Sportspiel

Alasdair Hooper and Will Moulton host the first episode of our Mental Health Awareness Week series on addiction with Russell Pearce and Patrick Foster. Addiction is a major problem in the UK and former Welsh boxer Russell, and former cricketer Patrick, know that better than most having suffered from alcohol and gambling addictions respectively. In Russell's case his addiction essentially cost him is gambling career while for Patrick, his gambling pushed him into almost doing the unthinkable. To sum up the state of the problem, in the first nine months of 2020 deaths from alcohol hit record levels in England and Wales - 5460.  That is a 16.4% increase on the same period in 2019. In July 2020, a House of Lords report titled 'Gambling Harm - Time for Action' found that half of adults in the UK gamble at least once a month. A third of a million UK citizens are 'problem' or 'disordered' gamblers and it is estimated that for every problem gambler, six other people are harmed by the breakup of fami