For his newest documentary, Drinking To Oblivion, Louis Theroux has embedded himself at King’s College Hospital in south London. He’s been interviewing patients whose alcoholism has put them in A&E and those at their penultimate destination, Kings’s liver unit. FYI, laughs are very thin on the ground, but if you’ve got the emotional fortitude this is an engaging and pretty mind-blowing bit of television.

As the title suggests, this isn’t your typical hand-wringing over whether an extra glass or four of Chablis poses a dilemma. The subjects we meet – Aurelie, Joe and Peter among others – have all at some point gone very hard in the dipsomaniac paint. We’re often told that the roughly 10% of people who struggle with real addiction (as opposed to semi-comedic, shh-it’s-fine, occasional binge drinking) are different from the rest of us. We’re told that their genes carry markers which, knocked about by misfortune or bad choices, will have them in the grip of addiction before you can say: “Better make that a double please, barman.” What’s striking here, though, is the paper-thin space between the ribald problem drinkers we all know and love, and the habitual alcoholics we’d be embarrassed to be seen at a bar with.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Louis with Joe.

In the liver unit, Louis meets Stuart, whose distended stomach is being drained of 10 litres of what can only be described as organ dishwater. Stuart is asked to list what he would drink on an average day: four or five pints, he replies, a couple of bottles of wine. Louis says that the sensible thing may be to choose one or the other. It’s hard to believe that all that stands between normal Ocado drinking and a place in the liver unit is saying “both”, but here we are. Once you start seeing a bit of yourself in red-faced street drunks it gets harder to fold your arms, harden your mush and tut about self-control. Watching Louis can feel like he’s snatching away our chance to moralise from the sofa, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion many viewers will recognise the jokey way Aurelie responds to a nurse giving her a firm but fair bollocking on the deteriorating state of her health. Yes, her spleen and pancreas may be enlarged, says Aurelie, her liver may be moving on to another stage of disease, but at least she eats her vegetables.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Louis and Aurelie.

For some, it might be hard to see how boozing could be more appealing than, say, actually being alive on Earth. But watching Louis’s conversations remind us that death factors heavily in the slide into addiction. “He doesn’t want to live any more. That’s the new idea,” says Peter’s girlfriend Mariana with the weary detachment of someone who’s spent years mopping up after an addict. Later, when Louis observes to Joe’s doctor how difficult it is not to be drawn into his exasperating orbit of chaos, she reminds him that mothering won’t help. Then you learn about the death of Joe’s own alcoholic mother when he was a kid and it pokes you in the sides like a red hot pin.

'It made me scared about my drinking': reactions to Louis Theroux's Drinking To Oblivion Read more

The patients who feature in Drinking To Oblivion all appear particularly vulnerable to the blows life has a habit of raining down. They are also resigned to a deep self-hatred. I am trying to locate, in my Rain Man internal library of moving TV moments, a piece quite like the moment Aurelie calmly mentions to her doctor that she thought, at this stage of her alcoholism, she’d already be dead. Her disappointment is barely hidden. It seems the only person for whom it isn’t blindingly clear that sweet, lovely Aurelie deserves better is Aurelie herself.

Sunday, 9pm, BBC2