'I have measured out my life with coffee spoons," wrote TS Eliot in his poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. The problem is that for a growing number of people over 60, the coffee spoons are becoming glasses of wine or gin, and the result has been a sharp rise in the number of OAPs whose daily tipple is spiralling out of control.

"We estimate an 18% increase in the number of women over 60, and a 15% increase in the number of men over 60, who have been admitted for rehab in the past two years," says Sue Allchurch, director of the Linwood Group, a chain of alcohol treatment centres in the UK. "Combine boredom, loneliness and the worry of getting older and you have the perfect formula for someone to turn to drinking excessively. Those people with a propensity towards alcoholism, which did not emerge during their working life, can find themselves progressing into dependency very quickly."

"I see it all the time where people measure out their lives by having a drink, then perhaps a meal, then another drink, then a sleep, then another drink and so on," explains Andrew Horne, director of operations for Scotland for the charity Addaction, where the highest number of OAPs in the UK are seeking help for alcoholism.

As people stay fit and healthy for longer, many feel forced to retire before they are ready. Add the fact that families are often scattered across the country and you can see how someone might start off having a pick-me-up G&T at noon, wine with lunch, a medicinal sherry before dinner, more wine with dinner - and before they know it, the drinking starts earlier, the measures get bigger and they are hooked. Some may have the additional triggers of anxiety about ill health and sadness at the loss of friends, relatives and perhaps a partner. "I am seeing people in their 80s becoming alcoholics," says Horne.

Paul Harris, 67, believes the cheapness of alcohol has contributed to his excessive drinking. "I retired too early and live alone, so I got into the habit of going to the pub at lunchtime," he says. "But instead of having one or two pints, I have half a dozen. Then, when I go to the supermarket to get my evening meal, I'm faced with offers such as three bottles of wine for under a tenner and I mean to have only one, but I wind up drinking all of them."

Harris says that he sometimes kids himself that he is OK because he can go on the wagon for short periods - the longest he has managed is two months. "When I don't drink, I start off with this euphoric feeling, but after a few days I get fed up of just listening to the radio and staring at the walls feeling depressed - so I go back to the pub to see my friends. It's all very well for a 30-year-old to make a different life with new friends away from a drinking environment, but at my age I haven't got the energy."

Like many older alcoholics, Harris has sought help. "I've started going to AA meetings, but most people who go are younger and have drug issues as well as alcohol addiction. The specific nature of that dual problem winds up being the focus of the meetings. Younger people also have different patterns of drinking - because many work - as well as different reasons for drinking and different motivations for giving up. My age group can get left out in the cold," he says.

Miriam Palmer, whose 69-year-old mother is an alcoholic, says the same is true of residential rehab. "My mother will periodically go to very exclusive, hugely expensive [rehab] places and comes out promising to go to all the meetings and to take her medication. Within a week, she's usually slipped and I think it's because these places don't realise the very particular challenges this age group are up against."

Horne says that 20 years ago, it would have been almost unheard of for someone approaching 70 to go into residential rehab, but although numbers are now soaring, it seems the alcohol treatment centres have not caught up. Some are even reported to turn older people away because they are ill-equipped to deal with them.

Frank Soodeen, a spokesman for Alcohol Concern, says, "A few years ago, there was a bit of a flurry about this issue and it looked for a moment as if alcohol services for older people would be addressed by the NHS's National Service Framework for Older People. But it's still the case that treatments focusing on the needs of older people are very, very rare." It doesn't help, he adds, that alcohol misuse among older people is a largely neglected area of research in the UK. Without any official figures on the true size of the problem and without any evidence base for professionals on the best course of treatment, the problem gets swept under the carpet.

Age Concern's director general, Gordon Lishman, shares his worries. "Our research shows that problem drinking in this age group is often under-diagnosed despite the fact that numbers of older drinkers have risen substantially in recent years."

Almost certainly this is partly due to the fact that OAPs have a marked tendency to under-report their drinking, often missing out alcoholic drinks that they regard as medicinal. Under-detection can also be down to reduced social contact and is sometimes because symptoms - such as accidents, depression, insomnia, confused states and self-neglect - are associated with the ageing process rather than the whisky bottle.

Alcoholism among OAPs can also get deliberately missed. "I think in a lot of cases relatives through to GPs actually choose to ignore it," says Soodeen. While some people might think "this is all that's left for them, why take it away?" it can also be because doctors hardly ever consider alcohol when assessing patients of this age, he adds.

Alex Edwards, 62, a computer programmer who has managed to stay off the bottle for seven months, says even close friends can turn a blind eye. "I have friends whom I've known for 30 or 40 years and I've noticed most are in denial about my alcoholism. They will offer me a drink, saying, 'Oh are you still not drinking then?'"

Edwards' drinking began after he started socialising at the pub on a regular basis and he found he had no control over it. He is one of the lucky few who has benefited from an age-specific service. "I look forward to my meetings," he says. "It's an anchor and a focal point and I like the eclectic approach that the therapy takes."

Mike Fox runs the older person's service at Casa Alcohol Services in London, which Edwards attends. "I work with anyone over 55, whether they have dementia or mobility issues or anything else linked to ageing. We believe that you have to deal with the whole person to help them get better. We also recognise that the potential triggers for this age group can be quite different from [those for] younger people."

Fox says he works with people with PhDs through to people who live on park benches. "The client group is as varied as it could be," he says, although the little research that is available suggests older married men are least likely to drink heavily, while older widowed or divorced men are among the highest risk group. The reverse is true for women - married women have high levels of consumption, while non-married older women generally show signs of good health. In both sexes, higher levels of drinking appear to be most prevalent among the higher social classes and the most affluent groups.

The health risks of excessive drinking for this age group make uncomfortable reading, with a long list including incontinence, coronary heart disease, strokes, falls and accidents, depression, dementia and self-neglect. Alcohol can even provoke Parkinson's disease among older people and alcohol is implicated in one in three elderly suicides.

Daisy Goodall, 73, who started drinking 15 years ago and is now in residential rehab, is testament to the additional danger of annoying other people. "It began when my husband died. When I had to stop working and move into sheltered accommodation, it got worse. I found things quite boring and I wanted something to cheer me up. But this last year, I got into binge drinking. I'd go seven to 10 days drinking solidly and then stop for a few weeks. That time without it would make me feel I wasn't addicted, but I nearly lost my tenancy when I went back on the bottle, knocking on doors and talking a lot of rubbish. I became known as a 'nuisance neighbour'".

· Some names have been changed. Alcohol Concern, 020-7264 0510; Casa 020-7485 1945; addaction.org.uk; Linwood Group, 0800 066 4173, lynwodemanor.co.uk