Jon Bellamy spoke with an ex-alcoholic & a Senior Legal Adviser

John Hayes and John Cartledge

More than 800,000 people a year are admitted to hospital with alcohol-related injuries and illness; seven out of ten police authorities and Councils say that 24-hour drinking has either increased or failed to change levels of alcohol-related incidents. These statistics can make for depressing reading, however, amidst the bad news and binge drinking there are some hopeful things happening at a grassroots level, helping to change one life at a time.

John Cartledge & John Hayes are a unique combination of an ex-alcoholic and a Senior Legal Adviser to a Magistrates' Court who together have written Alcohol - Thriller or Killer. Having known each other for over thirty years, meeting in court on numerous occasions, they now visit prisons to share their story, showing that God is able to change the life of anyone. With such a needed message for the UK, Jonathan Bellamy invited them down to the Cross Rhythms studios to find out more.

Jonathan: This book - Alcohol - Thriller or Killer. Let me start with you John Hayes first of all. Briefly what's this book about? I'll go into detail in a minute.

John Hayes: John and I met in roughly 2001 and I had known him before because I was clerk of the court, I am retired now. I was clerk of the magistrate's court and I used to see him almost on a daily basis.

Jonathan: When he'd been arrested?

John Hayes: Yeah. He'd been arrested because - well he'll tell you his own story. But he was an alcoholic for thirty years, and lost everything. We just met that way and then eventually, in 2001 we met each other and it went from there. So God gave us this idea to write this book; to put the two stories together as a contrast really. Because my stories rather tame compared to his and so we put the two together. It's something that's been on my mind for a long time, because I've seen what alcohol does to people. We're not here to tell people 'thou shalt not drink', but we're just here to point the dangers out.

Jonathan: Well we'll come to your story in a minute John Hayes. Let's start with you John Cartledge. A little bit about your story, what was your early life like?

John Cartledge: Well I started off like anybody else starts drinking, like any young person, a social drinker. I had great friends. So I was involved in football; went to Manchester City to play as a young boy. I knocked around with all sportsmen, rugby league players and footballers, but my drinking progressed to the lower steps of alcoholism.

Jonathan: Am I right; was it that you weren't too much into drinking until after you got married? That was the period where you became a heavy drinker. Is that right?

John Cartledge: Yes. It was a progression. In fact I was the last one of me young friends to start drinking. I always drank shandys, but I started to work in me father's business and a lot of the work - the business was done in pubs at lunchtimes. That's where I started to - I drank more than - you know you've got to develop like a tolerance in drinking. I was drinking more than me friends. That's how the heavy drinking started and it just progresses and progresses.

Jonathan: When you say heavy drinking, what do you mean by that?

John Cartledge: Well you know you can drink heavy, you can drink maybe twenty pints a night and not be an alcoholic and still go to work the next morning and I was like that for a time; until I got dependent on it and started to drink in the mornings and the lunchtimes. The pubs then used to open from eleven 'til three and it became difficult to wait 'til eleven o'clock in the morning. I had to go and buy from off licences and then go in the park and drink cider and things like that. Then of course my work suffered with me Father. We split up. To keep me same lifestyle of drinking, because I was earning a lot of money with me Father, I then progressed, if that's the right word, to lower class pubs, dives, where there were lots of criminals and to get that same money that's what I went into then.

Jonathan: Now, as I say you got married. How did this affect your marriage?

John Cartledge: Oh it's terrible looking back for me wife. The alcohol had become the central thing in her life. Her life was worked around my drinking. I'd go out at eight o'clock in the morning and come home when I was drunk at eight or nine o'clock at night. She recognised I was an alcoholic knowing I was the last to admit it. I'd be hiding bottles everywhere in the house, even in the hot water bottles.