How much do you drink? Honestly!

Just been reading on another thread about what people do and don't do which others would find unusual and a LOT of the posts include people saying they don't drink alcohol which I find insane as pretty much everyone I know drinks to some degree!

I don't see what is insane about the fact everyone you know drinks alcohol but people on MN threads saying they don't drink at all.

When I was 18 I discovered alcohol helped me overcome my extreme shyness .
So when I went to live in another city as a student I mixed with the drinkers. And I mean heavy drinkers who dropped out from their courses because of alcohol . And drugs in some cases. Drinking alcohol was very much the norm.
I very stupidly married one of the drinking drop outs and we moved to his home city amd continued to mix with heavy drinkers where drinking was the norm.
When I realised I was going to end up dead sooner rather than later I left not only my H but also the crowd of friends we had.
And I chose to mix with people with healthier attitudes to alcohol. Some of them drink and some don't.

My point being you obviously mix with people for whom alcohol consumption is seen as normal. But there are many social groups where people don't necessarily drink and there is no onus on them to do so.

One bottle of wine and a few beers per week. Weekend only. No midweek drinking here. I used to. But I stopped. By Wednesday/Thursday I'm usually gagging for a huge glass of wine but I don't.
I save it for the weekend.

Rarely. I think I had half a pint of lager about 3 weeks ago. Prior to that probably a good few weeks. Since I'm now two weeks into a medication that makes me drowsy I can't drink at all.

I drink so little because I no longer tolerate the feeling it gives me. Even small amounts can make me feel incredibly anxious and makes me feel out of control. It's not a feeling I've had in years gone by. I quite like trying 0% stuff if out and I am working my way through nice sodas and the like at home.

DH only drinks at weekends, no idea how much. He buys his own alcohol and that's his choice and doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't think he gets rat arsed though and sometimes will switch between 0% and alcohol throughout the evening. In our early years together we used to drink most nights and I dread to think what it worked out as over the week. We cut it back to just weekends and we are where we are now.

I believe alcohol has been classified as a carcinogen now, which is enough to put me off.

I haven’t touched a drop in about seventeen years, alcohol does nothing for me.

I generally don't drink. Maybe a glass of gin or two every three or four months and thats about it.

I don't really get why people go through bottles of wine. I don't have time to sit and drink as i always seem to be up to something at night.

None, it doesn’t interest me any more really

I agree with all of this. Some people say food is addictive (unsurprising with all the salt and sugar) and that’s why so many people are overweight, because the food is addictive. I hear phrases like food noise and that they can’t help it.

I knew an alcoholic who was skin and bone (assuming he barely ate) so he wasn’t addicted to food but was susceptible to alcohol. Given that over half the population are overweight, I wonder if that’s addiction in the same way as alcohol.

@preparingforthepileon. This is also a reply to your post.

I meant that I don’t get enough out of it to warrant it becoming a habit (if that makes sense). I have to kind of enjoy something a lot to want to keep repeating it and I don’t seem to get the enjoyment out of drink that others do. That’s all I meant.

It'll go straight to your head now, after a break! Cheaper now at least, lol.

The calculation is: units = volume (cl) x strength (%)/ 1000
Yes wine is quite a bit stronger generally than it was years ago, 13.5% used to be a strong red now it's more average, a light white might be 6 units. Having the calculation is useful as wine and beer can both have a huge range of alcohol %. The strength of some beers and the fact it is often drunk in pints really adds up. The 'just had a few beers' can be very misleading in units.

In a previous post I mentioned that health survey data accounts for 60% of the alcohol purchased, so unless people are buying booze and pouring it away, we can assume that over the population, people under-report by 40%.

Having said that, people who drink very little probably don't under-report so it's probably skewed such that the heavy drinkers under-report by more than that!

I drank half a glass of champagne at a celebration lunch about 6 months ago. The time before that would have been New Year’s Eve 2023 I think. I like the taste of some drinks, but I’d always rather have the calories as food. I live rurally, I have teenagers and an elderly mother, so I know I’ve always got to be fit to drive.

Same, actually.

Am afraid am boring, I don't drink at all, not done in years. My job stopped me, getting up at 4.30am isn't doable when had a few the night before, nor probably legal to get behind the wheel. From being a right lush in my 20's, I actually dislike the feeling now on the rare occasion I'll try and drink a drink that I don't bother at all now. Cuppa trumps every time!

OP - I’m mid 40s and drink exactly the same as you. Around 3 bottles of wine in total at the weekend. With food and pints of water over the course of a few hours so get tipsy but not drunk.

I fully admit that I could and did easily consume a bottle of wine a night in my youth/30s.

But as you can see on this thread, as you get older it's shocking how things change and your body cant handle it any more. I am now mid 40s and had to give up drinking completely because it just makes me feel so awful, its like a switch flipped and whereas alcohol used to make me feel energised, bubbly and happy, it started to make me feel exhausted, emotional, and super anxious to the point of panic attacks.

My mental health is so much better since I gave it up.

I don’t. Maybe every 3 or so months I might have a small glass of something. I haven’t had a drink since July. At Christmas I’ll have a baileys maybe a few times over the festive period.
I just don’t really see the fascination of drinking.

I drink very little now, probably only a glass or two a month. I used to drink much more frequently, although not a lot at once, but when I turned 50 I suddenly stopped fancying it.

No I have friends that are going through menopause and drinking doesnt effect them for me its really bad hangovers to the point I can not function.
Interestingly my feiends who are super fit like really fit seem to be the ones who can drink more. I think their bodies are processing the alcohol more efficiently.

I hardly ever drink - just the occasional one when out for a meal. But that’s mostly because I am one of those people who have histamine issues with alcohol and get really hot and flushed from even half a glass of wine, so it’s not a fun experience.

I have a different issue - I drink several Red Bulls most days (no sugar version), because I love the caffeine hit. I know they are supposed to be really bad for health, but I can’t seem to stop. 🤦‍♀️

Honestly the only time I drink is to make other people who DO enjoy drinking feel more comfortable. That’s actually mad when I type it out.
I used to drink more when I was younger/ going out more but even then I didn’t really enjoy it.
Now I quite like the odd glass of red wine but could honestly take or leave alcohol. When it’s just me and DH we don’t bother.
Most of our friends drink more than us and assume that we drink like they do because we will open a bottle when they come over to be sociable.
But honestly I think a number of them have got a bit of an unacknowledged alcohol problem.
Growing up my mum was checked out drinking wine in front of the TV most nights, she wasn’t awful or abusive and if I really need her she’d have tried to be there for me, but that is my enduring memory of her from that time. We are not close now. I don’t want that for my kids.

Luckily for me I don't enjoy drinking alcohol mostly.Sometimes I manage with food about a glass of wine.I hate feeling dizzy and getting a headache , so barely at all. Also has got worse with age.It seems to run in my family people who find it hard to drink
I am addicted to sugar though doing better now, had to be very strong, to cut down.So sympathies for those who like a drink.