DAYS would pass as Agnes Campbell lay alone in her bedroom, caring only where the next drink was coming from.

Agnes is a sweet-faced, quiet, shy woman of 64 and looks like the lovely granny she is.

She is the last person in the world you would think would have a problem with alcohol, but for years her drinking was done at home behind closed doors.

So much for the stereotype drinker.

Jeanette Gillespie, now 53, was a life and soul of the party' drinker...until she ended up fighting for her life in the detox unit at Stobhill Hospital.

Both women had been living in inner turmoil for years as their dependency on alcohol grew.

They knew each other to say hello in passing in Barlanark, but that was the extent of it.

Neither had the slightest inkling that they had more in common than living in the same East End scheme.

Now they are good mates - thanks to Glasgow's only befriending scheme for problem drinkers.

It is an imaginative project which matches people who need help with conquering their addiction with those who've been there and come out the other end.

Councillor pledges more alcohol services in Glasgow COUNCILLOR Jim Coleman - the deputy leader of Glasgow City Council who presented the lottery fund cheque to the group, above - has pledged that the council will try to roll out similar projects to GEAAP across the city. And he foresees a time when they will be able to get people back into work through the Glasgow Works programme, which aims to get people on incapacity benefit back into the labour market. "GEAAP is one of the few projects in the city that actually delivers support in the field of alcohol," he said enthusiastically. "It's got two wings - the befriending side which deals with the victims of alcohol and the educational programme in primary schools right across the city. "But there are opportunities in Glasgow and now that we have the infrastructure to provide training and support, I can see a natural progression with the befriending programme moving people up to a level where they come out the other end with a job. "That's the target we've got in Glasgow." He admits there is currently a gap in alcohol services in the city. "We need to set up similar organisations in the rest of the city. We've spent a lot on drugs counselling and support and that is starting to deliver. "But alcohol was always neglected. Alcohol far outweighs drugs when it comes to problems in the city, far outweighs it, whether it is addiction or violence. Yet the actual number of projects dealing with it is very small."

Both women are graduates of GEAAP (Greater Easterhouse Alcohol Awareness Project) and because Jeanette is the one who is further down the road to recovery, she is the befriender.

"If Agnes needs me, she knows I am there for her," says Jeanette. "But she wouldn't pester me."

They are both living and frequently, laughing proof of the fact that the scheme works and more than justifies the £448,083 Big Lottery grant it has just received to expand the service.

The scheme had run out of funding and at the moment there are only six befrienders, but the grant will mean training will soon be up and running to make more helpers available.

"We hope to train at least 20 volunteers a year," says Mary Fisher, befriending service manager and former client.

"But already we have a list of at least 18 waiting to be recruited."

"There are other counselling teams, but no other befriending scheme like this, which I think is a shame. It would be good to see it duplicated.

"It's very difficult for clients to come on their own for counselling. They might come once or twice and then disappear and it's because they have no-one to support them.

"That's the idea of befriending. Clients have difficulty going to the dentist or doctor or even leaving the house.

"With one client, it took six months to get her from her bedroom to the living room."

The idea is also to help people move on towards their chosen goal - whether that is just to get back into their community or finding employment.

For both Agnes and Jeanette, it's been a hard road.

At first, confesses Agnes, who has heart trouble, her own drinking didn't seem much of a problem.

She and her late husband, James, a bus driver, did their drinking at home.

"From Friday to Sunday, we would get through a bottle and a half of whisky. We just enjoyed it."

When James died four years ago of lung cancer at 59, Agnes felt very isolated and withdrew into herself.

"Your family have their own lives and you get lonely.

"I was very depressed and the drinking seemed to cheer me up so I started drinking through the week too."

To the despair of her family, she began drinking more and more.

"I was getting really ill, lying in bed and not eating. I think 20 years of drinking, sometimes steady, sometimes heavy, had just caught up with me. If I didn't have whisky, I would drink Frosty Jakes - cider with Irn-Bru."

It was only when her GP referred her to GEAAP that she began to recover.

"I've come out of my shell and this place has done that," she says gratefully. "I feel more in control than I ever was.

"It's a good crowd that's here. The counselling has helped me and I'm a member of the women's group and Jeanette is like a best friend to me. We meet in a cafe for lunch and just sit and talk."

Jeanette is an extrovert. Always was. And from the time she started work with Wills cigarette factory as a teenager, she knew how to party.

"I didn't recognise it as a problem. You were just having a laugh. You were out with the girls every night and drink was always involved.

"I used to drink Carlsbergs and vodkas. Together." She paused, before adding: "Aye, blow your head off. Or a wee vodka and orange or blackcurrant. All kinds of concoctions. And when you were skint, you went on to drinks like cider."

Even when she was made redundant in her 20s and moved on to another job, it was still party time.

"It was always somebody's leaving do or somebody's birthday. Any excuse.

"When you got your wages on a Thursday, you'd head to the pub. That was when your weekend started.

"Between me and my man, we could drink a 40 ouncer (a bottle and a half of vodka) a night and still go in to work next day.

"I always made a Sunday dinner and my house was always clean so I thought there was nothing wrong, but I would take a glass of vodka and lager before I sat down to eat."

As the years went on, she came to rely on it more and more and her health began to deteriorate.

"I noticed I was losing a lot of weight and I was feeling drained, but I always thought a drink would make me feel better. I wouldn't listen to anyone."

Jeanette was in and out of hospital several times before she hit rock bottom while she was working as a domestic at a List D school.

"I collapsed at work with an alcoholic seizure and ended up in Eriskay House detox unit at Stobhill for a month. I had the DTs and I was sick all the time."

When she came out, Jeanette was sent to GEAAP for counselling. "And I've never looked back."

After two years, her counsellor suggested she could train as a befriender. She is also on the management committee of the women's group and likely to go on a counselling course.

"This has given me my self-respect and my life back," she says seriously.

"From the first, I felt like I belonged. It was fun and we all shared similar experiences and I realised I had choices. I feel I have a purpose in life now."

"And Jeanette has been tested," says Mary. "There have been deaths and various trying situations, but she has not had a drink. She is a strong woman, but when she first came here, she was nervous and anxious."

That certainly doesn't sound like the confident, sassy woman she is today.

Mary, 46, a mum-of-three and formerly a shop assistant, is also proof you can move on even if your life seems to be falling apart.

"I came here for counselling and ended up with a job," she says. She had been encouraged by her experience to do a college course on counselling and after volunteering for several years, got the befriending job.

"About 12 or 13 years ago, I had witnessed a friend's husband being stabbed in the street. It was pretty gruesome. I tried to help him and he spoke to me before he died.

"I lost faith and trust in humanity after that and I started drinking to get to sleep at night and it became a problem.

"I didn't want to go out the door. I wouldn't say it was excessive except at the weekends when I could put the weans to my mother's, but I became very withdrawn and shut people out.

"When I was sent here for counselling by my GP, it was just great to have someone who truly heard you and understood you, who didn't judge you.

"I have never looked back. It not only gave me my life back, it gave me a life I never had in the first place.

"Sadly it took my friend's husband to be murdered for me to hit rock bottom and to turn my own life round."

GEAAP doesn't believe alcohol dependency is an illness. "My dad, like a lot of men in Glasgow, had an alcohol problem," says Mary, "but we don't see it as genetic.

"As I see it, I am the person in control and the person who can change things. I can go out with friends and have one or two drinks now. I know what my triggers are."

Agnes too can have a drink or two with friends at the weekend. Jeanette, on the other hand, believes that for her, one wouldn't be enough. "My health comes first now," she says.

n GEAAP: 0141 773 4908