Well, the week is now over and Sam has come through it, physically, extremely well: running 6 miles a day, and a couple of days when we took him to the swimming pool, he swam fifty lengths. He's very lucky: his liver is somewhat damaged, but if he stays off the booze, should correct itself. The main thing is that he's doing this at 28, rather than later and with more damage done. Psychologically he's been fairly down, feeling he's screwed up his life badly. But he's making plans for the future which don't involve drinking or getting high - to run in a marathon, to do an initial course as an EFl teacher, and (perhaps most important) to get out of Norfolk, where all his old friends are drinking and drugging friends. For Bendigo, it's been good to spend a lot of time just hanging out with his son day after day. Especially in the last few months, when the drinking has been really self-destructive - and B has had many unhappy memories of putting his own father to bed completely legless - B and I have kind of dreaded having Sam with us, but when he hasn't been with us we have also dreaded the phone ringing. Both B and Sam's mother have commented on how they are seeing glimpses of "the old Sam" - their pre-boozing son - back again. For me, I've never known Sam entirely sober before. I like him a lot. We're back home now, but we'll continue to see Sam every day this week - his sister is there too, and we don't want him to feel that now his chemical detox is over we're no longer interested. Thank you all for your prayers, support and good wishes. It has really helped us.