It must be different in the UK, I guess. I went to detox and they definitely will start you on the program when you have alcohol in your system, in fact they know you will have it in your system when you go in, and then they get you started on the detox and monitor you as you come down from it. Every time you go through detox it gets worse, so if you can look at it that way it may give you more reason to get it out of the way sooner than later. I learned this the hard way.