Is drinking a bottle of wine four nights a week a problem?

It meets the criteria for binge drinking 4 times a week so it's not great.
I would have thought you would be alcohol dependent/addict if you were doing that for months on end.

Can you go a dry week or month with no problems or do you get cravings & withdrawal.

It will be harming your liver & increasing the chances of cancer. Some people drink like that for decades & don't die from it but others are unlucky & get seriously ill after only a few months

@Dersnannienowi think you’ll know yourself if you have a problem, even if you don’t want to admit it to anyone else. I was drinking more than this and kidded myself that I was functioning just fine at work, at home, looking after my family etc. but deep down I knew I had a problem. I’ve not had a drink now for over 2 weeks and I feel like a different person. I’m so much more productive at work and at home, and I realise that I wasn’t actually functioning very well before.

Take a break from the alcohol and see if you feel any different.

Agree. Alcohol is an addictive substance that causes alcoholism which is a progressive disease - doesnt really matter if you minimise and call it heavy drinking rather than full blown alcoholism - because day in day out the toxin is systematically eroding your neurological and physical health. It’s not biologically possible to be healthy after many years of heavy drinking.

Even if you stuck with your personally described number of ‘heavy drinking’ units this would still continue to negatively erode your mental and physical health because it’s a progressive disease.

Yes that is a lot. Why don’t you stop completely for a couple of months and see if you have a problem with stopping? You will feel so much better after about 2 weeks, that I’m sure you will think twice about going back to that level of alcohol as it impacts sleep and the ability of the body to rest and restore itself.

Someone close to you has had to work up the courage to approach you about this.

That means people close to you have noticed and are worried about the amount you drunk. Those people may have aginised over how and when to speak to you.

The fact that they have done so should add real weight to your thinking on this.

Yes, it's a lot. And if you're drinking that much easily, it indicates your body has adapted to it.
Someone who isn't used to alcohol would be very drunk after an entire bottle of wine. That's the baseline.
Drinkers tend to shift their natural baseline, both physically and psychologically so that one glass of wine shifts to a bottle. They're not falling down drunk so it feels okay but the damage is still being done.

That’s an awful amount of alcohol. How do you function the following day?

The problem is you ard doing it 'to relax'. That's not a healthy way of coping with stress.

If you are driving to work in the morning as well, there is a chance it may also be criminal behaviour.

OP

try a lower ABV.
There are loads but New Zealand, Marlborough do a Sauvignon at 6% ABV
Lower in calories too. So it's approximately half the alcohol of a regular bottle.

Stick to a couple of glasses of lower alcohol and you will feel so much better for it.

Four bottles of wine a week s a lot for one person. Are you driving the morning after?

I'd be worried if a friend had to drink that much. It's a lot of money literally pissed away, too.

There is no question here, drinking 4 full bottles of wine a week is a problem.

Way above the recommended limits and just asking for health issues.

I wouldn’t say it’s a problem providing you can go without it and other elements of your life aren’t suffering. Is it good for you? No. It’s close to 40 units and the nhs recommended no more than 14 units per week. I can easily polish off three bottles of wine Thursday-Sunday because half a bottle is only two glasses. But I can go without it if I’ve got other stuff on. I just enjoy it, it’s a vice of mine and I’m working on cutting back.

I think the fact you have asked on here if others would see it as a problem kind of answers your question and maybe somewhere subconsciously you feel it's a problem too....... I get it and I went through a period where I was drinking more than I should have but like you I still functioned "normally" worked a pressured job full time and had everything sorted....... until I stopped and I realised that I wasn't fully functioning as I wasn't sleeping right, I was snappy, tired, anxious. Now I only drink on occasional weekends and special occasions I have found other outlets to help me relax and switch off. Good Luck OP whichever way this goes for you

I don't understand which option to vote for.

I think that's too much alcohol and would wonder why you are so stressed.

I think that is a humongous problem. You are an alcoholic if you can't cut this right down.

I would also add that you will get a lot of extreme comments here op because MN is generally very anti alcohol. I don’t think it’s helpful to label you an alcoholic because imo addiction is complicated and isn’t just a case of someone having too much of something. It’s a need that has to be quelled often at the expense of other areas of life. That’s just my view. From a health perspective though it isn’t great. I’d work on cutting back. In lockdown I could easily drink a bottle of wine per night but now that would be way too much for me. Gradually reduce for the benefit of your health.

It’s hard believe you think drinking a whole bottle of wine 4 times a week isn’t a problem?

It is to the close person in her life who knows this and has raised it with her

so therefore it is a problem on that level at the very least

Are you driving @Dersnannienow . Generally, the standard liver can only process one unit of alcohol per hour on a good day. Women often take longer than men, especially if they are slight in frame. Unless you start drinking at 6pm and drink the whole bottle in one, you could well have alcohol in your system the next morning. Basically, if you haven't finished drinking by 9pm, you will have alcohol in your system at 8am the next morning.

You wouldn't be asking if you were confident it wasn't a problem. There will be lots of people doing the same as you who will normalise it. It’s not relaxing you, it’s an addiction. If you were sitting down and eating a 4 pack of mars bars to relax and doing it four nights a week, you’d think you had an addiction to mars bars. It’s the same for wine.

Could you/do you ever stop and not drink four bottles a week?

My mental health would be in the gutter if I drank that much

A bottle in one evening is a lot. To drink that amount 4 nights a week, that is tons. It's far too much to drink on a regular basis.

Some weeks I do the same. I think it's a problem. For me, it's the bad sleep I get as a result of drinking and all the carbs i eat to go with it. I don't think i'm addicted, but I also do think it's a crutch that I lean on and a reward I give myself when i've had a hard day or a long day or a busy day. I didn't drink for ten days recently and felt amazing, so i'm trying to do that more. But the bottom line is, I love a glass of wine.

If it's me, aged 26, going to the pub 4 schoolnights a week and having a whale of a time, ringing in sick a lot, spending all her wages in Topshop, ehhhh it's fine for a short period, she'll grow out of it.

If it's a proper adult, it is too much yeah.