‘I was drinking to numb my anxiety’: Britain’s women binge drinkers share struggles of hitting rock bottom
Passed out on the sofa and her body swollen after another dusk-to-dawn drinking session, Issy Hawkins called her mother for help.
Spiralling into alcoholism as a teenager, she hid her problems from the outside world. According to a recent study, she is far from the only young woman in the UK to struggle in the battle against the bottle.
British women were named as the biggest female binge drinkers globally in a report released in November. Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicated 26 per cent of British women were consuming at least six drinks once a month.
Issy, now 30, first turned to alcohol “to
