I polished off 3 bottles and was found on ground

THE consequences of Lucy Rocca’s heavy drinking could well have proved fatal, had she not won her battle with the bottle by her forties.

The 42-year-old university graduate, from Sheffield, has described how she, like legions of middle-class women, never had an ‘offswitch’ when it came to alcohol.

On a quiet evening at home, the mother of two might polish off a bottle of wine. Social events with female colleagues would also be dominated by ‘excessive amounts of wine’.

But one such binge in 2011 ended in A&E after she finished three bottles and was found on the pavement outside her home at 2am.

This ‘rock-bottom’ moment ended her relationship with alcohol.

It also prompted her to support those who think of themselves as normal people who just ‘enjoy a drink’, but in fact are damaging their body, mental health and relationships.

She previously told the Daily Mail: ‘I didn’t see myself as an alcoholic. There had been bad nights, there had been embarrassing nights, but nothing on that scale had happened before. I drank to relieve loneliness as a single parent. My friends were lawyers, teachers, nurses – professional people who all binge drank as well.’

Six years on, she is teetotal and running a website, Soberistas.com. It attracted 20,000 members in its first year and has won acclaim for its approach to problem drinking.