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CINDY COTTRELL THOUGHT NOTHING OF DOWNING BOTTLES OF VODKA, UNTIL A HEALTH SCARE CHANGED HER LIFE. AS THE GOVERNMENT SPENDS £10M HIGHLIGHTING THE DANGERS OF EXCESS DRINKING, CINDY CONFESSES SHE SLEPT WITH AT LEAST 5 STRANGERS WHILE DRUNK

By Fiona Whitty

Cindy Cottrell couldn’t work out what had happened to her when she woke up one day to find that the dress she was still wearing from the evening before was soaked in blood.

Had she been in an accident?

Or mugged?

The grim truth, she discovered later, was that the previous night she had been in a fight with a girl who’d smashed a bottle over her head.

Cindy had been rushed to a nearby hospital where medics stitched the wound – but she’d been so drunk, she couldn’t remember a thing afterwards.

“I was horrified when a friend told me I’d thrown a drink over a girl at a nightclub and she’d come at me with a bottle,” Cindy says.

“What if I’d been killed?

“That said, it wasn’t enough to stop me getting blind drunk again the next weekend,” she admits.

Now 22 and a nightclub worker, Cindy spent years drinking herself into oblivion every weekend.

On a night out she’d down two bottles of wine before she left the house, followed by so many vodkas and shots, she wouldn’t know where she was the next day.

Often, she’d wake up in a stranger’s bed.

She says: “I can’t bear to imagine the danger I put myself in.

"I could have gone home with a murderer or a madman.

“Reality would finally hit on the Sunday, when I’d feel embarrassed and guilty about my behaviour.

"I’d cry all day and vow never to do it again.

"Yet on Thursday the cycle would start afresh.

“I’d heard binge drinking was dangerous, but I thought I was too young to be affected.”

Cindy’s story is an all too familiar one, with the UK in the grip of an epidemic of binge drinking.

Latest Government statistics reveal the number of women dying from drink-related illnesses – including breast cancer, heart disease and liver failure – has almost doubled in 15 years.

In the last five years, emergency hospital admissions for women with alcohol-related injuries – attacks, accidents and alcohol poisoning – have soared by 29 per cent.

Cindy began drinking at the age of 13, sneaking alcohol from the drinks cabinet at home in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

By 16 she was a regular in bars, and at 18 she was pregnant.

As soon as she had given birth to her son Cory, now four, she was back on the booze, her wild partying starting on a Thursday evening when she packed Cory off to his father for the weekend.

“I was also taking cocaine, and often I wouldn’t make it to bed that night.

"The next day I’d carry on boozing, getting through a bottle of vodka at home.

"Saturday night would be the usual bender,” she says.

“I’d have arguments and fights then go home with strangers.

"I must have slept with five or more men without realising what I was doing, waking up in a strange bed and cringing: ‘Oh no, not again’.”

Cindy’s wake-up call came when she responded to an advert asking for binge drinkers to undergo a series of medical tests for a TV documentary.

By then she was spending £200 on cocaine and £100 on booze every week.

The results were grim. At 22, alcohol had wreaked such damage on her health that she had the liver of a 42 year old, and the heart of a 29 year old.

She was devastated.

“Since the tests six months ago, I’ve given up drugs and I’ve cut my drinking down to one night a week,” she says.

Cindy felt immediate benefits – and not just to her health.

She says: “I knew a lovely guy, Adam, from the old days, but he’d been reluctant to get involved with me because of my drinking.

"Now we’re together, and I’ve finally found a loving relationship.

“I’m a better mother to Cory, too.

"I used to spend days slumped on the sofa. Now I’m full of energy.

"We spend quality time together in the park, playing and laughing,” she adds.

“I’ve been transformed in the last six months, and I feel positive about the future. I’ve got my life back.”

Dr Hilary says:

The amount Cindy was drinking and the enormous physical toll on her body would undoubtedly have killed her through alcoholic liver cirrhosis, heart attack or premature dementia.

Binge drinking is a dangerous and addictive form of substance abuse which can kill.

 

Cindy appears in Make My Body Younger, coming soon to BBC3.

 

Do you binge drink? Do you think about the long-term health implications of binge drinking? Do you regularly have nights out and not remember anything? Would your nights be boring if they were spent sober?

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Photography: Jamie Hughes. Hair and Make-up: Kellie Mitchell at Joy Goodman