A JUNIOR doctor who was arrested twice for drink-driving has told a court the ‘stress’ of studying drove her to the bottle.

Dr Lauren Fowler was barely able to speak when police found her slumped over the steering wheel after she had crashed her car, magistrates heard.

Following a boozy lunch with pals, she had bought another bottle of wine from an off-licence. It was found empty in the footwell of her Ford Ka following the crash, a court heard.

The smash in Manchester last October came days after Fowler graduated from Imperial College in London with a medicine degree.

Two months later, while on bail, the 25-year-old was arrested after driving her vehicle into another car parked outside a hotel near her family’s home in Styal, Cheshire, magistrates heard.

She had drunk half a bottle of vodka. A breath test showed she was more than three times over the limit. Once again, officers found an empty bottle of wine in her car, said prosecutor Joseph O’Connor.

Fowler, who also studied at Clare College, Cambridge, admitted drink-driving and failing to provide a breath specimen at Stockport magistrates’ court yesterday, Her solicitor, Helen Turner, said she had given up alcohol and was facing a disciplinary investigation by the General Medical Council over her conduct.

‘She has an addictive behaviour, she admits this — she has a very stressful lifetime. She has made a hill for herself to climb and I can only ask that you don’t make this a mountain,’ she said.

Fowler wept as she was handed an eight-week jail sentence, suspended for a year, and a three-year driving ban. She was also ordered to complete 40 hours of unpaid work and pay £200 in court costs.

A road safety campaigner criticised the sentence. Hunter Abbott, who runs consumer breathalyser firm AlcoSense, said: ‘She’s exceptionally lucky that she’s not caused damage to anything other than property.

‘They’ve recognised she has an alcohol problem and she’s been extremely fortunate in receiving a suspended sentence and only having to pay court costs, avoiding a fine.’