"My son and is mental health/alcohol issues"

My son has struggled with with anxiety/depression and used alcohol as a prop and this has become an addiction. I wanted to highlight one particular change in NHS policy which has left a gaping hole in support for alcoholics since 2018 in relation to the ability to detox.    

Our son has long periods of abstinence but when he drinks it is a lot.

In 2018 he went through a spell of drinking and needed to detox when he stopped to withdraw safely. Stoke Mandeville Hospital ran a week detox programme which helped him detox properly and he remained free of alcohol for more than a year as a result.

In the last few weeks he has been in a similar position but the NHS no longer run any withdrawal programme to support recovering alcoholics whether via the hospitals, GP's or organsiation like One Recovery. The advice is to detox reducing your use of alcohol over a period of time which is impossible for the large majority of alcoholics for obvious reasons. This is a short sighted saving which leaves a gap in the support and in the long run leads to higher costs for the NHS and certainly for alcoholics trying to recover.  This policy needs to change back to that as in 2018 and be more in line with eg heroin addction where methadone is prescribed by support organisatons to help detox. 

The only way our son could properly detox was to go into rehab which we can afford, but many alcoholics could not. They are left trying to reduce their consumption slowly which is virtually impossible for an addict or risk suffering seizures if they try to stop immediately.

This, in my opinion is not morally acceptable and in the long run will end up costing the NHS more in terms money and resources. Our MP is also taking this matter up on our behalf.