SEATED at a marble kitchen island, Anniki Sommerville and a gaggle of other mothers sip prosecco while their tots play at their feet.
But standing up after downing the last of her drink — her sixth — Anniki feels lightheaded. Taking her toddler’s hand, she bumps into the doorframe as she shouts goodbye to the other mums.
Waking up the next morning, Anniki feels nauseous and jaded. She is also covered in bruises.
Shocked, she realises she does not know how she got home from her pal’s house and cannot remember pushing her baby’s buggy.
Writer Anniki lives in Ealing, West , with her partner of 18 years, Paul Wells, who works in catering.
She says: “These monthly mum gatherings had become a part of life but I’d become concerned by the damage they were doing to my and family, so I gave them up — and ditched in 2021.”;
While teens and have dialled down their drinking, there has been a worrying rise in older people boozing.
The Nuffield Trust think tank recently blasted the government’s policy on problem drinking as “no longer fit for purpose”;, largely because our drinking habits have changed so dramatically.
Younger people are now swerving booze, with a quarter of 16 to 24-year-olds not having drunk in the past year.
But alcohol use has shot up in the over-65s, with 21 per cent now classed as heavy drinkers, compared to 12 per cent in 2012.
And deaths from alcohol rose by more than 60 per cent from 2006 to 2023.
Meanwhile, the #Winemom hashtag on has more than 26,000 posts and the platform is filled with clips of women pouring themselves a glass of plonk as a reward once the kids are in bed.
Anniki says: “This culture of mums drinking more irresponsibly than teens has to stop, as do the constant ‘mummy needs her wine’ memes.
“There are endless products on online stores like , aimed at the ‘mums who love booze’ market, including a depressing card reading: ‘I love you as much as you love , Mummy’.”;
Although Anniki struggled to drink in moderation as a teen, she says she never thought of herself as a heavy drinker.
But she admits: “When I became a mum I would still drink as much as the drunkest person in the room.
“Boozing to excess when you are responsibility-free is all well and good, but things change when you become the carer of a baby.
“It took me a long time to realise this, because when I became a mum, alcohol became the antidote to stress.
“It has become normalised that the best way to combat the stresses and strains of is to drink to excess.
“But mums often get carried away and don’t realise just how much they’ve drunk.”;
For Anniki — who had her first baby, Rae, aged 40 in September 2013 — it was bonding with other new mums that caused her drinking to spike.
It has becomenormalised that the best way to combat the stresses and strains of motherhood is to drink to excess
Anniki Sommerville
“I made mum friends at a baby group and every fortnight we’d get together and, without fail, drink,”; she says.
“Becoming a mum is isolating, I loved the camaraderie. We shared bottles of Prosecco and at the end of the evening I’d be shocked to realise I’d drunk two to three bottles.
“It’s fun to start with, but things started to change as time went on. In bars, mums would end up falling all over the place.
“This was the kind of drinking you’d see from teens, not people facing night feeds. It was heavy drinking.
‘I wasn’t alone'
Anniki adds: “Mums would transform into different people when drunk, from singing wholesome nursery rhymes at baby group to standing on a chair in the pub, belting out once they’d had a few.
“I’m not criticising women who drink. It’s just the level of drinking.
“If I’d been on a bender and my daughter woke in the night, I would be conscious of how drunk and incapable I was.
“I would quickly get impatient that she wouldn’t settle, but luckily my partner would step in to give her a bottle and calm her. Remembering this made me uneasy the next day.
“Even though the drinking made me paranoid and would cause me to beat myself up when I woke in the night, I didn’t think to stop. After a session, the following day would be a total write-off.
“As a new mum I was already paranoid I was getting things wrong, but the day after drinking, this paranoia — and the mum guilt — were next level.”;
‘I couldn't see straight'
Eventually, Anniki started to worry about her behaviour.
“My partner and I took my daughter, then a year old, to a friend’s house party,”; she says.
“I drank so much that, at leaving time, I couldn’t see straight to push the buggy.
“When I got home I couldn’t remember the journey we’d taken, which had included a train.
“Thankfully, Paul would instinctively be more sober if he noticed I was drinking a lot. Sometimes he would roll his eyes if we were out and I was drinking too much.
“That night, my vision was swimming and I ended up running to the toilet to be sick.
“The next day I woke up full of angst and paranoia. I wasn’t alone, either. One mum I know passed out on the bus, missing her stop and arriving home after 4am.
“Another had a mugger grab her phone as she was calling her partner to tell him she was running late.
“One mum even lost her front teeth after falling over on the pavement when she’d had too many.”;
Leaving the booze behind
Anniki realised life as a boozy mum did not suit her.
She says: “According to an NSPCC study, the number of children in with a parent who misuses alcohol remains high, with more than 70,000 cases recorded each year since 2019/20.
“I cut back on my binge-drinking once Rae was two years old, in 2014.
“I simply had a moment of clarity and realised I couldn’t parent on hangovers any more. I couldn’t handle the and guilt.
Drinking was not only making me feel terrible, but was also dangerous for me and for my kids
Anniki Sommerville
“After welcoming my longed-for second baby, Greta, in 2018, I had been booze-free for three years.
“I then went through a short phase of drinking again, to see if I could drink mindfully, but found it difficult.
“I never binged like I used to, but being older I was unable to deal with the fallout, and parenting two children.
“So I decided it was best to give up booze altogether and became sober four years ago in 2021, only having a glass of fizz on special occasions. I also left behind friends from my boozy mum days.
“The thing that has stopped me from drinking the most is my new, daily hobby — .
“This fills the hole boozing would have taken up, as I run 3k daily.
“Drinking was not only making me feel terrible, but was also dangerous for me and for my kids.
“Motherhood is already hard – but drinking only makes things far worse.”;
