The reason they are drinking so much alcohol is because of other, hugely significant, problems in their lives: poverty, mental illness, housing difficulties, domestic violence, loneliness.
It is The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game which are the two films expected to predominate at this year's Baftas, the weirdly fortuitous pairing of two distinguished, intelligent, slightly theatrical performances and two brilliant British scientists cursed with the traditional qualities glibly associated with genius: shyness, loneliness, and disability of various sorts.
When loneliness takes hold, the ways we see ourselves and others, along with the kinds of responses we expect from others, are heavily influenced by both our feelings of unhappiness and threat".
I call Professor Cacioppo, co-author of the loneliness book.
But it has much going for it: "Volunteeers overcome loneliness, meet friends, gain skills, get jobs and just feel good about themselves".
Men with poor health, low incomes, few qualifications and living in rented housing are hit hardest by loneliness, which Independent Age defines as the feeling of not liking isolation.
Society's wider fear of loneliness is compounded by a "phobia" of old age with the effect of inhibiting attempts to tackle the problem, she added.
I craved connection, but had no idea how to create it, and so wound up in a loop: I was so often lonely, I assumed that loneliness was all there was.
In later years one of his favourite TV programmes was Dinner Ladies, "because it's about loneliness".
Barnett plays with extremes: her shape-shifting vocals, sometimes multi-tracked to heavenly effect, enable her to seem as strong as a statue or as fragile as glass within the space of a single song as she explores lust, obsession, loneliness and tormented self-examination with unnerving precision.
On Monday Independent Age will call on the government to tackle loneliness among retirees by providing pre-retirement advice on retaining and developing social networks and for local councils to step up efforts to identify lonely people.
