I drank so much white wine it gave me cancer. This is exactly how boozing puts you at risk of nearly 40 different types of the disease… and how I finally went sober WITHOUT medication

Hélène Poole had it all – or at least, it seemed that way.

Balancing a high-powered career in management consulting with raising her three sons, she spent her 30s and 40s in a glamourous whirl of international travel, long lunches with clients and sophisticated industry parties.

But beneath the successful veneer, Hélène was struggling with a heavy, suffocating burden: a debilitating drinking problem.

Despite thriving at work, she regularly found herself knocking back ten bottles of wine a week – more than six times the recommended weekly limit for women.

Alcohol was practically part of her job description. Boozy lunches would lead into post-work cocktails, which were then followed by a late-night wine bar.

‘I was drinking from Monday to Friday. And though I’d spent the weekend sobering up, I’d be back to it again the following week,’ says Hélène.

It wasn’t until she stepped back from her career in her 40s, moving to France with her children and husband Richard, that the cracks began to appear, however.

With less of an opportunity to drink during the week, Hélène would instead spend her weekends binging, as a way to let off steam.

Lunches and BBQs with friends would see Hélène regularly reaching a point where she was slurring her words, repeating herself and tumbling over her own feet.

‘In the moment, I found it hilarious,’ she explained. ‘But I would wake up the next morning mortified – having embarrassed myself, and my family.

‘I thought because I only was drinking white wine or champagne, and usually only at lunch or dinner – never in the mornings, or behind my family’s back – that I didn’t have a problem. But it was all adding up.’

Then Hélène, 55, was diagnosed with cancer, which she believes was linked to her excessive drinking over so many decades.

But, shockingly, neither the terrifying diagnosis – nor the brutal treatment that followed – proved enough to convince her to quit.

In fact, Hélène’s life-saving chemotherapy had to be delayed for months after she broke her arm falling over blind drunk while taking the bins out.

Then came the real reckoning. On family holiday in Portugal, Hélène found herself blacking out at dinner, unable to remember what she’d eaten or said, at just 8pm.

‘I knew I needed to make a change,’ she says. ‘So that September, I decided to enrol in online sober coaching. I threw out every bottle of alcohol in my house. And for months, it was agony.’

‘But eventually, I got there. And it’s changed my life.’

Three years on, Hélène’s life is almost unrecognisable. She and her family have relocated to Switzerland, Richard is retired and Hélène has built a successful business as a sober coach, helping others find their own path to freedom.

‘The positives are endless. My sleep is wonderful, my under eyes are no longer puffy, and at 58, I look younger than I did a decade ago,’ she explains.

‘Best of all, my relationships are entirely transformed. My boys, who are now 16, 20, and 22, are so proud of me.

‘Occasionally, a slight sense of missing out still returns when I watch others drink, but I reconcile it instantly by remembering what happened every single time I took a sip. “Playing the tape forwards” is a very powerful tool to remind yourself where that one glass can take you.’

Hélène is hardly alone. Rather, experts say she’s part of a growing number of midlife women who have a problem with alcohol.

While younger adults are drinking less than previous generations, the proportion of women aged 45 to 64 who consume ‘hazardous’ amounts – regularly drinking more than 14 units a week – has remained steady.

And the number of women aged 55 to 64 in this at-risk category has seen the sharpest rise – 14 per cent, or around 1.2 million women, now drink at this level compared to nearly 8 per cent in 2000, according to NHS data.

This has been linked to menopause, midlife stress and changes such as children leaving home, divorce and reduced social networks.

And it can lead to devastating health problems, as well as damaging relationships with friends and family members.

Consuming any alcohol at all can raise the risk of nearly 40 different cancers – with heavy drinking, like Hélène’s, spiking the chance of some cancers by more than 400 per cent.

And regularly drinking more than the health service’s recommended 14 units a week – roughly a bottle and a half of wine – can cause debilitating long-term heart, hormonal and metabolic problems as well, research has shown.

For Hélène, her relationship with alcohol began in her mid-teens.

Growing up in Sheffield to a French mother and English father, she began drinking with school friends at 16.

‘At the time, it felt completely magical,’ she says. ‘It was social, exciting, and it bonded us all together. It made me feel funnier, smarter, and more attractive.’

Alcohol served a similar role throughout Hélène’s twenties, as she climbed the corporate ladder in London.

Drinking, she said, became almost a core part of her professional identity – with her ability to drink heavily after a long day of work and still perform at a high level the next morning feeling like a badge of honour.

It wasn’t until her mid-forties that she noticed a shift. Her daily glass – or bottle – of wine became less about celebrating and more a way to let off steam, a cure-all after a hard day running a home and solo parenting three young boys when her husband was travelling.

‘By the late afternoon, I would pour a glass of wine while cooking dinner, promising myself I wouldn’t cross an imaginary line halfway down the bottle. But I crossed it most nights,’ says Hélène.

By her early 50s, Hélène was living under a strict system of self-imposed rules, trying to limit herself to five bottles of wine a week – around 50 units, already far beyond the recommended weekly limit.

‘It was a time of complete misery,’ she said.

While she was largely able to limit her consumption during the week, Hélène let her hair down on the weekends – regularly binge drinking at barbeques, lunches and dinners with friends.

‘It became really messy – I would be slurring my words, repeating the same questions 20 times, tripping over my own feet, or breaking things,’ she said.

‘I was embarrassing myself and my family. And while my husband would gently suggest that I had had enough, I didn’t want to hear him. I just wanted to drink.

‘In the past, when everyone else around me was also pissed, we would do silly things like that and it would be funny. But when you’re the only one who’s that drunk, no one is laughing. And if they are, it’s at you, not with you.’

As Hélène got older, entering the menopause, her tolerance went down. Just three or four glasses of wine could get her as intoxicated as a bottle used to – and with a much fiercer hangover. But she kept drinking – usually knocking back around five to six bottles a week.

Then, last year, Hélène noticed a strange lump in her neck. Her GP immediately referred her for a scan, and, a few weeks later, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

‘I had known, for years, that drinking raised my risk of breast cancer,’ says Hélène. ‘I was terrified of the disease – and constantly getting checks done, congratulating myself, each time I was given the all-clear, that I had escaped it once more. But my thyroid cancer diagnosis still came as a massive shock.’

The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland at the front of the neck that helps control metabolism, growth and other vital bodily functions. Like breast cancer, thyroid cancer has also been linked to heavy alcohol consumption.

The shock quickly wore off for Hélène, however.

In November 2022, just before her emergency surgery, she went on a planned trip to Ibiza with girlfriends, treating it like her final, wild party. Right after, she went to South Africa with her family and literally drank her way through the vineyards.

And on New Year’s Eve, having polished off a bottle of wine, Hélène fell in the dark while taking the bins out and broke her arm so badly that her chemotherapy had to be postponed until March.

She was disturbed by the way that alcohol got in the way of her life-saving cancer treatment. But it took another six months for Hélène to finally decide enough was enough.

On a family holiday in Portugal, she found herself blacking out at dinner – unable to remember what she’d said or done or even eaten.

‘That September, I said I was done,’ she says.

Consulting her doctor first, to ensure she wouldn’t suffer physical withdrawals, Hélène signed up for one-to-one online coaching.

‘We did ten intensive sessions, speaking two to three times a week at the start,’ she says.

‘It was a day-by-day battle to not give in to the cravings. I listened to two sober podcasts a day, read endless literature, and soon after joined an online community called Tribe Sober which was a life saver.’

The treatment required Hélène to throw out all the champagne and white wine from the house, and her husband had to switch to drinking beer and whiskey.

Christmas was torturous, she said, as was a family ski trip in the new year. But she persevered.

Today, it’s been three years since her last glass of wine – and Hélène has begun her own business as a sober coach, to help others achieve the same transformation.

‘What finally shifted everything for me was finding clarity rather than shame,’ she says.

‘The moment I decided to stop negotiating and step fully into a different way of living, the mental noise completely quieted down.

‘You don’t have to struggle on your own. There are many of us out there who speak your language and just get it. Give 1-to-1 sober coaching a go. It transformed my life and it was the best investment and gift of self-care I made to myself succeeding at sobriety at the first attempt.’