It's not just teenagers hitting the bottle I am haunted by "units," a word that has become one of the most unwelcome in the English language. For the past month, I have lived by them or, as the medics would have it, risked dying by them. Was there ever a more prosaic way of referring to the pleasures of drink: Keats's beaker full of the warm south, or Byron's celebrated cure for a hangover, "hock and soda water." In this prosaic age, we are advised to measure our drinking in units, measures worked out, I like to imagine, in some musky Dickensian office where the joy of living reaches only through piles of government directives. My mood of euphoria follows the conclusion of a serious investigation I have been making for tonight's Panorama on BBC One. And our findings are indeed serious. It seems the country could be on the cusp of an epidemic of old-age drinking. I admit I was thoroughly sceptical when the idea was first described to me. I thought I knew a good deal about the lives of older people. As the Government's so-called tsar for the old, I met, talked to and corresponded with many of them. I got to know about care homes and retirement crises, of pension shortcomings and the fears of dying. But I never once came up against the problem of late-onset drinking. That's why I took some convincing. But I now know the evidence is there. I even put my own drinking patterns under scrutiny and was surprised by the result. It's in hospitals and rehab establishments that I discovered the statistics. Fact: last year more older people were admitted to hospital for alcohol-related injuries and illnesses than those in the 16 to 24 age group. Fact: an estimated 1.4 million over-65s are drinking too much. Fact: according to the Alzheimer's Society, excessive alcohol over long periods of time increases the risk of a dementia-like condition. That last fact was the one that really scared me. I have been drinking since my teens. We grew up in a drinking culture: my tipple was a "gin-and-It" - what in the north of England of the 1950s was the equivalent of a dry martini, but with sweet vermouth. I learnt about whiskies and beers at university, and about wines in the travelling days of the 1960s. A lifetime of celebrations - weddings, christenings, and more lately divorces and funerals - have been threaded with the joys and comforts of alcohol. Yes, I and many of my generation are long-standing drinkers. The problem is that old age arrives with all its accompanying angst and too many of us up the intake and risk shortening our lives. Retirement is often a shock in any form: all the more hurtful if it's forced redundancy. In Glasgow I met up with Stuart, who had once been manager of a kilt shop. Left at home during the day while his partner worked, he took to sipping their fine wines and watering the bottle. Naturally, the ruse came to light. Help was summoned from Addaction, a charity dealing with addiction that recently backed the Commons health committee report calling for early professional intervention, together with consideration of minimum pricing and a reassessment of the licensing laws. Minimum pricing arrives in Scotland next April, and ministers are considering extending it to England and Wales as well. Barbara is in her seventies and since being widowed has lived alone. She and her husband were enjoying a happy retirement in France's expat community. But his illness and death plunged her into gloom. Come 4pm, she starts on the wine and downs a bottle a day. More over-65s than any other age group are drinking six or seven days a week. And that includes me. Barbara sought help, but plenty don't. And too often, GPs called to deal with falls, with confusion, with memory loss overlook the fact that drink might be the cause. Something in my soul resists the pressure from younger people to mend my ways. And when you're old, most people are young - nurses, doctors, social workers and such. I share the response of many older friends who declared "old age isn't much fun and we'll enjoy its few remaining pleasures while we can. Don't tell us what to do. Which brings us back to those units. I won't recite them now because they're confusing and contradictory: what exactly is "half a standard glass of wine"? All I can say is that my drinking diary registered me as well over the limit. Yet I share the same way of life as many, never drink at lunchtime, rarely touch spirits. And I enjoy the conviviality of old age. Its bulwark against loneliness, isolation and depression is self-evident. The trend towards growing old in your own home increases the risk of all three. With the baby boomers now of retirement age, a generation who expect to enjoy life will be at risk. And with cheap booze available round the clock in supermarkets, there is evidence that if England follows Scotland's lead, there could be 50,000 fewer alcohol-related deaths over the next decade. Panorama: Old, Drunk and Disorderly?" is on BBC One tonight at 7:30pm