Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) – and Substance Use Disorders in general – are men’s issues because many more men than women suffer from them. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported in 2024 that an estimated 400 million people, or 7% of the world’s population aged 15 years and older, lived with alcohol use disorders. The alcohol-attributable mortality was heaviest among men, accounting for two million deaths annually compared to 600,000 deaths among women, in 2019. The WHO report is here.

I gave up alcohol in September 2025 after taking Antabuse (disulfiram), and I haven’t wanted to drink alcohol since. I stopped taking the drug in April 2026. Antabuse is by far the quickest and easiest and cheapest and most effective route to long-term alcohol abstinence for problem drinkers, but (unfortunately) for a variety of reasons it’s rarely prescribed by doctors to problem drinkers.

Paul Elam was a substance abuse counsellor for 30 years. He and I co-wrote the international bestseller ANTABUSE: The one-step program for alcohol abstinence. We recorded a video discussion about AUD and abstinence, here (video, 36:59). Available to order only through Amazon, the Kindle edition is available to order here and the paperback edition here. The free audiobook is here (1:57:47).

I have a website dedicated to AUD, Men Stop Drinking. I support individual men with drinking problems, who wish to become abstinent. They need to email me in the first instance (mike@j4mb.org.uk). I don’t charge for my time helping them.

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