Did I drink myself stupid because I’d inherited alcohol genes ?
Her father and grandad liked a glass or three. Now, after a revealing DNA test, Julie asks
My body was programmed to drink to excess
A PAIR of unfamiliar eyes peered into mine as I woke up. They belonged to a man in a fluorescent jacket and green overalls — the kind paramedics wear. ‘You’re all right,’ he said, gently. ‘How are you feeling now?’
My head throbbed as I sat up to find myself on a cold, metal bench in the middle of the night. I heard a train announcement and realised I was at a railway station. Panic swept through me as I struggled to remember what I was doing there. Had I been in an accident?
The paramedic patiently explained that I’d boarded my train home, fallen asleep and the ticket guard hadn’t been able to rouse me to check my ticket. They’d stopped the train at Woking ( an unscheduled stop) and I’d been carried off — unaware and unconscious — by the emergency services.
There was nothing medically wrong; I was a healthy woman in my 20s. I was just hideously, humiliatingly drunk, having been quaffing prosecco for around seven hours with work colleagues in a pub. The last thing I remembered was boarding the train. Then I’d blacked out.
It’s a tale that might sound disturbingly familiar. From office parties to intimate festive dinners, temptation is huge at this time of year. At least, that was always my experience, until I quit drinking in 2019 after years of being a borderline alcoholic binge-drinker.
Once, leaving a grand party, I fell over drunk outside a Park Lane hotel and had to be helped off the pavement by a valet driver. Christmas itself was often a blur. Going out on Christmas Eve, getting sloshed, vomiting, waking up on Christmas Day with a hangover, vomiting again, cooking a roast while feeling queasy, starting on hair-of-the-dog, then drinking through until New Year’s Eve.
At the time, I laughed it off as seasonal exuberance. But now, recalling it fills me with shame. Sometimes I’d become verbally abusive when drunk, then have no recollection of what I’d said to my expartner the following day.
In my 30s, I married my husband, Cornel. He has never been a big drinker and put up with me, amazingly, but often said he hoped I would cut down.
So imagine my delight when I received cast-iron proof that this fondness for Christmas spirits wasn’t entirely my fault; that my body was programmed to drink to excess while friends around me stopped.
Research by Penn State University in the U.S. into genes with links to alcohol use has shown that how much you drink could be significantly influenced by your DNA.
When the study’s 3.4 million participants were asked how much they drank, the 10 per cent of people from a white European background with the highest genetic score linked to drinking put away more than seven drinks a week on average. Yet the 10 per cent with the lowest genetic score had fewer than four drinks a week.
Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, of the University of Liverpool, worked on another such study that identified genetic variants linked to drinking. That research found those who drank a lot — at least five bottles of wine a week for men, and three-and-ahalf for women — shared six specific genetic variants.
He explains: ‘ Using the UK Biobank [a bank containing the genetic information of half a million people], 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 variants — it increases your risk of drinking more heavily.’
Curious, I used the genetic testing firm 23andme and discovered I have not just one but four ‘ alcoholic dependency’ genetic variants ( including ADH1B) that predispose a person to drinking more and having a higher chance of alcoholism.
Relief flooded through me. I felt vindicated, as if the weight of guilt and embarrassment had lifted. But there were questions, too.
Professor Pirmohamed is keen to stress that alcoholism is not a foregone conclusion for those carrying these variants. ‘No gene by itself is necessary or sufficient to lead to alcohol dependency,’ he says. ‘Other factors in your lifestyle also play a part, such as family, life experience, social groups and even access to alcohol.’
I thought about my father, who died of cancer aged 59. Had I inherited the genes from him? Like me, he would ‘save up’ his drinking to a Friday and Saturday night, becoming lighter and more talkative with each glass.
He told me stories of how, as a child, he was not allowed to see his own father when he was drinking, saying that his mother locked his father in another room. So was it passed down to both of us from my grandfather? Does that mean I’ve passed it to my own children, aged 15 and ten?
I was 13 when I had my first taste of alcohol, from my dad’s barrel of home-brew. Giggling, my friends and I helped ourselves while he was at work. But while they had one or two glasses, I had four. And so the pattern was set. We would get older kids to go to the offlicence and buy us alcopops and cider. But when others stopped, I’d drink until I couldn’t stand up.
As a young journalist, women were encouraged to ‘drink men under the table’. And so my tolerance increased. On a binge day, I easily drank two bottles of wine.
Then I’d wake in the early hours, dry mouth, head pounding and get the 3am horrors — did I fall over last night? Who did I offend?
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 — my career never faltered — rather than an alcoholic. But once I started drinking, I couldn’t stop.
When I had my two children, in 2008 and 2013, I’d stop drinking entirely while they were small, but then fall off the wagon once they were older, indulging at weekends as a ‘treat’ after they’d gone to bed. I’d conditioned myself to believe alcohol was a tonic. For being bored. Or angry. Or sad. Or tired.
It wasn’t until one night in 2019, when I was 42, that I found the inner strength to stop.
I was in Paris with my husband, drinking a cocktail, and thought: ‘I don’t like doing this any more.’ I wanted to see Napoleon’s tomb the next day without a hangover. I haven’t touched a drink since.
It might sound bizarre that someone seemingly with no off switch could stop so suddenly. But I’d been thinking about it for a while, hating the shame and fuzzy memory. I knew moderation would never work for me.
The fact I could stop so suddenly gives me hope that although our behaviour around drinking can be a genetic predisposition, it is, perhaps, not a curse.
Professor Pirmohamed says: ‘It doesn’t mean that if you’re carrying those genes, you will always drink heavily. It’s about avoiding triggers where you can.’
I can testify that life is so much better sober. I notice more, I remember more, I sleep well.
I wish I’d known I had this genetic predisposition earlier. Would it have helped me curb my drinking? I don’t know, but it explains my huge tolerance for alcohol.
I hope this has not been passed down to my children, but if signs of addiction ever start to show, I’ll be the first to raise it with them.
Meanwhile, this Christmas (my fifth one sober), while other people start on the sherry, I shall be on sparkling elderflower water.
One friend suggested I am still ‘addicted’, but addicted to not drinking. I’ll happily take that.
It’s not a curse, but a warning to avoid triggers