To drink almost a bottle of wine everynight

[Mum21beauty]

I am not reliant on it . I just enjoy it every night though ...

I can easily drink a bottle of wine and not feel drunk or have a hangover. I very frequently do. I know it's a problem.

I don't feel like an alcoholic, at all. I accept that I am. It is not a physical addiction at all, for me. It's mental.

We need to take action.

My alcoholic ex-husband was cremated today. He was 55. He leaves behind four devastated children and two agonised ex-wives - not to mention his elderly mother and dozens of people who loved him.

Get help. Now.

14 units a week & having alcohol free days is recommended for a reason. You’ll ruin your liver. You are a alcoholic

OP you’re not having vodka on cornflakes of a morning but you are relying on it to relax. You need to find a healthier way of winding down than binge drinking every night. Please seek RL help.

I’m your proof.

I drank probably around the units you do weekly. Maybe less. I’d drink 3/4 of a bottle most nights and a full bottle fri/sat.

Through other reasons I ended up having a scan in January. They detected mild fatty liver. My liver function tests are actually okay (they can be deceptive as the consultant explain) but scans aren’t. He told me that 95% of people who drinks more than a couple of units a day with no rest days, or people who regularly exceed the weekly recommended units WILL have fat in their livers.

Fatty liver is the first stage of liver disease.

I had a wake up call. I truly believed giving up would be hard and I couldn’t. I’m 4 months on and I now drink less than 10 units a week (very max, sometimes none I can take or leave it) and have at least 5 clear consecutive days.

Just give it a go to cut back.

Hmmm sounds like a lot imo

My STBXW drinks a bottle of wine a night, and has done for the last 8 years. IMHO she has a dependency issue, likely brought about by habit, not coping with stuff and stress. The wine replaced me in the marriage.

She blames everyone else, and never takes responsibility for her own actions.

Her family thinks it's normal and send her tacky booze orientated presents. They are all so dumb.

Well why not try a sober month? There's loads of support on here. Look in I think Alcohol Support. Maybe. Start a thread for support (rather than denial like this one ).

That's a lot. How long have you been drinking that much? Nightly suggests to me you are relying on it. To wind down?There are other healthier ways to do that. (a hobby, exercise, walk the dog, a film, a box set binge). I drank very heavily for around 18months after losing my Dad, along with not eating. I lost 3.5 stone & got really ill, scared myself & stopped, cold turkey, overnight. It would be sensible to stick to at least give your liver some recovery time & only drink Fri & Sat & not a bottle each time.

OP I'm in a similar situation, but I'm a comfortably off SAHM with 2 wonderful teenage DCs and not much stress, but I bloody love the opiate high a bottle and a half of white wine gives me every night.

I've recently admitted to some close friends that I think I'm an alcoholic and one has bought me a book on giving up that sits proudly on our kitchen counter, but that I haven't read since I got it.

I buy the weakest wine I can find (11.5%) and can easily drink a bottle and a half a night now. I never act drunk and I'm very energetic in the morning, so my DCs are mainly oblivious to it. I even tried costly hypnotherapy recently, which didn't work.

My main problem is that I know so many people that do the same and who tell me to just stop listening to the "paranoid and misinformed naysayers". You'd be amazed how many people I know who think this is 'normal'!

But it isn't. Mumsnet has spoken.

I don’t understand people who say they have no wish to live forever. Like what else are you going to do?

As someone who could do this, not feel drunk and would love to.... I don't, it effects sleep badly and skin and weight. A bottle of night is habit forming and so bad for your liver

I grew up in a household where my parents drank like you and still do. It was over dinner and in the evening, but they just weren't there for us emotionally in the way I now know they should have been.

They handled problems appallingly after wine time started. We did less at weekends as they were slow to get going. They have health issues in their 50's that they really shouldn't have yet. My sister is reluctant to let them look after the grandkids, despite the fact they appear outwardly successful.

The worst part is that they normalised it to the extent that I was drinking daily by my early 20's. I literally thought it was just how adults handle stress. I quit after my now DH intervened and made me realise how abnormal it was and I'm so, so glad.

Do you want that for your kids, OP?

@rainbowbash please don't make suggestions such as I would go cold turkey (should be easy as you don't rely on it).

It's very dangerous, even a bottle a night believe me

Well YABU if you want to see your family grow up to any meaningful extent. If you want to die in your middle age of a diseased liver then go ahead!

A friend of my DM's fell into the habit of drinking half a bottle every night. Her doctor said she was well on the way to liver failure; think this was in her mid fifties?

Don't have alcohol free months, just practice moderation. Have one small glass slowly of an evening, and have a few days off in the week. Drink a glass of water before your alcohol; often when I get a 'I need a drink' feeling about me, I don't, and I'm actually just thirsty

Your liver can’t cope, yours isn’t a special one and it is silently being damaged. The liver has a fantastic ability to cope for a longtime and mild disease doesn’t look that different from moderate disease on normal scans. It is all okay until you can no longer compensate and then you are very ill.

But I am finding work life so stressful at the moment and it really takes the edge off

If you can't cope with work without drinking at night, that does suggest you're dependent. Try taking a month off alcohol.

Sounds more like you are what they call a 'problem drinker' rather than a full-blown alcoholic but it is a slippery slope. You must have a high tolerance for alcohol to be able to put away a bottle +/- a night and get up for work the next day and take care of a toddler in the mornings / evenings! My personal theory is that the higher tolerance you have, the more in danger of health risks you are because you don't feel the immediate effects so are inclined to drink more than is wise.

I am a alcohol wimp, more than 2 glasses and I feel awful the next day, get stomach issues, headaches and feel depressed so that is a natural control over my alcohol consumption. Even then I found I was having at least a glass of wine or a beer 5 nights a week so for the New Year I did dry January and now only drink on weekends. I feel much better for it and am sleeping better. Could you try something like that rather than going cold turkey? Commit to only drinking 3 days out of 7 or something? That would halve your alcohol consumption immediately.

If you simpley can't have a night off then that makes you dependent. I drink half a bottle 3x week and sometimes a few beers too and I'm sure that is too much.

The comments on this thread have been a wake up call. One I didn’t realise I needed. I’m not the op, but I might as well be.

I need to re-evaluate my own behaviour around alcohol, now.

I'm not reliant on it because if I was i would want it in the day and morning but I don't.

My mil used to say this on the early days too. She'd say she didn't need it but the panic in her eyes when someone suggested she not drink for just a week showed she'd have an issue not having booze daily. She agreed to do two days booze free and was caught drinking from a hip flask at the kids soft play party.

She'd think because she drink til after 8 then she didn't have an issue but you could see her watching the clock from 6 onwards. She'd not be concentrating on what people say because she'd be constantly checking the time or making excuses to leave to go home and drink.

Twenty years laters the 8pm drinking of a bottle of wine increased to two bottles and the start got earlier and earlier. She went from a bottle of wine a day to a litre of gin a day.
At her worse she neglected her pets and they were shitting in the house, she hurt her grandchildren through falling on them pissed, as well as other stuff and she didn't wash and just laid in bed drinking gin all day.
She's still drinking now and frankly is a mess. She's so bloated I don't know how she's still alive.

Watching their mum decline and be gripped more and more by addiction made her adult children view their own drinking differently, sil also used to drink a glass of two of wine a day daily but stopped when she realised she didn't actually want it and had just got in the habit by feeling unsocial when her friends would drink daily and pop round every evening for wine. A couple of her friends kept trying to make her drink and sil felt it was because he saying drinking daily isn't healthy was a judgement on themselves drinking daily.

Most things are fine in moderation but I don't think a bottle a day is moderation, it's excessive and the very fact you're asking here implies you think you may have an issue. Some people will tell you it's not a lot, some people will tell it's a massive amount. If the only way you can relax is to drink alcohol every day then you're on risky ground of being dependant on it if you're not already.

"I guess it's a cry out for help as I'm too nervous to speak to someone I know."

How would you feel about speaking to your GP about it OP? If you've been drinking that amount for a while then having a liver function blood test would probably be a good idea. You said you've lost 2 stone in the last 6 months without trying upthread too? Any other weird symptoms? Just cos losing that amount of weight without trying is a little concerning. Please don't feel nervous about opening up to your GP, they will have heard it before and should be there to help you help yourself

I completely understand the enjoyment of wine in the evenings, I love having some - but not every night. As PP's have said, it may be just an unhealthy habit now, but you need to rein it in before it gets out of hand.

Could you start by pouring yourself smaller measures so it's not nearly a bottle? Some wine glasses are huge, but you can get the smaller ones for white wine (or even buy some flutes, they're small).

What about having wine one night, then two nights alcohol-free? Think of something else you can do that'll keep you occupied instead- what about exercising, take your DC out for a walk on these lighter evenings?

You just need to start cutting back now and I'll bet you'll find you can do without it.

This thread is such an eye opener for me.

I drink 1-2 glasses per night. Every single night. I feel shitty. Depressed. Demotivated. Anxious. Tired. Irritable. I know deep down the alcohol is causing this. I don’t really know how to stop because I use it to unwind when the kids are asleep and I can finally relax.

1st May. A new month.

People who drink a bottle of wine every night don’t get properly drunk from it as they have a higher tolerance. If I don’t drink for a while then I’d be absolutely hammered after a bottle of wine but by the end of a boozy holiday I can handle it much better.