The team behind the multi-award-winning Gainsborough Foundation, which provided help and support to people with alcohol problems, have developed a new resource that is available online.

Using the service, known as Answers, the online tool will offer advice and support to those who need help.

A launch event was held at the Indiaana Restaurant, in Ramsey, on November 27, and several speakers told their recovery stories.

The programme’s designer, Nick Charles, who is also a recovering alcoholic, said recognition of his work from the medical profession and former patients had given him the impetus to create a new treatment service after health officials pulled the funding for Gainsborough.

He described the new Answers service as revolutionary and said it had been adapted for people to use online.

Mr Charles said: “I am still baffled by the absence of any sort of cohesive treatment plan and remain astounded that my educational treatment programme is still the only one of its kind, even today in the enlightened 21st century.

“The age-old Alcoholics Anonymous is not a treatment programme. It is a community fellowship of fellow alcoholics, attempting to support each other via 12 religious steps. Despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find a comprehensive programme even vaguely similar to Answers on the internet.”

Dr Arun Aggarwal, the programme’s analyst and medical lead, added: “Never once in my 30 years of medicine have I encountered an alcohol treatment programme as efficient and as magnificently successful as Answers.

“It has had unprecedented successes. This outcome is radically different to others’ experiences up and down the country and I have been the envy of my Royal College colleagues nationwide. I am delighted it is now available for everyone.”

Mr Charles said: “I accept I am on a mission. I want a realistic approach for the client group I love, so they, like me and mine, can be restored comfortably back into a society that likes to drink, and not feel like an unwelcome visitor.”

He added: “At a time when alcohol abuse is increasing at a truly alarming rate, creating a huge burden on mental health and other related services, someone has to have the courage to acknowledge that alcohol is a powerful legal drug creating mayhem out there; it simply has to be dealt with.”

To find out more, log on to www.alcoholanswers.co.uk.