheap drink which the Scottish Government and its allies in the minimum pricing campaign hope to address.

Jack Law says: "A minimum price policy targets drinkers who are causing the most harm to themselves and society. It will have little effect on the spending of moderate drinkers." At a fixed price of 50p a unit, that three-litre bottle of white cider would cost £11.25 instead of £3.77. It will not be so cheap for people to get tanked up.

"I don't want to come over as censorious about people's drinking. I don't want draconian measures introduced. I want a debate about the role of alcohol in Scottish culture. I want people to think about their drinking. I am not against drink, I am against drunkenness.

"The statistics about the death toll are shocking but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The results of Scotland's poor relationship with alcohol are obvious in terms of illness, disruption in the streets, accidents on the road and in the home, domestic abuse and family breakdown."

A problem for those who are trying to re-engineer Scottish society into moderate drinking mode is that many people simply do not believe the government health warnings.

A man with a £1.69 pint of Carlsberg lager and a 99p Bacardi and coke in The Goose, a large drinking establishment on Union Street, says: "This figure of 21 units a week was just plucked out of mid-air by doctors who were asked by the government to set a limit. And there's a story this week that even four pints a week can damage your health. Come on."

Dr Peter Terry, chairman of the BMA in Scotland and a key figure in the minimum pricing initiative, says that the evidence is all too clear.

"The number of deaths related to alcohol is staggering," he says with no pun intended. "The situation is unacceptable. The consumption of even relatively small amounts of alcohol will damage your health.

"It is proven that intervention on price works. When the cost of alcohol goes up, the level of health problems comes down.

The minimum price per unit is just part of a package aimed at changing traditional attitudes. "We have to target those who drink to excess. We also have to influence those who regard themselves as moderate drinkers and persuade them to look at what they drink and how they might reduce their consumption," says Dr Terry, who likes an occasional drop of quality wine but rarely ventures as far as a third glass.

Jack Law believes the debate is well under way. Drunkenness will become socially unacceptable. "Within a decade, or maybe even five years, we will see the benefits if Scots can be persuaded to be more moderate drinkers."

Dr Terry says the improvements could come sooner. "Dr Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, believes the beneficial effect of a minimum price policy could be seen within as little as a year. What is certain is that Scotland can't go on accepting the current levels of alcohol-related damage."

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IN REHAB: By Rachelle Money

IMAGINE being asked to remember your first kiss, your first dance, your first taste of wine, even, and not one solitary memory comes to mind because your entire life is one grey blank canvas, an existence blotted out by drink.

That empty life is the life that Kerr (not his real name) lived. Like many alcoholics, he robbed himself of family and friends, of the roof over his head, of his job, of his happiness. And also like many alcoholics, it wasn't until he hit rock bottom as a homeless drunk that he finally admitted he needed help.

Glasgow's Garscube House is now home to Kerr and nine other recovering alcoholics whose chronic alcohol abuse has left them all but ruined mentally, physically and emotionally.

Opened in January, Garscube House is a modern complex of flats and bedsits and is a residential rehabilitation unit. This is the only unit of its kind in Glasgow specifically for alcoholics. The majority of rehabs are for drug abuse.

In the small garden at the back of Garscube House eight of the residents are taking part in a group therapy session. Two men are in wheelchairs because of illness brought on by drink. There shouldn't be any presumptions over what kind of person comes here. Alcohol blights all social classes, all creeds and all races. Among the residents are well-educated professionals and people who grew up in tough council estates.

One resident, the most vocal member of the group, says he recently read that there were only a few hundred deaths from drugs in Scotland every year but that thousands of people die from alcohol. We focus on the dangers of drugs and disregard the impact of drink because "alcohol is too real for people", he says. It's such a prevalent part of the Scottish lifestyle that to admit its risks is just too frightening a proposition for most people.

Time for a reality check. One in 20 Scots are dying from alcohol-related diseases. As the rehab resident rightly noted, in 2003 a total of 2880 deaths in Scotland were attributed to alcohol while just 317 deaths were drug-related. In Glasgow there are just 125 residential beds available at any one time for substance misuse. Of the 323 admissions to residential rehabilitation in 2008/09, 30% were for alcohol.

Quietly sitting in the corner of the group is Kerr, who smokes a cigarette as others talk. Kerr is 43 and has been at Garscube House for six months. He moved here from a crisis centre run by the charity Turning Point where he stayed for two months. This is his first time in a rehab centre.

Everyday activities most of us would take for granted can trigger his desire to drink, even a movie can set him off.

"It bores me really. I used to watch a film with eight cans at the side. Not being able to drink is like missing a left leg," he says. "It sounds sad but everything I do now just seems boring because I can't get a drink."

When asked how old he was when he had his first drink he says he finds it hard to recollect his past. Pulling his head to the left he stares at the wall as if searching for memories, but all he finds are broken thoughts.

When he arrived at the crisis centre eight months ago he had used all his options. His mother, ex-partner, three children, and friends had all left him. Kerr was squatting in empty flats and at one point was sleeping in cars which were left on a scrap yard site. At the height of his alcohol abuse he went missing for seven days but can't recall where he went or who he was with. It wasn't a Lost Weekend, more a Lost Week.

Kerr finds it hard to explain why he drank. He thinks it might be to do with his childhood when he felt unloved but he struggles to find a definite answer.

Later Kerr says he feels like a "wanderer". "We want something else but we don't know what that something else is. I am a restless soul and I think that I will never find that something I am looking for."

The Scottish government want to help people like Kerr by introducing minimum pricing on alcohol which could see some drink prices rise, but would this really benefit alcoholics?

Kerr says he doesn't believe this tactic can solve Scotland's drinking problem, in fact he thinks it could lead to a rise in crime.

"All it will mean is that people will go back to bootlegging drink or you might see more alcoholics begging rather than just having heroin addicts doing that. I think there could also be more off-licences being broken into," says Kerr.

During his stay at Garscube House, Kerr has been able to improve his relationships with his mother and children. He is about to start volunteer work in the community and hopes to be resettled in a new home at the end of the year. His future is filled with challenges but his goals are simple.

"I know that the first challenge is to walk out the door and down past the off-sales."

Elaine Forbes, service manager of Garscube House, says the residents here are chronic alcoholics who suffer emotionally and physically because of their addiction.

"We have one who is in hospital, three are physically disabled, and five have peripheral neuropathy which means they have nerve damage in their hands, their feet, or muscles in their body."

In the Changing Scotland's Relationship with Alcohol report published in May the Scottish government pledges £120m investment over the next three years to "improve the identification, support and treatment of those who are misusing alcohol".

Funding has been a problem for the newly built Garscube House as staff failed to get financial assistance even to pay for an alcohol counsellor.

Forbes said she has to rely on two post-graduate students training in social work from Strathclyde University to come twice a week to the unit. They also have someone from Alcoholics Anonymous who visits, as well as a local community art group which helps with the therapy work.

Forbes believes more beds for alcoholics should be made available if the complex needs of alcoholics are to be met.

She admits she was shocked at the latest NHS statistics.

"For a lot of them they have to reach crisis point before they get the help and unfortunately for some they never reach rock bottom, they reach death's door and that's it."