Steve the alcoholic’s story shames modern Britain | Peter Ormerod

From GPs to benefits, and even my church, the institutions where people like Steve look for support seem all too ready to turn their backs. Only prison would have him

“I can’t go on like this.”

They’re not words you ever want to hear a friend say. And yet, when Steve uttered them to me a couple of years ago, they felt like the break of dawn.

Related: If you want to know how to help an alcoholic, you're asking the wrong question | Patrick Strudwick

This was institutionalised buck-passing. Without our group from the church, he’d have been entirely alone.

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