High-flier Clare Pooley knew she had to get off the booze

This time of year is all about friends, families — and, of course, raising a glass to all the good things in life.

But now the party season is growing to a close, it’s also a time of introspection — and there may be a sense that all that consumption, particularly of alcohol, comes at a price.

An extraordinary new book lays bare the toll it can take — and, should you be considering cutting back, provides all the motivation you need.

On the surface, Clare Pooley’s life was perfect. She was a Cambridge graduate and business high-flier turned stay-at-home mum to three children.

But she found herself drinking more and more — a glass of wine while helping with homework, another making the children’s tea. Eventually, she was drinking 100 units a week. Then, as her life began to collapse, she realised the booze had to go. But had she quit in time to save herself?

DAY 1

On a scale of one to ten, today is around a minus five. It’s a Sunday, so I have a hangover, obviously. But this is the day after my birthday party, so my hangover is a humdinger.

My brain seems to have shrunk to the size of a marble. I’m drowning in waves of nausea. I clutch at my kitchen worktop like a desperate sailor clinging on to a life raft. This is not a good idea, because I keep catching sight of my grey, puffy face reflected in the polished granite. Yikes.

Even on a good day (which this is not) the noise levels would be unbearable. My three children — Evie, 11, Kit, eight and Maddie, six — are making an unholy racket.

I’m aware the rational response would be not to touch another drop for several days, if not weeks.

But I also know the only thing that’s going to make me better is another drink.

Despite relying on alcohol as a way of relaxing when she got in from work and switched to looking after her children. She said: ‘Only copious amounts of booze enabled me to make the switch from one persona to the other’

I glance at the clock. Is it broken? It’s barely moved since I last looked at it. Just after 11am.

Not drinking before midday is one of The Rules. If you drink in the morning, you’re an alcoholic, right? But after 12, particularly at weekends, is perfectly OK. Everyone knows that.

I open the cupboard and reach past the Weetabix (no chocolate cereals in my house, because I am a Good Mother most of the time) to investigate. There’s an open bottle of red wine with about two inches left. It’s very unlike me to leave wine unfinished. I must have fallen asleep (aka passed out) before I managed to drain it.

I can’t possibly pour it into a glass. My children are pretty used to Mummy having a glass of wine permanently welded to her hand, but even they might baulk at seeing me with one at 11am.

So I take out a mug and pour in the dregs.

Only minutes after I’ve knocked it back, the throbbing in my head subsides. And that’s when I look down and see what’s printed on the mug in my hand: THE WORLD’S BEST MUM.

I hate myself.

I can’t remember the last time I went a whole day without a glass of wine. On a weekday, I’ll have a large glass while helping the kids with their homework. Then a second while preparing the evening meal. Then I’ll hide that (more empty than full) bottle so I can open a new one when John, my long-suffering husband, comes home, and we share it over dinner. (When I say share, what I mean is we’ll both have some, but I’ll make damn sure I get more than him.)

Clare took a brutal look at herself and realised she had to stop drinking completely

That’s more than a bottle a day.

Then there’s the weekend, when lunchtime drinking is almost obligatory. So on Saturday or Sunday (probably both) I can easily polish off two bottles. Which means I’m drinking nine or ten bottles of wine a week, minimum — around 100 units.

It has to stop.

I take a brutal look at myself. I’m 46, but I look older. I’m raddled. I’m 2st overweight, mostly round my tummy. If I stand up straight and look down I can’t see my feet. I’ve started to hate taking buses as people often offer me their seats, as though I were pregnant. When I recently measured my waist, I found to my horror that it is 36 inches.

Then there’s the wine witch — the pet name I’ve given to the voice that’s taken up residence in my brain. It turns even the most solid of resolutions to dust, whispering things like: ‘There’s only a little left in the bottle. You may as well finish it or it’ll go off!’

What kind of an example am I setting my children? I don’t want them to think all adults need buckets of alcohol every day.

After graduating from Cambridge, I travelled through the Far East on my own, and was a director on the board of a major advertising agency by the age of 30.

Yet now I’m always anxious. The booze — the trusty old pal that used to make me feel invincible — is only making things worse. The obvious solution is to cut down. But I’ve been trying to do that for years. Within a few weeks I’m back where I started, only drinking more than before.

Clare pictured in her wilder, non-sober days. She says she had to find out if there was life after wine and find out how to socialise without alcohol

I have to stop completely. But is it possible to live without alcohol in a world where you’re more likely to be offered a glass of wine at a playdate than a cup of tea? Where every social event is fuelled by gallons of booze? Is there life after wine? I’m about to find out . . .

DAY 2

I blame Bridget Jones. I loved her humour and the way she drank like a fish. I loved Bridget because I pretty much was Bridget. So much so, when I was 30 and the BBC were looking for people to feature in a documentary about the ‘real-life Bridget Joneses’, they called me.

I reluctantly agreed to take part in a singletons’ dinner party. They filmed me waving my wine around, as I proclaimed: ‘Look. I’ve got a great job, a really cool car, and I own my own flat. Why on earth would I need a man to make myself complete?’

I wasn’t expecting anyone to actually see the documentary. So imagine my horror when all week on prime-time TV the BBC ran a trailer featuring only one person: me. There I am, slightly tipsy, saying: ‘Look. I’ve got a great job, a really cool car, and I own my own flat.’ Then the serious male voiceover cuts in: ‘So why can’t these women find the one thing they really want: A MAN?’

Clare was horrified when she was filmed at a singletons dinner for a documentary about real-life Bridget Joneses  and the BBC ran a trailer featuring only her

Clare says Bridget Jones gave everyone an excuse to drink too much because woman saw drinking as their duty as feminists to beat the boys at their own game

Everyone saw it. But it didn’t stop me loving Bridget. She gave us all an excuse to drink too much. Back in the Nineties, we saw drinking as our duty as feminists to beat the boys at their own game.

I assumed I would stop drinking with such abandon after I got married to John and had kids. But I was of the generation told we could ‘have it all’ — and I was juggling a top job and babies.

I’d run home from a day keeping hundreds of balls in the air and immediately have to switch into calm, happy mother mode to read The Gruffalo to my children.

Only copious amounts of booze enabled me to make the switch from one persona to the other. I was driving myself crazy.

When I was at work, my heart was with my children. When I was with my children, my head was filled with work. I was paying a vast proportion of my salary to a nanny so she could do the job I desperately wanted to do myself.

So when Maddie, my third child, was born, I quit the rat race to be Perfect Mum. My house was going to be a happy haven of cupcakes, craft tables and playdates.

When her third child was born, Clare quit the rat race to become the perfect mother but instead of feeling fulfilled she felt as though as she had lost her identity

Instead, I started feeling as though I’d lost my identity. I was only ever defined in relation to other people — John’s wife or Evie’s Mmummy. It was as if, without them, I didn’t exist. Wine was my oasis, a release from the stress of toddler tantrums and the boredom of nappy-changing. A glass of wine could put the zing into a late-afternoon playdate with a girlfriend and the Zen into post-children’s bedtime. Without booze I felt timid, boring and anxious.

But I know it’s the drink that has — slowly, insidiously — put me where I am today.

DAY 3

I’ve gone three days without booze on numerous occasions. I’ve given up for months at a time. But this time I know it’s not temporary — and I can’t stop thinking about wine, my errant ex-lover.

Six o’clock became the most difficult part of the day as it was the time Clare would usually have a drink

I’ve even been cooking in the morning and leaving dinner for John to heat up when he gets home, because cooking, for me, is entwined with drinking. Many an evening I’ve spent with a spoon in one hand, glass in the other, talking to an imaginary camera crew as I channelled my inner Keith Floyd, the hard-drinking TV chef.

I’m shattered, too. But despite the exhaustion, I can’t get to sleep. I’m used to being eased into the Land of Nod by the anaesthetising effects of a few glasses, but for the past two nights I’ve been awake for hours, brain whirring, while John slumbers.

Now it’s six o’clock, the most difficult time of the day. I’ve cooked the children’s supper, we’ve done homework and bathtime and they’re happily sitting in front of the television.

All the time booze is calling me. But if I don’t walk away now there’s a danger I never will.

I feel I’ve done as much of today as I can manage, so I tell the children we’re all going to bed. Yes, Mummy, too. We curl up together, reading stories. I suddenly realise that, because of wine, I wrapped up years of precious bedtime routines as early as possible.

I gave up work so I could spend more memorable time with my children, then spent the next few years constantly trying to run away from them.

DAY 7

I’m not sure I can do this on my own. I wish I could talk to someone, but I’m too ashamed. I’ve casually told John I’ve quit drinking, but I’m sure he expects me to be back on it by the weekend.

Since we met nearly 20 years ago, John’s loved me patiently through years of increasing overindulgence. But I can’t talk to him. Maybe because I don’t want to confess the truth, even to myself.

It seems crazy that when I quit smoking 15 years ago, I was able to tell the world proudly. But now I’m ditching another addictive drug and feel I can’t tell anyone.

Clare felt she was able to proudly tell the world that she had quit smoking 15 years ago but couldn’t tell people she was ditching another addictive drug

I’m doing an amazing thing — for me, for my family — and yet I’m scared everyone will think I must have been a bad mother, an irresponsible lush.

I’m worried that now I’ve quit, they’ll think I’m boring and I’ll never be invited out again.

Alcoholics have a terrible image. You immediately imagine tramps quaffing methylated spirits, mothers lying face down in pools of vomit while their children forage for scraps. Alcohol is the only drug in the world where, when you stop taking it you’re presumed to have a problem, while those still indulging are viewed as ‘normal’.

I’m sure I’d meet some incredible people through Alcoholics Anonymous (especially in the nearby Chelsea meeting, which is, apparently, stuffed full of celebrities). But I can’t make myself do it.

All those mums at school who see me as always organised, hosting coffee mornings and volunteering for class rep, have no idea I have this problem. I rarely drop a ball.

I’m probably pretty irritating, come to think of it. Which makes me wonder, how many mums like me are out there? Who else is standing at the school gate, stealing the kids’ Haribos to smother the smell of stale booze?

Clare says: ‘Alcohol is the only drug in the world where, when you stop taking it you’re presumed to have a problem, while those still indulging are viewed as normal’

DAY 14

Two weeks in and my mornings are transformed. There’s no longer insomniac exhaustion or a hangover to contend with.

One memorable hungover Saturday, I somehow reversed my car over a raised mini roundabout. To my horror, the car stopped moving, leaving me stuck, balanced on top of the roundabout with all four wheels suspended in mid-air.

I had to clamber out of my car (still dressed in my pyjamas), to beg help from four security guards.

‘Don’t worry, madam,’ said one, kindly, ‘people do that all the time.’

‘Do they really?’ I asked him, relieved. ‘No,’ he replied, as they all cracked up. They clung to each other for support, they were laughing so much.

I realise now one of the differences between ‘problem’ drinkers and ‘normal’ drinkers is their attitude to hangovers. I was always astounded by people who would turn down a glass at Sunday lunch because they’d drunk too much the night before. Didn’t they realise that the only cure for a hangover was to drink more?

DAY 33

Thirteen years ago, my husband married a party girl. A bon viveuse. Until recently, our lives revolved around entertaining over boozy Sunday lunches, getting happily plastered at parties and cooking elaborate dinners accompanied by expensive wine.

But now he’s married to a teetotaller. He wanted me to cut down — drastically. But he didn’t ask, or want, me to stop completely.

When Clare married her husband, John, 13 years ago she was a party girl. Before she quit she imagined he would leave her for a younger, slimmer woman

But now John ismarried to a teetotaller. He wanted Clare to cut down — drastically. But he didn’t ask, or want, her to stop completely

Before I quit, I’d have visions of him leaving his puffy, boozy wife and running off with a younger, slimmer version.

Now I have the same vision — only now they’re happily sharing a bottle of wine in a romantic bistro, while I sit home alone with a glass of water.

This evening I pluck up courage. ‘Darling,’ I say, ‘can I ask you something?’ John freezes. He’s a stiff-upper-lip Scot who went to boarding school aged seven — he doesn’t do ‘talking about stuff’.

‘Does it bother you that I’ve stopped drinking?’

John looks relieved. At least I hadn’t asked him: ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

‘God, no, it’s a wholly good thing,’ he replies. The benefits are, apparently, as follows:

1. I no longer fall asleep while watching TV, so we can genuinely share a box set.

2. I’m less grumpy.

3. I don’t keep him awake, tossing and turning.

4. He doesn’t have to drink really fast to make sure he gets his share of a bottle of wine.

pecialists all over the country are reporting a huge increase in the number of women in their 30s and 40s being admitted with liver disease. They tend to be those in higher-end executive jobs who see booze as an intrinsic part of their lifestyle

DAY 62

I’m struck by the fact you’d never find a group of mums at the school gate joking about how they were dying to get home to rack up a line of cocaine. And yet use of another life-destroying drug is not only acceptable, it’s expected, to the extent that not taking it makes you weird.

Which is crackers — especially as liver specialists all over the country are reporting a huge increase in the number of women in their 30s and 40s being admitted with liver disease. They tend to be those in higher-end executive jobs who see booze as an intrinsic part of their lifestyle.

It’s not just liver disease. Excessive alcohol consumption is also linked to cancer, particularly breast cancer. Women who drink just three alcoholic drinks a week have a 15 per cent higher risk of breast cancer than teetotallers.

So as wine o’clock comes around and I glance wistfully towards the fridge, I think: ‘Is that nightly glass (or three) of wine worth burdening myself and my family with a breast cancer diagnosis?’ With a sigh, I make myself a hot chocolate.

Clare knew she needed to quit the drinking to reduce her risk of breast cancer and liver disease. Women who drink just three alcoholic drinks a week have a 15 per cent higher risk of breast cancer than teetotallers

DAY 70

It strikes me, looking fleetingly in the mirror (past the age of 40, it doesn’t do to linger at mirrors) this morning, that something has changed: my hair.

There are many benefits I expected when I quit drinking — weight loss and so on — but bouncy hair wasn’t one of them.

I google ‘sober hair’. Apparently, hair, like your skin, suffers from dehydration when you drink. Plus alcohol depletes your iron levels, which makes your hair fall out.

This hair thing is very good timing, because tonight I have an ordeal. My old Cambridge college, Newnham, is holding a drinks do at the House of Lords.

I still remember when I got the results from my Cambridge application with my friend, Philippa.

I poured us both a vodka and orange for courage despite it being only 11am (that didn’t augur well).

When Clare and her friends got their Cambridge application results she poured them vodka and orange for courage despite it only being 11am

Clare says: ‘Many of my cohorts are now government ministers, top lawyers, brain surgeons, newsreaders, best-selling novelists and rich-as-Croesus financiers.’

I unfolded the letter with shaking hands and scanned down until I found the words ‘We are pleased to be able to offer you . . .’ It was undoubtedly the proudest day of my life.

Tonight I’ll look around the room at supposedly some of the brightest and most promising of our generation. Many of my cohorts are now government ministers, top lawyers, brain surgeons, newsreaders, best-selling novelists and rich-as-Croesus financiers.

And what am I? An ex-boozy housewife. All that promise left pickling at the bottom of a bottle of Chablis.

I know from my pregnant days that these functions are generally useless at providing non-alcoholic drinks: warm orange juice or elderflower cordial.

I arrive at the House of Lords. I was wrong about the soft drinks. There’s no elderflower cordial — only warm, sticky orange juice.

Not only do I not want to drink orange juice, but my bright-orange tumbler shouts ‘NON-DRINKER’ loudly in the sea of classy wine glasses. I can’t see one other glass of orange juice being drunk.

One lady I don’t recognise comes up to me.

‘I remember you!’

Oh God. I have a feeling this is not going to end well.

‘You were famous for running down the college corridor naked except for a strategically placed yucca plant, claiming to be Eve in the Garden of Eden.’

I feel a wave of nostalgia for my younger, unforgettable (even if for the wrong reasons), exuberant self, and take a sip of my sticky orange juice.

Clare thought she’d got the wine cravings under control but gave in after 3 months of sobriety

DAY 91

I thought I’d got the wine witch under control, but tonight she’s back with a vengeance. I’m desperate for wine. So I log on to Facebook as a distraction.

Mistake. My newsfeed is filled with pictures of drinking at parties, dinner tables complete with large bottles of wine and the inevitable memes joking about mums and their wine.

‘Because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere!’

‘Keep your friends close. Keep your wine closer.’

‘Be kind. Be helpful. Bring wine.’

What’s the point of me going through this when everyone is drinking? It’s a perfectly acceptable way of winding down. Why am I making life so hard?

I curse my decision not to ban booze from the house. I’ve been determined to keep everything as normal as possible, to have an open bottle of wine available for John or for guests.

But knowing there’s half a bottle of my favourite white in the kitchen is driving me insane. I walk back and forth to the fridge so often I’m surprised I haven’t furrowed a groove in the floor.

Eventually, I open the fridge and pour a large glass.   

• Extracted by MAUREEN BROOKBANKS from The Sober Diaries by Clare Pooley, published by Coronet Books, price £16.99. To order a copy for £13.59 (20 per cent discount). Visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over £15. Offer valid until January 31, 2018.