Emily Carter-Lucas, 22, of Hereford, spends £100 a week on booze and is known to get in fights with strangers on nights out

At first glance, she is the sort of daughter every parent would dream of. An accomplished musician, with a degree in contemporary arts, Emily Carter-Lucas is naturally bright.

Indeed, her teaching assistant mother and civil servant father were overjoyed when she achieved a string of As and A*s in her GCSEs and A-levels. She positively thrived in her grammar school - and looked set to go onto great things.

So why then, before the clock has even struck 10pm on a Saturday night, has Emily lost count of how many drinks she’s had?

Her second bottle of cheap rosé has already been polished off, and she has made a start on the tequila.

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Musician Emily Carter-Lucas (pictured), 22, of Hereford, will have had two bottles of cheap rosé and started on tequila by 10pm on a typical Saturday night

Despite being just 5ft tall, the attractive brunette will knock back at least ten shots of this 40 per cent strength spirit.

Often, in a state of obnoxious inebriation, she will then get into a furious altercation with a stranger over some perceived slight.

After staggering home, she’ll have a ‘nightcap’ of Baileys or two before throwing up and falling into bed.

The next day, the intelligent and animated 22-year-old, who loves literature and music, will have one hell of a hangover. And the detail of what has happened to her will be all but a blur.

And sadly, it is, she admits, all too usual for her to binge ‘to the point where I forget’.

Indeed, Emily, who lives in Hereford, has a night like this at least once every week. It’s a vast amount of alcohol for anyone, let alone a young woman, to consume.

But Emily is far from alone in her relentless quest to get blind drunk. Tens of thousands of other bright young women across the country also regularly drink frightening amounts of alcohol.

Despite being just 5ft tall, the attractive brunette will knock back at least ten shots of this 40 per cent strength spirit and get into an altercation with a stranger during a night out

Just this weekend, a Bank Holiday and also London’s annual Notting Hill Carnival, images of drunken young girls, lying prostrate on pavements, were as widespread as piles of litter and pools of vomit. In fact, they were rarely granted a second glance by passers-by.

The statistics revealing the depths of young British women’s abuse of alcohol are deeply concerning. Guidelines recommend you should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week - around six medium-sized glasses of wine.

Yet research has shown one in five British women exceed this and, according to the World Health Organisation, there are more women in the UK with an alcohol problem than those without - some 55 per cent.

More than this, over the past 20 years, the number of alcohol-related deaths every year among women has increased by 80 per cent - from 1,334 in 1994 to 2,838 today.

And of these, one of the biggest increases was in women supposedly in the prime of their lives, those aged 20 to 34, with a rise of 130 per cent.

Abigail Jones (pictured), 23, of London, who is pursuing a PR career, can easily have a bottle of wine and ten drinks on a big night out

Why? The reasons are diverse and complex. Young middle-class women are more likely to go to university than ever before where, as one psychiatrist told the Mail, ‘there is an institutional acceptance of binge drinking’.

Bad habits then become engrained as aspirational women pursue careers, delay children, become stressed and overworked - and self-medicate with alcohol.

As well as all this, for each of the young women I interviewed, a common theme was how booze-fuelled excess is the ultimate marker of a good night.

I’ve put on quite a lot of weight - 2st this year - and I’ve gone from a size eight to a 14. I hurt myself quite a lot when I’m drunk. I get in fights a fair bit, too. I always regret it because I’m not that kind of person

In Emily’s case, she spends around £100 a week on alcohol and drinks an average of 75 units - a staggering 5,300 calories, the same as eating 18 burgers.

The dangers of binge drinking are well documented. In addition to liver failure it can damage fertility, while increasing the risk of heart disease and cancer, with around six per cent of breast cancer cases in the UK linked to alcohol.

For women, the toxic effects of booze show up much more quickly than men, who have lower body fat and higher levels of water, which dilutes alcohol.

Women’s livers also produce less of the substance that the body uses to break alcohol down (an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase). This means women not only get drunk quicker, but the effects last longer.

In addition to health risks, drinking to oblivion also leaves women more susceptible to injury and sexual assault.

The daughter of a property developer father and a teacher mother, she grew up in a home where, as in so many middle-class families, there was a relaxed attitude to alcohol

Last month, 52-year-old Edward Tenniswood was jailed for at least 30 years for the rape and murder of Northamptonshire student and doctor’s daughter India Chipchase, 20.

The court heard he took advantage of her drunken and vulnerable state after she downed six Jagerbombs (Red Bull mixed with Jagermeister liquor) in just ten minutes in a nightclub.

Another case saw 19-year-old Jamie Leppard from Wainscott, Kent, sentenced to eight years youth custody for raping a ‘lifeless’ 18-year-old girl at her birthday party. She had passed out after drinking ‘everything from vodka, Malibu, Bacardi to beer and wine’.

Last month, an inquest heard how the promising future of biomedical sciences student Caroline Everest, 18, was extinguished after she drank up to 30 shots of vodka in a nightclub in November last year.

She was discovered in a river two days later having died as a result of hypothermia.

While, officially, men are still more likely to consume higher amounts of alcohol, a major problem in investigating the drinking habits of women is that they’re far less likely than their male counterparts to admit the true amount they consume.

Today, Abigail says she drinks five nights out of seven and spends between £150-£200 a week on booze

Emily, then, is speaking with a rare candour when she says: ‘I drink quite a lot. I’ve had three today already and it’s only 6.30pm. I have two or three drinks every day and then a lot at the weekend. I like to get drunk.’

Emily, who suffers from depression no doubt exacerbated by her heavy drinking, says the main reason she binges is because it relaxes her and makes her forget.

‘It does make me feel worse the next day, but it’s worth it. It’s also a social thing. It’s a big part of the community round here. There are five pubs within a ten-minute walk of where I live.

‘I feel really down if I don’t go out drinking because there is nothing else to do. I honestly don’t think I have got a problem though.’

But Emily, who earns £20,000-a-year as a manager at a cocktail bar, admits there are repercussions: ‘I’ve put on quite a lot of weight - 2st this year - and I’ve gone from a size eight to a 14. I hurt myself quite a lot when I’m drunk. I’m covered in scars, bruises and cuts. I get in fights a fair bit, too. I always regret it because I’m not that kind of person.’

Emeley McGuinn, 21, from Blackburn, Lancashire, says she has two glasses of red wine a night

There is no doubt that intelligent and educated young women are drinking in a way their mothers and certainly grandmothers would never have dreamed of. What’s more, it has become socially acceptable for them to do so.

‘There’s a popular misconception that those who are abusing alcohol, the drunken women we see across the country staggering out of clubs, are uneducated and working class,’ explains consultant psychiatrist and alcohol abuse specialist Dr Chris Kelly.

‘But alcohol abuse is across the social spectrum. There are as many, if not more, professional females who drink too much. I’ve treated lawyers, teachers and doctors.

‘Many universities have more women than men now. A lot of these women will end up becoming alcohol dependent.

‘In the past it would’ve been unheard of for women to get so drunk and so openly.

‘Intelligent women tend to have babies later in life, so they’re not tied down when they’re younger. They also have more choices and, with this, more stresses and responsibility. In a sociological sense, they have more things to juggle than perhaps at any other time.

Emeley consumes 30 units of alcohol a week, more than double the recommended amount

'I am seeing many women who have become dangerously tolerant to alcohol. As well as ultimately putting themselves in harm’s way, regular binge drinking causes mental health problems and feeds on buried feelings of depression.’

The number of women in their 20s with alcohol-related liver damage is also on the increase. In Norfolk, hospital consultant Dr Martin Phillips warned four years ago he had seen a 65 per cent increase since 2008.

He said at the time: ‘It’s a common misconception that women can “handle” their alcohol intake just as well as men. However, it’s simply not true.’

Another contributing factor in the boom in alcohol abuse among middle-class women is the seductive marketing employed by the drinks industry to attract female consumers, including the advent of sweet drinks such as WKD and Smirnoff Ice.

‘Ultimately,’ Dr Kelly says, ‘people drink because it feels good. It is a nervous system suppressant. It depresses the higher sensors of the brain, the part that makes you feel stressed or anxious.

Research has shown one in five British women exceed the recommended alcohol guidelines and, according to the World Health Organisation, there are more women in the UK with an alcohol problem than those without - some 55 per cent

It’s the initial ‘buzz’ of the first few drinks which Emeley McGuinn, 21, says is behind her habitual and excessive drinking.

The former grammar school pupil, from Blackburn, Lancashire, is about to start university to train to become a teacher.

Yet she admits: ‘I drink two glasses of red wine every day. At the weekend I will easily have 12 drinks on a night out, such as gin and lemonade or Malibu and orange juice. A lot of the time these will be doubles.’

Emeley consumes 30 units of alcohol a week, more than double the recommended amount.

She can easily spend £100 on one night out, and on average £600 of the £1,000 she earns each month from part-time bar and modelling work goes on booze.

It depends on the night how much and what I drink, but if it’s a big night out, I can easily have at least ten drinks and a bottle of wine

Our interview was conducted on a Sunday morning - not long after Emeley had got in at 5.30am following a night of heavy drinking.

Yet despite the fact she has become a seasoned drinker, Emeley didn’t touch a drop of alcohol until she was 18, focusing on her school work instead. Fow now she doesn’t worry about how much she drinks - but insists she will cut back when her career as a teacher takes off.

Privately educated Abigail Jones, 23, who studied English Literature at the University of Manchester, has a burgeoning career in PR already well underway. But this has not curtailed her drinking.

The daughter of a property developer father and a teacher mother, she grew up in a home where, as in so many middle-class families, there was a relaxed attitude to alcohol. ‘I had wine with dinner from the age of 14,’ she says.

Over the past 20 years, the number of alcohol-related deaths every year among women has increased by 80 per cent - from 1,334 in 1994 to 2,838 today

Today, Abigail, who lives in London, says she drinks five nights out of seven and spends between £150-£200 a week on booze.

‘It depends on the night how much and what I drink, but if it’s a big night out, I can easily have at least ten drinks and a bottle of wine. It does seem like a lot but I don’t look at it that way because it’s so normal here. I want to make the most out of living in a city.’

There does seem to be an element of peer pressure to her drinking, and what she describes as a ‘fear of missing out’.

She adds: ‘Touch wood, nothing bad has happened to me yet but you do sometimes do things you wouldn’t do if you were sober, such as walk down streets on your own. I’m also starting to think I’m spending a lot of money and I haven’t got anything to show for it.’

One can’t help but be saddened that obliterating reality seems to be the highlight of the week for so many bright, young women.