The Rise Of The Mid-Life Binge Drinkers

NHS figures suggest baby boomers are set to overtake young people as problem drinkers. Here, Clare Pooley explains how she got sober

- Clare Pooley

If you picture someone with a binge-drinking problem, they would probably be a young person falling out of a nightclub and vomiting into a gutter. It’s unlikely that you’d imagine someone like me– a 50-year-old, Cambridge-educated, middle-aged mum-of-three. Yet, new NHS figures show that we over-50s are overtaking youngsters as the nation’s problem drinkers.

This doesn’t surprise me, because just a few years ago I was drinking around 70 units of alcohol a week, which even I recognised was way more than the government recommended limit of 14. But not even my husband – who thought I should cut back but didn’t think I needed to quit – or my closest friends realised that my drinking had become an issue. Nobody staged an intervention.

Six years earlier, when my youngest child was born, I had given up a high-powered job in advertising. I’d imagined spending a few years being the perfect stay-at-home mum, baking and making models out of yogurt pots.

Daily drinking

But, as any full-time mum knows, it’s not a walk in the park. Well actually, it’s endless walks in the park, pushing swings and negotiating your way around toddler meltdowns. At the end of a busy day, I’d kick back with a large glass of Chablis and have some ‘me-time’.