CLOSER NEWS REPORT
British women are the No.1 female binge drinkers in the world – but new research appears to show that how much you drink may be inherited. As many of us enjoy the benefits of Dry January, Closer speaks with one former binge drinker who has discovered her genetic link to booze issues
REAL LIFE
Julie Cook was just 13 when she had her first taste of alcohol from her dad’s barrel of home-brew. She and her friends helped themselves while he was at work – but while her pals only had a couple of glasses, Julie had four.
Julie, 46, a writer who lives in Hampshire with her husband Cornel, 43, a musician, and her two children, aged 15 and 10, says, “The pattern for my binge drinking was set early on. We would get older kids to go to the off-licence and buy us alcopops and cider. But when the others stopped, I’d keep drinking until I couldn’t stand up.
“As a young journalist, women at work were encouraged to ‘drink men under the table’. And so my tolerance increased. On a binge day, I’d easily drink two bottles of wine, then I’d wake in the early hours, dry mouth, head pounding and get the 3am horrors wondering if I’d offended anyone.”
UNCONSCIOUS
In her twenties, Julie woke up on a bench at a railway station after a night out, with a paramedic next to her who explained that the ticket guard hadn’t been able to wake her. She says, “I’d been carried off – unaware and unconscious – by the emergency services. There was nothing medically wrong with me, I was just hideously drunk after a night out with colleagues.”
She adds, “Strangely, I never thought I had a drink problem, and no one ever told me I did. Looking back, I’d call myself a functioning binge-drinker rather than an alcoholic. Once I started drinking, I couldn’t stop.”
A recent survey reveals that British women are the biggest female binge drinkers in the world, with more than a quarter regularly knocking back more than six drinks in a session at least once a month. And research by Penn State University in the USA has shown that how much you drink could be significantly influenced by your DNA.
Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, of the University of Liverpool, worked on another study that identified genetic variants linked to drinking. The research found that those who drank a lot – at least five bottles of wine a week for men, and three-and-a-half for women – shared six specific genetic variants.
AVOIDING TRIGGERS
He explains, “We identified that people who drank more heavily tended to have particular variants in their genes – ADH1B being the most common. Indeed, 50 per cent of the variance for Alcohol Use Disorder is explained by genetic factors. If you carry these variants – some people may carry one or two, some all six var
