This is the Guardian.

Today, Britain's drink problem and how lockdown accelerated alcohol deaths.

A quick note before we start, this episode does contain potentially triggering accounts of

addiction, heavy drinking and one account of suicide or thoughts. Please take care while listening.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the warning signs were there. People were isolated,

stressed and all too often, turning to alcohol as a way to escape their reality.

There were little voices saying this isn't real. It's like being on holiday, you know, it's lockdown.

Who cares? I'm not going to see anybody today. I don't have to be sober.

Kathy Edge had always been a social drinker. But during that first lockdown, retired and living alone,

booze became a habit. The blurring between kind of enjoying it and feeling nice and

it just being a thing that you needed to function, that came on very quickly.

Within months, her drinking had escalated.

In two days, I would get through a letter of vodka and probably about four bottles of wine,

minimum. You can get through that. That would floor most people, didn't even feel drunk,

all enjoyment had gone. This was just, you know, it had almost replaced how I refueled myself.

That's what I needed just to exist.

Across the UK, alcohol sailed boomed and drinking became a national coping mechanism.

There were repeated warnings about the risks. Experts, including Dr Stephen Ryder,

a liver specialist, sounded the alarm. And that home drinking thing is the key for me.

If that continues, we will see more people running into trouble and form more people dying of it.

More than two years down the line, the consequences of that excess drinking are stark.

Research from the University of Sheffield has found we could see more than a million

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