Bromsgrove man to hold 'sober space' event
Simon Remington says he's doing it to improve people's understanding of alcohol after he was diagnosed with liver disease and underwent a transplant due to what he was told was a result of excessive drinking
A Bromsgrove man is to launch a sober social and support space aiming to educate people so they can make more informed decisions about alcohol.
51-year-old Simon Remington was diagnosed with liver disease which he was told was a result of 'excessive drinking' and underwent a successful transplant in 2021.
The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released in February this year showed in 2023, 10,473 deaths from alcohol-specific causes were registered in the UK, the highest number on record.
Alcohol-specific deaths only include those health conditions where each death is a direct consequence of alcohol, such as alcoholic liver disease, but it does not include all deaths that can be attributed to alcohol.
7,922 of those deaths were due to alcoholic liver disease, accounting for just over three-quarters (75.6%) of the full total.
Simon says he now wants to help people understand how alcohol works and doesn't want anyone to have to go through what he did.
"It became a habit to come home from work, have a few glasses of wine, which those few glasses of wine became a couple of bottles of wine and that over 20-30 years, even though I didn't have any symptoms as such, that was excessive drinking," he said.
"I woke up one morning in March 2020 and I had a distended stomach, my stomach was stuck out, I woke up and was like, what has gone on there, I then in my head put two and two together and went, well the only thing it could be is my drinking.
"That night before that morning was the last time I ever drank, that was definitely my light switch moment, I went no this is causing me to be ill and the shock enough for me was what made me stop."
Receiving diagnosis was 'damning'
After having tests, Simon was diagnosed with having liver disease.
He was then told he also had ascites - the build-up of fluid in the abdomen, which led to him having to have his stomach drained in an attempt to get rid of it and being put on diuretics - water tablets which help the body remove excess fluid.
"I went from being around a 13 stone man, to at my worst after losing weight to my lowest which was about 8st 12lbs," he said.
"That was a really shocking period in my life, I was like a skeleton with a stomach.
"Then I had to come off the tablets, so I got bigger again, so I started having to have drains every two weeks and each time they were taking up to 15 litres of fluid off my stomach."
Simon says he then got to a point where he was getting more and more poorly and was referred to the Queen Elizabeth (QE) Hospital in Birmingham.
It was there he received news that he said shocked him.
"I was actually in a wheelchair because I couldn't walk as I had so much fluid in my body," he said.
"The doctor sat me down and said to me on that day, you need a transplant, without a liver transplant, you've got a year, two years maximum to live.
"That is a pretty shocking and damning thing to be said to you."
Successful transplant
In July 2021 Simon was added to the transplant list and later that year in October received a successful one at the ninth attempt in the Queen Elizabeth (QE) Hospital.
He's thanked the hospital staff for all they did and since then he's worked with the British Liver Trust and Alcohol Change UK to try and help people become more educated about alcohol.
Earlier this year in July he held an alcohol-free event in Bromsgrove attended by both charities and members from the QE to create a space where people could attend and hear more about how alcohol works.
On the back of that, he's now set to hold a 'sober social and support space', the first one being held this evening at The Wellbeing Tree in Bromsgrove (6:30-9pm), to continue to give people a place and a chance to meet without feeling pressured or judged.
"It's not about being anti-alcohol in any way because I don't feel that's going to help, it's about people understanding and being educated around alcohol so they can make their own informed decisions about how they drink," he said.
"What it's trying to do is provide that education at an early enough point that people don't go through that same journey I went through without knowing and without the knowledge about what they're doing to themselves.
"I want to really try and help people in the way through education to understand what alcohol is, what are the harms of alcohol, what alcohol does to your body, and therefore what excessive drinking can cause,"
Further support
Further support is available by visiting the Get help page on the Alcohol Change UK website or other sources such as those listed on the NHS alcohol support web page.