Three months into his latest – and hopefully final – bout of rehabilitation, he knows he will almost certainly be staring into the jaws of death if he falls off the wagon again.

His obsession with booze has cost him relationships, a home, two sons and his job. It has also taken away his self-respect. He sometimes just sits and cries at how little life he has; other times he cries because cirrhosis of the liver is excruciatingly painful, and its effects go way beyond one organ to most parts of the body.

He's waxy and yellow, his skin itches, he aches all the time, and unless the house is tropically hot, he shivers. He can't walk more than a few yards, and hasn't the energy of a newborn kitten. He can easily sleep for a whole day then be sleepless for three.

His mum visits, but hardly anyone else. Until recently, Michael's life revolved around the bottle, and he's had to lose his boozing mates in order to attempt seriously to save his own life. He knows that he has dragged down at least one of those friends with him.

The illness – and now his attempts to put alcohol behind him – have made him a recluse. Bad though he still feels, since admitting himself to hospital at Christmas after his last binge, his condition has actually improved.

He's less jaundiced than he was; his appetite has returned (and he watches TV food programmes continually, which stimulate it further); there are signs that his liver is fighting back – but no-one knows yet if it will recover enough to serve him properly again.

If it doesn't, and he proves his determination to stay dry, doctors will possibly talk about considering him for a place on the transplant waiting list.

Eighty per cent of people who receive a new liver following acute alcoholic liver disease go on to enjoy a new lease of life and never again fall off the wagon. The other 20 per cent give way to the addiction once more and – as George Best found – go downhill fast. For those alcoholics who receive a new liver and stay dry, there's an 84 per cent 10-year survival rate.

Only time will tell for Michael. In the meantime, he still thinks about having a drink – but not as much as he did a few weeks ago, when resistance was torture.

His doctors at Leeds General Infirmary made no bones about it when they said he was close to self-annihilation – continuing his old toxic routine would definitely kill him. Dying of alcoholic liver disease is, they say, a gruesome way to go.

Part of Michael seems to want to show he is strong enough to beat his condition without the aid of someone else's liver; part of him reluctantly admits it might be the only way he will live.

He struggles with feelings of fear and unworthiness. After all, he has trashed himself for 25 years, and cost the NHS countless thousands of pounds. "If I could turn the clock back, I wouldn't have started. Maybe there's something genetic in me that meant I would be a drinker. I don't know. I do know that no-one made me do any of it."

Michael's mother doesn't drink, but he grew up amidst pub and club culture, a "happy, normal boy". Some memories seem to be hazy, but he recalls starting to drink cider and beer with older boys when he was 12. He moved on to regularly drinking home-brewed cider. He never missed school, though, and at 15 began work at a local mill.

He looked older than his years, and says publicans turned a blind eye anyway. Drink played an increasing part in his life, but it was something he did, at that stage, to keep in with his friends.

"But when I was 18, my mum and dad got divorced and I got depressed," says Michael. "I then broke up with my long-term girlfriend and began to drink more, on top of anti-depressants."

He says he went on to have a few happy years, in another long-term relationship that brought two sons. But he always drank a lot, and after a few years began to feel trapped. "I admit it, alcohol came first. I would go to the pub instead of going home, and the pub was full of other blokes who seemed to be doing the same. My friends were all barflies." Stomach pains were diagnosed as ulcers.

Michael managed to work for the same agricultural machinery company for 13 years, despite the fact that his drinking was growing steadily worse. Drink tore apart his relationship and meant he lost access to his children. In his late 20s, he was promoted to a more stressful job. He would steady his nerves with a couple of pints of cider for breakfast. He'd down another couple at lunchtime, then stop at the pub for maybe six more in the evening, before heading home for three bottles of wine, vodka, whisky… whatever he could lay his hands on.

"I was drinking 12 hours a day, seven days a week," he says. "I don't think it's clever. I think it's disgusting, actually." His work suffered, he was frequently late. Vomiting bile became normal.

He occasionally tried "cold turkey", but always hit the bottle again within days if not hours. One day he didn't have his two pints for breakfast, and at lunchtime had a seizure. He was rushed to Leeds General Infirmary, where he was admitted and given a dire warning by doctors.

"I did rehab for 10 days. But once you feel better you miss your 'friend'. There's no such thing as having only one, so I was as bad as ever soon afterwards." Back at work, his employers tried to help by organising counselling. Eventually he had to leave through his illness, and he is now classified as disabled.

Even with little income he managed to drink. "I was on a suicide mission," says Michael. "I used to drink to kill the pain of the mess I'd got myself into, particularly over my kids."

Repeated attempts at rehab failed. Efforts to give up by himself led to seizures, with his body reacting violently to the sudden, unmanaged absence of alcohol.

Hospital stays became more frequent and prolonged, sometimes as long as eight weeks. The drinking wasn't even enjoyable. "Me and my friends would sit around and feel sorry for ourselves, talking about regrets and 'what ifs'."

He remembers drinking faster and faster, so no-one in the room guzzled more than he did. He also recalls the nadir of waking in the night with the effects wearing off, and realising there wasn't a drop in the house. At 4am he went to the corner shop and knocked until he woke the owner to beg for alcohol.

Not long before he met his current partner Sam, Michael Jarrett's mother and sister had been told during one hospital admission to expect the worst, such was the extent of his liver and kidney failure.

Yet again, pints of fluid that his liver and kidneys could not process were drained from his abdomen, and lifesaving nutrients were pumped into him. In the midst of hallucinations, Michael says he finally thought "never again".

He moved in with his mother, but felt lonely when she was not around. The drinking began again in secret, and he would hide his stash behind the bath panel.

When Sam first encountered him, stocking up on booze in the supermarket where she worked, she found him "chatty and pleasant, cheeky but kind".

They got together, and Sam says she had no particular plan to save Michael from himself. "She never pressurised me to stop, but she did make me promise never to lie to her about my drinking."

"When he was with me, he'd drink slowly. With his mates, he drank twice the amount in the same time." Sam doesn't drink, and she's put up with a lot. "Yes – shakes, vomit, bile, breathing difficulties, black-outs… and the seizures whenever he tried to stop. But if you love someone, you try and help."

Despite his mammoth intake, Sam says she has never seen Michael visibly drunk.

These days Michael has a lot of time to sit around and think more clearly. He says he bitterly regrets the time he's lost to alcohol. Now he has a step-daughter he wants to run and play with, but he is too ill to do so.

"I feel bad about what I've cost the NHS. I feel bad about my sons, and what I've put my mother through. Guilt eats away at me. I can maybe have a new life if I stay off the drink. I really want to do normal things and go back to work."

He thinks that what's making the difference this time is having Sam's support. She has given up work to care for him. "I couldn't do it without her. If I were on my own, I'd still be drinking."

Michael Jarrett's addiction to alcohol came very close to killing him. He doesn't think he deserves sympathy, but he wants a chance to start over.

"I think I deserve all that's happened. I drank and drank to forget bad stuff and never knew my limits. But I think I've taken enough punishment now. I want to be able to live life properly…"

Message in a bottle:

The cost to the NHS of alcohol misuse has been estimated at £1.7bn a year.

The process is silent but when liver disease has developed, it presents as an acute illness with a 25-50 per cent immediate mortality rate.

In England, 39,180 people are admitted to hospital with alcoholic liver disease each year.

In 2005, 4,160 people died in England and Wales from alcoholic liver disease, an increase of 37 per cent since 1999.

Source: British Liver Trust
For information on safe drinking levels, visit www.drinkaware.co.uk

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