A crusader against drink driving faces a £650 court bill and is scarred for life after she got behind the wheel while two-and-a-half times over the limit.

The journey home from the pub in a Peugeot 106 turned into the worst drive of her life for Gillian Claire Standing, 27.

York magistrates heard that the psychiatric nurse who helps others give up alcohol crashed into a lamppost and wrote off her car.

Her back and head were so badly injured she spent three days in hospital and will be permanently scarred. Nearly five months after the disastrous journey, Standing, of Woodlands Place, Willow Bank, New Earswick, pleaded guilty to drink driving.

Magistrates fined her £600 with £50 costs and banned her from driving for two years.

Prosecutor Colette Dixon said Standing's car crashed into a lamppost on Haxby Road and spun off the road into a small wooded area on June 23.

When police arrived at 11.20pm, Standing was sitting injured on the grass verge near it.

A blood sample taken at York District Hospital revealed she had 207 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80.

Damien Morrison, for Standing, said: "Gillian Standing is a crusader against drink driving."

She works with helping others get off drugs and alcohol dependency and knew the impact they could have on peoples' lives.

"Being part of the NHS, she has placed an unnecessary drain on the service which, if she had taken care and acted responsibly would never have happened.

"She is not very keen to get back in a vehicle and in fact has not driven since then."

On June 23, she had been with her boyfriend to a pub and they had agreed that either they would get a taxi home or he would not drink.

But because he had been working nights, he was "fractious" and they had an argument.

He threw the car keys at her and stormed out of the pub.

She took the decision, she since bitterly regretted, to drive the two or three miles home.

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