Addiction

This morning the Office of Fair Trading slammed payday lenders for ‘causing misery and hardship’. It’s not just the poor who suffer — even in the bonus-rich City, some high-earners are borrowing at huge interest rates against the next salary cheque. Joshi Herrmann reports (http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/bankers-on-wonga-payday-lenders-causing-misery-and-hardship-even-among-the-rich-8522409.html) Jamie, a 25-year-old banker, is describing his life in the [...]

Mark Dempster, Nigel Barden and Gisli Orn Gardarsson Mark Dempster on his new book, Nigel Barden on food, this week’s ‘Fourfer’ is The Pioneers and actor Gisli Orn Gardarsson. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01307lj

Article about my journey and book in the Daily Record: WHEN Mark Dempster leaves his Harley Street clinic to head home, he passes the spot where he was scoring drugs and sleeping rough just a few years ago. Counselling stressed-out city traders and millionaires’ kids on addiction, the softly-spoken Scot is one of the UK’s [...]

It’s perhaps not the biggest come-hither to the audience for a lecture if the lecturer confesses at the outset that the subject upon which he is going to speak is one that in part he is fairly ignorant of, and in another part quite bores him – yet that is exactly my position. Many of [...]

  Blame it on craft beers, inexpensive wine or the down economy -- North Americans are sipping more alcohol, more often. (Twenty-two percent of you say you drink too much, up from 17 percent a decade ago.) And while you all know that problem drinking is a serious health risk (any more than two drinks [...]

In his first interview since becoming the incoming leader of the Anglican Church, Bishop Justin Welby revealed the struggles he had faced as a teenager at Eton, nursing his alcohol-dependant father whose behaviour had become increasingly erratic. Since the age of three, Justin had been brought up alone by his businessman father, Gavin Welby, a [...]

Christmas and New Year are often very difficult for people with mental health problems. Whether the time of year has troubling personal meaning or because you are supposed to be so happy and content or whether it is because everyone is with family and friends and an individual may be alone with mental health problems [...]

Few approaches to addiction generate as much controversy as 12-Step recovery. On one side are the ardent supporters of the program, some of whom credit it with saving their lives. On the other side are the critics and those who found that the program didn’t resonate with them or even hindered their recovery. Both have valid points, and both, [...]

An addict who once travelled the seedy underbelly of the world transporting drugs is now offering counselling services from one of the most respected addresses in the UK. Mark Dempster’s journey took him from Helensburgh through the Himalayas, hiding packages of drugs inside his body, and doing time in and out of prisons with stops [...]