The People Joins Xmas Ambulance Crews

Her face is smeared with vomit, her skirt has ridden up to show her knickers and her stockings are round her knees.

The pretty 21-year-old lies slumped in the back of the crowded ambulance whimpering and flailing her limbs as paramedic Brian Hayes tries to get a drip in her arm.

Brian shakes his head wearily and says: "She's totally out of it. God knows how much she's had or where her friends have gone.

"She could have been raped and wouldn't have known a thing."

Fellow paramedic Phil Guthrie tries to hold a sick bowl under her chin while propping up a semiconscious man called Dave and trying to bandage the bleeding head of a paralytic OAP who's just lost control of his bowels.

Welcome to the front line of boozed-up Britain - and another night of battle for our 999 heroes. It's 2.30am in central London on Friday - the biggest night of the year for office parties.

Brian, Phil and 999 team-mate Kevin Carroll are dealing with their Eleventh drunk in seven hours - and will treat another Nine before dawn.

Across the capital, dozens more crews have been picking up the battered casualties of the UK's most deadly weapon - alcohol.

In the two years since 24-hour drinking was launched, London has seen a 12 per cent rise in booze-related calls.

Alcohol admissions to hospitals have Tripled.

And across the country, A&Es are regularly clogged up with drunks, costing taxpayers £500 Million a year.

Brian, 37, said: "The level of drunkenness is ridiculous. "I fear we are fighting a losing battle and will soon reach breaking point.

"Every time an ambulance is called out it costs £167.

"Between November last year and this September we answered 38,849 alcohol-related calls - that's £6.5million of taxpayers' money.

"And while we are mopping up sick and dealing with obnoxious or violent drunks, we hear calls coming over the radio to real life threatening emergencies.

"How would you feel if your dad had a heart attack and we could not get to him because we were dealing with a p***ed-up teenager?"

Brian has pioneered London's first "Booze Bus" ambulance which targets alcohol-related calls at peak periods to free up other crews for genuine emergencies.

He said: "More and more kids are getting paralytic.

"That's setting a time bomb for a surge in liver disease and health problems in the next decade."

And fellow ambulance man Michael Taylor, 42, warned drunk girls are easy targets for sex attackers. He said: "They match lads drink for drink then go off to the toilets, collapse in a cubicle and wake up an hour later with their knickers round their ankles, no idea where they are and terrified they've been sexually assaulted.

"Their friends say, 'Someone must have spiked her drink'. But when they sober up may they admit how much they drunk. Yet an expert told me there's not one proven case of Rohypnol or GHB date-rape drugs being used in the UK."

On Friday, the Booze Bus got its first call at 7.15 to a drunk who had collapsed in a Euston garden after an office bash.

Brian and Phil took him to University College Hospital - where he turned nasty and was arrested. Next was a call to a 49-year-old man slumped semi-conscious on a wall in Trafalgar Square.

The ambulance was diverted to Vauxhall Bridge Road, where a 48-year-old man had smashed his head open when he fell while trying to swig from a bottle of vodka.

Next they picked up Jim, a 40-year-old chartered surveyor who collapsed at a Chinatown eaterie after a party.

Pals had tied him to a chair for safety before dialling 999.

They also picked up 18-year-old Dan who was wandering shirtless round Leicester Square with his face covered in blood.

Next was Lisa, a pretty 25-year-old hit in the face by a flying glass at her office party in Aldwych.

They then headed to Soho where drunken designer Lars, 30, had tried to jump a 5ft railing for a pee - and bust his ankle.

Brian said: "It should be agony but he can barely feel it."

He also treated a man slumped on a nearby bench.

At 1.45am the crew collected a pensioner who hit his head in Holborn - then raced to a club off Regent Street to treat drunken Dave and the 21-year-old girl.

Brian said: "She'll come round in hospital scared, ashamed and feeling like s**t." And he told how medics were regularly attacked by drunks.

He said: "I've been thumped, kicked and bitten and had to have tests for HIV and hepatitis.

"I don't know what's happened to our society."

Alcohol Concern said: "We must crack down on irresponsible pubs and clubs which sell very cheap booze then leave the emergency services to clean up the mess."

I was on a drip... Mum was terrified

Tv Researcher Lisa, 31, of London, is single and tells of her nightmare binge that ended in hospital last Christmas.

I would never have called myself a big drinker but at our work lunch I started on champagne, then red wine, then Baileys. By 6pm I was drunk but we went to a pub, then a club.

We had shots of Sambuca and I staggered to the toilets - pals came looking but I'd stumbled outside without my coat in the freezing cold.

A passer-by found me lying semi-conscious covered in vomit. I'd lost control of my other bodily functions too.

This good Samaritan, whom I never found, rang an ambulance. The first thing I can remember is being slapped in the face by a nurse trying to rouse me.

I was on a drip and vomited for another three hours. My mum was called and said I was Homer Simpson yellow.

She was terrified my liver was failing. I couldn't stop crying and felt disgusted I'd tied up an ambulance.

I was off work for two days but later started a diet and exercise regime which I've stuck to. I'm terrified of getting drunk again.

source: People