Behind my glamorous life of cocktail parties was a life-wrecking alcohol addiction and I spent most of my time drunk or unconscious. Here’s how I hid it for a decade… and warning signs to watch out for in your loved ones

At 24, Tess Ridgeway thought she’d landed on her feet. 

Having worked her way up in the local hospitality industry in the mid-noughties, most evenings were spent schmoozing with colleagues and potential investors, often at luxury hotels or fancy cocktail bars. 

Her finance-executive boyfriend – 20 years her senior – funded their lavish lifestyle, including penthouse apartments. ‘To be honest, I didn’t have to work,’ says Tess, now 41, who lived in Manchester at the time. Still, she had her own talents – an A* student with a degree in English from Leeds University.

‘It was all very glamorous,’ says Tess. ‘Lots of fancy meals and corporate events, I could dress up like a Barbie and enjoy this professional world with this very grown-up man.’ 

Yet, when the parties ended, Tess’s situation was anything but aspirational. 

She rarely stopped at two, three or even four, cocktails. Very often, she’d insist on another glass – or bottle – of wine when the couple arrived home. Sometimes, Tess would black out by the end of the night – or find herself having a ‘hysterical’ row with her partner.

But the next day she’d get ‘dressed up’ and pretend nothing had happened. To onlookers, she was an elegant networker who was mature for her years. 

Her mother, who lived an hour’s drive away, thought she worked in PR and put her common vanishing episodes down to professional commitments. 

Friends became increasingly distant after she’d fail to commit to plans, instead dedicating free time to her toxic relationship.

In fact, she was at the beginning of a destructive spiral into alcohol addiction that would last a decade – and ultimately cost her everything.

Tess first began drinking ‘socially’ at university, aged 18, but didn’t develop ‘excessive’ habits until her early twenties. 

‘When I first had a drink as a teenager it wasn’t that big a deal,’ she says. ‘It was like have a drink, have a little dance… it was okay.

‘But very quickly, as I realised I didn’t want to be in the real world, I discovered that drink could take me away from reality and the bits of me I didn’t like. Alcohol was a symptom of the overarching problem with my self-esteem – it could have been anything.’

By 29, Tess was single, and spent most of her waking hours drunk, unconscious or at her local A&E, seeking help for self-harm injuries. 

‘I had no money, no savings, no job, no nothing,’ she says, adding that home was a one-bedroom Manchester flat that was ‘loaned’ to her by a male ‘friend’ who was often abusive.

‘I’d start drinking at around lunchtime to try and escape from the loneliness and shame about what my life had become.

‘I’d be pretty much out of it for most of the day and then, around 4am, I’d wake up with this searing terror. I’d think, I can’t stop drinking. No man will ever want me. I’ve got nothing. I’m going to die alone. The only thing I could do was drink more and hopefully pass out.’

She developed a ‘disconnected’ relationship with her close relatives, including her mother, with trips to the family home in Lancashire becoming less and less frequent. 

‘I felt further and further away from my mum,’ she says. ‘We’d speak on the phone and I’d pretend everything was fine. It was clear she knew something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.’

A pair of kind social workers ultimately saved her life, she says.

‘They turned up at my door one day – I think the hospital staff had contacted them with concerns. 

‘When they arrived, I was a complete mess. There were bottles all over the floor, remnants of vomit, my hair was all matted. I think, by that point, I’d been lying on the floor for several days, in and out of consciousness.’

Her visitors didn’t ask judgmental questions. Instead, they asked what they could do to help.

‘It was the first time I felt that someone cared about me, and didn’t want anything in return,’ she says.

‘I was so used to men seeing me in that state and being angry, telling me I’d let myself go, that I was a mess.

‘But these women were kind and caring. They gave me a tissue to wipe my eyes. It was a moment of hope.’

This marked the start of a five-year recovery process, which saw Tess undergo six months of intensive NHS inpatient treatment, as well as four years living in supportive housing while participating in a 12-step recovery programme. 

The 12-step protocol is a popular treatment run by Alcoholics Anonymous, which has around 32,000 members across the UK. 

The process involves a structured and gradual recovery process led by peer support, with an aim to change thoughts, behaviours and relationships related to addiction. 

Today, Tess resembles an astonishing example of reinvention. Now 41, she is an accomplished therapist and mother of one, with a Master’s degree in psychotherapy under her belt and is happily married to her husband of four years. 

She spends much of her working life trying to set patients free from addiction – a challenge that can be particularly tricky with women.

Firstly, it’s much tougher to get women to seek help, says Tess, who works at The Priory’s Flourish addiction service, which offers lower-cost residential treatment.

‘Women don’t want to come forward. They’re often terrified that they’ll lose something – be it children, or a job or relationships. But it’s often going on under the radar. It’s less obvious.’

Experts have previously warned of the rise in so-called ‘functioning’ alcoholism in women. 

Food delivery apps and aggressive female-targeted wine marketing are said to have fuelled a striking rise in the number of alcohol-related deaths in women.

In 2023, alcohol-related deaths peaked at their highest-ever level – at 8,274. 

According to Alcohol Change UK, the proportion of UK women who report drinking more than six units on one day doubled between 1998 and 2022.

Tess says the glamourisation of ‘cocktail culture’ somewhat disguised her problem drinking when it began in the early 2010s.

‘I thought I was just going out and drinking cocktails – it’s not the type of life you associate with your typical alcoholic,’ she says.

‘When everyone around you is doing it but they’re still professional, successful, going to work, it’s normalised.’

It only took a year of boozy late nights before she became reliant on alcohol to ‘take me away from the real world’. 

‘Alcohol was the symptom. It could have been anything,’ she says. ‘I was this scared little girl who didn’t know how to be, didn’t have a purpose, didn’t have a direction. 

‘I needed a balm to protect me from a world I found so scary.’

This entrenched fear and discomfort is a sensation she’s suffered since the age of five, she says. 

‘I always had this sense that something wasn’t right with me, like I didn’t quite know how to function.’

At school, she remembers feeling ‘awkward and separate from other children’, and failing to make friends.

‘There was a constant cacophony of noise in my head, I could never relax. I remember always feeling frightened and overwhelmed, and I struggled to control my impulses.’

Now, she knows this collection of feelings was indicative of a developmental condition that’s seen an exponential rise in Britain – ADHD.

The developmental disorder, which affects between three and five per cent of adults, affects how the brain develops and functions, causing problems with concentration, emotional regulation and impulse. 

Studies show a 20-fold rise in diagnoses over the last 25 years. 

Experts have recently questioned the accuracy of such diagnoses, claiming private clinics with ‘less qualified’ staff are mistaking other emotional problems for the disorder. 

Tess was diagnosed three years ago by a psychiatrist at a private Manchester clinic. She sought an assessment after learning more about ADHD and recognising signs in herself.

‘I began to look differently at my impulsivity, the intensity, the emotional dysregulation, the need for stimulation and the way I could become completely consumed by a feeling, a person or an idea.

‘There was a shift from, “What is wrong with me?” to “What has been happening for me – and what do I need to work with this differently?”

‘Once I understood my brain better, I could start building a life that worked with it rather than constantly fighting against it.

‘That doesn’t mean ADHD explains everything that happened to me – it doesn’t. But understanding it gave me another piece of the puzzle.’