Drinking, mental health and the pandemic: three stories from service users

"The only plan I had to deal with this [gnawing feeling of emptiness], for many years, was to blot it out and drown it in the booze."

"I was using alcohol to suppress a lot of pain that would re-emerge often in my drunkenness and certainly the next day when I often couldn't remember what I had done or who I had been with."

"We have had a lot of new members in the past six months as the pressure of the pandemic has highlighted or accelerated peoples’ drinking."