I have grown dispirited reading all the sycophantic coverage of the operation for George Best's liver transplant.

The mythology around the ex-footballer has become so intense he is treated like a national hero. All sense of reality about the man disappeared long ago.

To quote a well-known television boss, let's cut the crap. George Best may have been a great footballer in his prime with Manchester United, though whether his twinkling, magical feet were ever the miracles soccer legend would now have us believe, I could not say.

But what is unarguable is that George Best is not just a drunk. He is, as he himself so engagingly confesses, an alcoholic. There is a huge difference between the two.

The former is a seriously nasty social failing. The latter is a disease - but a controllable disease.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, addicts who may have lost their jobs, homes, families, friends, self respect - everything, because of the booze - learn how to restart living their lives without alcohol.

They stay away from the bottle just one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time with the support of others around them.

For the alcoholic it is a terrifying process demanding immense amounts of courage, determination and perseverance.

Sadly, so far, George Best appears to have been unable to summon up these qualities, though he first tried AA as long ago as 1980.

Even though he has managed to keep himself sober for a year to qualify for the life-saving transplant operation, there is nothing in his history of clinics, therapy, medical implants and all the rest of it that gives much confidence he will stay off the booze permanently.

His hospital room has been described as his last chance saloon. But that misses the point. Someone else's liver may have saved Best's life for the moment but it is not going to curb the alcoholism.

Somehow, while he lies there in bed with the donated organ struggling to cope with his ravaged body, he has to find the will to take control of the disease.

He might start with the Serenity Prayer which AA members constantly repeat to themselves and say at every AA meeting: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

While the pressure of celebrity may make some people drink excessively from time to time, it does not create alcoholism. The cause and true nature of the disease have never been satisfactorily explained.

Most alcoholics reach their personal "rock bottom" before finding the will to help themselves. It is the gutter - or the morgue.

Best must surely know he has reached his in an intensive care unit with a stranger's liver inside him. Now he has to dare to live again.

How sad such a talented sportsman and charming person should be so shockingly self-destructive. It really does not have to be that way.