Hard-drinking Lithuania battles the bottle

Vilnius

BEHIND a heavy wooden door next to a Vilnius church, a couple of dozen Lithuanian men are talking about their dependence on alcohol. The moderator is Kestutis Dvareckas, a priest and a decade sober.

The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks Lithuanians as the world's heaviest drinkers. WHO estimates published in May pegged average annual consumption at 18.2 litres of pure alcohol per person in 2016, putting the small EU Baltic state ahead of Belarus, Moldova and Russia.