Seniors Housing & Healthcare Trends

LOS ANGELES: Retirees are increasingly being revealed as the fastest growing ‘problem drinking’ quartile.

Although Susan Trent* had always enjoyed a glass of wine with friends at weekends, the 68-year-old was too busy raising two children and holding down a demanding career as a management consultant to contemplate drinking midweek.

In 2020, however, she retired. Then lockdown hit, the scrapped plans she’d made to volunteer and travel exacerbating her loss of identity. To compound her anxiety, her mother had just died. “I was suffering from grief. I had no structure to the week, no purpose, no challenges. I was lost,” says Susan, who has delicate features, silver hair and a shy smile, and speaks to me over video call on condition of anonymity. “I started to use alcohol to cope with the stress. Alcohol turned from something enjoyable to something I needed.”

At first, she stopped herself drinking before 7pm, “but this slowly got earlier and earlier. And then it didn’t matter what time it was.” By last October, Susan was drinking up to two bottles of wine a day, ditching her empty bottles in public bins on her dog walk to hide her consumption. “I lost all self-confidence,” she says. “I was living in a nightmare. And the more scared I got, the more I drank. I thought that was the way to fix it. I felt completely ashamed.”

She is far from alone. Last month, figures from the Department of Health and Social Care revealed 92,313 over-65s were admitted to hospital for alcohol-related conditions between 2023 and 2024 – theirs being the only demographic in which hospital admissions have increased for this reason; a record high and nearly 25 per cent higher than before the start of Covid.

Dr Niall Campbell, an addiction specialist and consultant psychiatrist at London’s Priory Hospital Roehampton, says some 15-20 per cent of his patients are aged 60 or over, “and that’s on the increase.” Martin Preston, the founder of Cheshire rehab centre Delamere, which treated Susan and can accommodate up to 23 addicts at a time, agrees that those seeking help “seem to be getting older. At the moment, we have three or four women who fall into that age group.”

In part, this is down to our ageing population. Today’s pensioners, teenagers in the 1960s, are the first generation for whom alcohol consumption has been socially encouraged throughout their adult lives, leading to decades of cumulative damage, because “alcohol-related conditions like liver disease, cognitive decline and cardiovascular issues tend to develop over time”, says NHS GP Dr Deepali Misra-Sharp, the clinical lead for substance abuse at her Birmingham surgery.

However, she adds, “some people escalate their drinking in later life, leading to more immediate health risks like falls, hospital admissions and acute withdrawal symptoms.”

So what causes the nightly glass or two to turn into something problematic? Retirement is certainly a “trigger”, says Preston. “There can be a loss of status. Adult children can be busy looking after their own families so [they have] a lot less to do.” Without the camaraderie of work, loneliness and low mood can set in, he adds – government figures have found depression affects around 22 per cent of men and 28 per cent of women aged over 65, and this age group is more likely to be bereaved: “Grief and loss can feature.”

Add in the similarly discombobulating effects of Covid, and it’s little wonder we’re seeing the fallout. Whereas a fifth of Generation Z now don’t drink at all, Susan says that throughout her working life, “it was abnormal not to drink” at dinner parties and social events, although she never did to excess.

Even in her mid-50s, when her mother fell ill with dementia, she succumbed only to an occasional glass of midweek wine “to cope with the stress”. But, because of lockdown, she was unable to attend her mother’s funeral. Grappling with her finances, with no job to distract her, “I was using alcohol to self-medicate, to get through it all,” she says, convincing herself that once life returned to normal, she would stop. “That was my justification.”

But then Susan fell ill herself – she doesn’t want to disclose her illness – which, she says, “caused even more stress.” Ironically, says Misra-Sharp, “coping with declining health” is one reason that her patients are drinking more, often at home alone. And, she adds, “women in this age group are increasingly drinking more than previous generations.”

Susan’s worried husband, Jack*, who drinks only moderately, “would buy the wine and pour me a glass or two. But it didn’t stop me,” she says. Instead, she hid her drinks and made sure she was the one to empty the bins: “I’m sure I’m being naive in thinking people didn’t notice. But at the time, I thought I was covering it up quite well.”

Eventually, however, her drinking escalated to the point where she “totally withdrew. I was frightened to leave the house, isolated from friends and family. I started to not eat properly. I couldn’t sleep properly. I couldn’t function.”

Susan first stayed at Delamere, where a 28-day programme costs £18,000, in January last year, the visit initiated by Jack and their children and paid for with her inheritance. “I was so low and scared I went along with it,” says Susan. It was unsuccessful because she didn’t fully engage with the programme, which includes individual and group therapy, to address the underlying causes of addiction. “Growing up, everything was private. You didn’t open up. You didn’t talk. You just got on with it,” says Susan, who relapsed last spring when cataract surgery triggered feelings of isolation. “I spiralled quickly,” she says. “I was so weak through lack of food I could barely stand. I was absolutely broken.”

Campbell points out that “to understand addiction you have to understand your feelings” and says an inability to discuss emotions is particularly problematic among the Priory’s older male patients. “Men talk about things like football and politics, but not about how they feel. I’ve had a number of outpatients who have practically been dragged here by their wives. She’s at her wit’s end because he’s sitting around all day. That’s the demographic we see – the retired husband, financially comfortable, but his new hobby is drinking rather than golf or birdwatching.”

Denial is also common. Often, a husband will insist his drinking is under control, only for the wife to email Campbell privately saying, “It’s terrible. He’s got a temper, sleeping all the time, falling over.” Unsurprisingly, the marriage deteriorates, the wife leaves and the alcohol-addicted husband struggles even more on his own, increasing the risk of suicide, “which is tragic and avoidable,” he says.

Campbell stresses that a glass of wine in the evening is all right, “but very often it’s not one or two,” and the tipping point is “when the consequences outweigh the benefits.” Age brings decreased tolerance, adds Preston, and “what you might be drinking without incident in your 40s, at 65, you might get a two-day hangover”. It’s “not unusual” for family members mistakenly to believe the drinker has dementia, he says, and those who arrive at Delamere often have “more physical complications” than younger guests.

Misra-Sharp says the most common alcohol-related conditions she sees in her surgery include gastrointestinal problems, depression and sleep disruption: “The rise in alcohol-related health issues among over-65s is concerning, especially as many don’t realise they are drinking at harmful levels.”

She takes a “compassionate” approach to patients, suggesting measures such as introducing alcohol-free days and encouraging hobbies that don’t involve drink, while Campbell urges older drinkers not to despair. For those who can’t afford rehab, “AA is free. A specialist addiction counsellor wouldn’t cost much. There is a solution. You can get help.”

Susan returned to Delamere last October. This time, rehab worked because she embraced the possibility of change and accepted she couldn’t drink again. She now goes to AA meetings and volunteers for Age Concern. She’s started painting, experimenting with new exercise classes and meeting friends for coffee. Above all, she says, “I’m being more open. That was one of the things that probably led to my addiction – that I didn’t talk to people enough about what I was feeling. I thought that was a weakness.” But, she adds: “I’ll be five months sober this week.”