Bottle of wine a night

[KangarooKenny]

My DH drinks a bottle of wine every night.
Very, very occasionally he will have another glass out of another bottle, or he will have a can of gin and tonic on a hot night in the summer.
He has been drinking like this for 20/30 years. When could you expect to see a physical consequence for it ?
He goes to the gym, his cholesterol is fine. I just don’t get how he is so well considering what he drinks.

My dad was like this and started showing signs of health damage age 60. But he was also over weight. He started showing signs of dementia which can be brought on by too much drinking and heart failure (again drinking). But this time we stopped his drinking, as he suddenly became dependent on my mom and could no longer do anything for himself so no more drinking for him. He sadly passed away aged 63 due to sepsis. He has gotten a UTI and my mom didn’t realise until it was too late. She was his caretaker and he couldn’t communicate something was wrong.

I would get a divorce as soon as you can OP or you'll end up looking after him

My uncle was like this. Nothing happened until suddenly his kidneys failed at the age of 48. He spent 5 weeks in hospital and is now waiting for a transplant but it was very touch and go for the first few weeks. I know your DH is older but I would worry about it and try to broach getting help.

There's some slightly misleadingly-phrased stuff being said about alcohol, depression and SSRIs.

Alcohol doesn't directly counteract the serotonin-increasing effects of SSRIs in a pharmacological sense, and the phrase "alcohol is a depressant" refers to the fact that it's a central nervous system depressant, not that it makes you feel depressed (though in some people it can make them feel low in the short term, and it can obviously cause misery in the long term).

Neither of these is to say that alcohol can't have a detrimental effect on mental health — obviously it can. If you struggle enough with your mood that you need antidepressants, then it's a bad idea to drink a lot, and the drink might be making you worse to a greater extent than the SSRIs can possibly make you better. And alcohol and SSRIs can interact to make the side effects of both worse.

I know this seems nitpicky but it's unhelpful to spread information that's not really accurate. Alcohol is dangerous enough that you don't need to say it stops SSRIs increasing serotonin, or to misuse descriptions of its central nervous system effects to imply that it has a direct clinical-depression-inducing effect.

Your husband is correct, a lot of people probably do drink a bottle of wine per night. And all of them are at risk of liver failure.
I would have thought his liver could pack in at any time and the consequences are horrendous. And he can't then stop drinking and expect to recover, he'll be passed the point of no return once he has symptoms.

Past not passed🙄

I would get him to take a liver function test, he's probably done more damage than he realises. If not then he will if he carries on.

There's a common misconception that you don't have an issue with alcohol as long as you aren't drinking first thing in the morning and missing work etc. I would be very surprised, drinking for that length of time, if he didn't have any sort of withdrawal symptoms if he was to stop drinking or even in the morning as the alcohol wears off. As lots of other people have said, being able to go to the gym and having low cholesterol doesn't tell him how his liver, arteries or brain are doing. But unfortunately it sounds as though he's unlikely to stop until he sees a real need to.

The problem is, he's not giving his liver any recovery time if he's drinking every day, especially in that quantity. A liver profile might be a good idea.

alcohol related liver disease