Drinking wine each evening

I am a doctor who works with cancer patients. It’s one of the biggest risk factors for cancer and many seem oblivious until they have a diagnosis.

The NHS drinking advice is 14 units (for women and men now) but is not a “safe”level. There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol only a “lower risk” level. They are just trying to minimise impact knowing most will not stop drinking alcohol.
Just because we normalise it in our society doesn’t make it okay. It’s personal choice of course as to what risk you take but we should stop normalising and even congratulating high alcohol consumption.

When I was a junior dr in A&E many of the presentations on an evening or weekend were actually middle aged adults with problems secondary to their alcohol consumption - the normalised “moderate” daily or regular drinking not the type that’s renowned for taking up A&E time - for example atrial fibrillation (type of heart rhythm disturbance) in the 50 year old drinking 2 glasses a night, or severe heartburn in a 48 year old needing a work up in case it’s a heart attack.

While liver damage is commonly touted, and of course is a concern, fewer people are aware of the impact of “moderate” drinking on mental health (changes brain chemistry as it’s a depressant - literally acting on brain pathways in opposite ways to antidepressant medication), cancer risk and dementia risk to name a few.

While some European countries may have less alcohol related disorder due to the drinking culture that isn’t to say their breast or bowel cancer rates, or dementia rates, or liver disease rates etc are lower than the UKs.

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/alcohol-and-cancer/how-does-alcohol-cause-cancer

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-risk-of-dementia/reduce-your-risk-of-dementia/alcohol

And for those touting positive health benefits of alcohol - unless it’s a doctor who’s stuck in their ways from the 60s - you’ll be hard pressed to find medical opinion now that alcohol has benefits. Any small benefits of red wine is massively outweighed by the now know risks. And yes I do know that doctors are some of the worst drinkers - habit and addiction and societal normalisation affects all! That’s all I can say.

@Mamabear2424 I commend you for attempting now to have 2 nights off a week. Try if you can to also gradually reduce your consumption across the nights you are drinking. Both these things together will make a big difference to your health.

High levels of alcohol consumption don't seem to be working out that well for the French....

https://movendi.ngo/news/2021/06/08/understanding-frances-alcohol-burden-high-alcohol-mortality-requires-urgent-action/

You know you are drinking too much. Can you go without alcohol for a week, how do feel when you think about that? As someone who was alcohol dependent, i would say you need to stop a.s.a.p. And by the way, your liver will not be healthy at all, so don't kid yourself.

Exactly, they might look unremarkable but have abnormal blood tests results. Have you had blood tests recently OP? Had your liver checked?

Don't the French have very high rates of alcohol-related illness? In what way do you think they seem "ok"?

Agree with @PrinciSalt

MN is a strange place, with lots of people drinking to excess, yet no desire to cut down and attempting to reassure OP that drinking almost twice the NHS recommended limit is totally fine

Canadian guidance now recommends no more than two alcoholic drinks per week https://www.ccsa.ca/canadas-guidance-alcohol-and-health

Millions of people do things like have a kebab every day or down cans of monster or red bull every day and are still here so why not. You only live once and wine is better than all of those ask the French

just read that you drink 2.5 bottles a week, that’s 10 bottles a month, 120 bottles a year - looking at it like that it looks a lot of wine to me and surely a negative to good health

I've just caught up with all the OP's posts.

This jumped out at me:

Life just seems a bit boring and less sparkle without wine

And the fact that she is going to try to cut down not drinking and work up to 3 nights a week.

This to me suggests that alcohol is far more of a crutch for her than she perhaps realises.

Use looking forward to a glass of wine on a friday and/or Saturday night as your "sparkle." If you need it more days than not for "sparkle" and cutting down has to be done gradually and reluctantly, you really are overly reliant on alcohol.

Yes. And people conflate ‘everyone does it, it’s normal, look at people in France’ with ‘it’s ok’.

Just because everyone is doing something, that does not mean it’s the right thing to do. That’s what we tell our kids isn’t it?

As we can see on this thread, many drinkers want other people to drink too. Like when people are overweight, they find it difficult when their friends are on a diet and tell them that they are perfectly fine and don’t need to lose weight.

People who drink as much or more than the OP are telling her that it’s absolutely fine and she should keep going because anyone saying to the contrary is being uptight. They feel uncomfortable and don’t want to look at their own intake as a problem.

OP take advice from objective medical sources. Not fellow drinkers on Mumsnet.

Alcohol is a confirmed risk factor for cancer. I have young adult kids who drink with their peers, and they don’t understand the implications or care. I hope they will when they mature further.

I am sorry you are going through this. The problems with blood tests is that the liver can carry on functioning until there is only around 10% left. And then it can suddenly get damaged beyond repair and the bloods go haywire when it’s too late.

i hope you can get some meds to ease the pain and numbness a little. That sounds awful xx

I think, that if you are overthinking you’re drinking enough to ask, that you know that it’s not ok and looking for people to tell you it is. Give your liver a day or two off, your body will thank you.

Agreed. I think there have been studies that have found the middle classes to be at higher risk of dangerous drinking, haven't there? Excessive consumption is often normalised so people don't realise that they have a problem until it's too late. Like poor @JanglingJack who has shared her story above.

2 1/2 bottles a week, especially every week is too much in my opinion.

We know alcohol is bad for our livers. You won't know about long term damage being done until it is symptomatic, (although I guess you could pay for a private liver panel blood test every 6 months or so). I had liver damage (from covid) - trust me you do not want to make your liver upset with you!

I'd limit it to a bottle a week. Get in the habit of pouring a healthier drink every evening, and keep your glass of wine for a Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening.

@JanglingJack really sorry to hear about your condition. Nobody should judge you for it having been "self inflicted" btw. Pretty much half the population regularly drinks more than they should as this thread has shown. It's so normalised in society that most people close their mind to the fact that it is a very dangerous drug. It's been shown that if alcohol was developed today it would immediately be banned and considered class a. But it's everywhere. I used to drink way too much as well but as far as I know I've got lucky. I even continued binge drinking after watching my mum die if liver disease (which by the way is an absolutely brutal, horrendous way to go) because it's just something that happens to other people. I only really started moderation after meeting DH because he rarely drinks - which was a revelation to me. Drinking every day was just "normal" and I think that's because my parents are/ were both alcoholic. Id caution parents against regular drinking in front of kids if you don't want them to do the same.
Anyway I wish you well and hope your condition doesn't get any worse.

I suspect there are a few on this thread who have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

Personally, I think that the fact the OP even asked the question is probably enough to indicate that, deep down, she is questioning whether or not there is a problem. The fact that her DH links it so readily to her mental health is also quite telling. People without a drink problem don't need alcohol to stay happy or mentally healthy. In any case, alcohol is well known to be a depressant.

Yep. There is some strange kind of snobbery hierarchy with drinking. If you have a good job and drink posh wine, that’s ok. Apparently. The denial is strong.

The little voice in your head is telling you it's not fine so trying a night or two off is a good plan. It's not great long term even if you feel 'healthy' now. It's well over the 14 recommended units.

I'm no better because I 'binge' my recommended units on the weekend. Flat wine also now makes me feel like crap (I'm 53) but fizzy wine not so much. That's my vice.

Good luck on trying a wine free night or two.

There is a huge amount of denial about drinking in this country. Often from the middle-class middle-aged women demographic who think because they are drinking ‘good’ wine with dinner, they are ok…

No I don't think that's healthy. Try one glass each evening, if that's too difficult then have glasses Friday and Saturdays.

What qualifications do you have that make you a better judge of what's healthy than the NHS/medical experts? I'm curious to know what your judgement that it's a non-issue is based on. Have you carried out extensive research into this issue, and if so, where is this published?

I would feel drunk and then hungover the next day after 2 glasses of wine!

Sounds like you just do it out of habit but ask yourself: if you didn’t have your glass of wine tonight and tomorrow, how would you feel? If you feel upset or like you couldn’t do it, that’s a problem. 2.5 bottles a week is quite a lot really!