Daniel Taylor-Sweet / BBCAt 31 years old, I was told by doctors that if I didn’t stop drinking alcohol, I could die.I was shocked because I didn’t drink every day, I never drank alone and I drank because I enjoyed it as a social activity, not because I felt alcohol-dependent.But by definition, my alcohol consumption from my late teens to late 20s would be considered binge drinking. It felt normal because people around me were doing the same – and now it was catching up with me.I’d recently become a mum and had gone to the GP because I felt tired all the time. This led to blood tests and a liver function check.Further tests revealed I had severe alcohol-related liver fibrosis, or extreme scarring on my liver, most likely because of my drinking habits.I trundled home from the hospital in a daze, with my daughter in her pram. This might have happened to me, I thought, but I could not be the only one.I wanted to know what this said about the UK’s drinking culture and began looking into it for BBC Panorama.Alcohol-specific deaths are at their highest levels in the UK since records began in 2001.While the problem is undoubtedly bigger in men – particularly older men – more women under the age of 45 are dying due to alcohol-related liver disease, or ARLD, than ever before, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures from 2001-22.If we binge a given amount of alcohol in one go – for example on a night out – it can be much more damaging than if we drink the same amount over a longer period.The latest research, by a team at University College London and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, suggests bingeing may be up to four times as damaging for the liver.When we think of binge drinking, we tend to imagine people drunkenly sprawling out of bars and falling over at bus stops. But actually, a binge can be less alcohol than you might think.In the UK, a binge is considered as drinking six or more units of alcohol in one sitting for women, and eight or more for men. That is two large glasses of wine for a woman.At King’s College Hospital in London, consultant hepatologist Debbie Shawcross tells me that she regularly treats professional women in their 40s and 50s with liver disease.“They’re spinning plates in the air, and maybe they have young families,” she says. “They’re not alcoholics… but they are just drinking too much as a habit.”I’m not in my 40s yet, but she could have been describing me.When I was younger, I would easily drink more than what’s defined as a binge on a night out. I didn’t think anything of it until I got my diagnosis.After my blood tests came back as abnormal I was sent to Glasgow’s New Victoria Hospital, where I had an ultrasound, and finally a fibroscan. All this took place over the course of about a year.A fibroscan is a type of non-invasive ultrasound which measures liver stiffness. A reading of seven kPA (a unit used to measure the level of oxygen in the blood) or below is considered normal. My reading was 10.2.This indicated severe scarring – if it had not been caught, and if I had not stopped drinkin …
