When does it switch from heavy drinker to alcoholism?

[Isthisalcoholism]

Drinking a bottle and a half of wine at home on your own of an evening just as a matter of course and being seemingly unaffected...this isn't normal is it?

My friend drinks a bottle of wine or half a bottle of vodka every night too. She's skinny, but with a big tummy, and catches every bug going. She hides the bottles from her DH and lies to me that she hasn't had a drink, when I can clearly see she's unsteady and slurring her words.

If they're drinking that much habitually then they will get physical and mental damage from it, whether they have alcoholism or not.

That's not an abnormal amount for people to drink ime

It's alot but alot of people do that

Low level alcoholism is pretty normal is what I'm basically saying

Also alcoholism shouldn't be really defined by quantity. frequency and habit are better indicators

That's not an abnormal amount for people to drink ime

That doesn’t make it in any way normal! If that happens four nights a week (to fit with “more nights than not”) then it’s 60 units a week. About four times what’s recommended and the whole week’s worth in one go.

I used to put away between 1 and 2 bottles of wine a night.

I thought I was probably alcohol dependent but didn't care and could function perfectly well.

Over the last few months I've been on a health kick and have 3-4 consecutive nights per week of drinking nothing at all. It has not been the slightest problem. If DH is drinking I don't feel any desire to join in.

On the nights I do drink now I will have max 1 bottle of wine.

I've heard that the way to tell if you are an alcoholic is not whether you can do without, but whether you can have only one glass and then stop. I can physically do that, but I find it tough and have to actively decide I won't have more. It's certainly easier not to start.

Some people have no choice but to drink alone, if I waited for another adult to be here before I had a drink I'd have been teetotal every night except one in the past eleven years.

Not being able to go without would be what made the difference to me or starting drinking in the morning and in work lunch breaks

@Spodge would you mind me asking if you have noticed a significant difference in how you feel now that you've cut down so dramatically?

I've heard that the way to tell if you are an alcoholic is not whether you can do without, but whether you can have only one glass and then stop. I can physically do that, but I find it tough and have to actively decide I won't have more. It's certainly easier not to start.

I drink alcohol (normally gin and tonic) perhaps 4–5 times per year, but I can never have just one! It affects me immediately and then I crave another one and usually finish feeling quite tipsy after having a third. If I never had one again, though, I wouldn't care.

I'm not sure the label matters.

I would say the main thing to consider is if the drinking is impacting relationships with others or affecting their life in any other way.

And yes, what would happen if they couldn't drink at the level they wanted to.

I do think there's an unhealthy tolerance involved if someone can drink a bottle in one night without ill effects.

When I felt drinking was getting habitual, I knocked it largely on the head - and that was (up to) a bottle a week, usually over 3 or 4 nights. So nowhere near a level of consumption anyone would consider damaging, but it was becoming too much of a routine. I still have the odd glass of wine (or more) when out, but I don't have it so often at home any more, and when I do it's one of those 250ml bottles, usually over two evenings.

@Ellapaella - I feel really good. But I think a lot of things have come together for me that add to that feeling. I've lost weight (way before cutting back the booze) and found fitness and am just in a good place. Maybe that's why cutting back has been pretty easy. The biggest difference I notice is in sleep quality. I slept perfectly well (or so I thought) before but would wake up feeling sluggish more often than not, whereas now I am full of beans once I have woken up properly. (I am not a morning person.) I do get an evil hangover, however, if I really push the boat out now, and I get drunk more quickly.

I think it’s got more to do with the behaviour when drinking or if drinking to drown out rather than an amount

When it costs you more than money

I've heard that the way to tell if you are an alcoholic is not whether you can do without, but whether you can have only one glass and then stop

That certainly shows me that my friend is an alcoholic for sure!

Sounds like your family member has a serious alcohol problem

Well it depends. If they are doing that all the time then yes, that’s a huge issue. If it’s just for a special occasion then I don’t think it’s a big deal at all.

If they do this every night that's getting on for 100 units a week. My mum has done this for years, I'm only just realising this isn't normal and has damaged family relationships. Recently however she's has days of not drinking which I didn't think she could do, then the next day hard at it again.

So in relation to your question OP I'd wonder how this is impacting their life in other ways.

they don't live with me, whenever we spend time with them they drink this quantity

A couple of times every year, DH and I visit a family member and her family. Every evening at dinner we open a bottle of wine and drink it and the beer drinkers drink beer. We then open another one when the kids are in bed and finish that. I wonder does she think we are alcoholics? The thing is we only drink when we are all together. We could easily not have a drink for months in between. We also eat a ridiculous amount of junk food while there.

They must have a very high tolerance, I’d be
INCREDIBLY ill if I drank 1.5 bottles of wine.

No, thats not normal. Just doing that at home of an evening, I'd say thats a definite problem- tolerance levels alone would suggest they are drinking a heck of a lot to tolerate that and feel sober.

Cousin's husband put away 3.5 bottles of wine on Xmas day and was sober as a judge
I'm always utterly amazed people can drink like this and still function- they must feel like shit every morning- how do they go to work drinking this amount regularly etc?

That sounds really positive @Spodge - I didn't think I drank much (a large glass of wine most nights and occasionally more on a weekend) but I had to stop a year ago due to health reasons. The main benefit I noticed was in sleep quality, getting a better nights sleep meant I was more motivated to do exercise and I noticed I was generally much better tempered and less irritable. I do have the occasional drink now but generally never through the week, possibly a bottle of wine over the weekend but sometimes not even that. I suffer terrible hangovers now too if I do have more and find I get terrible anxiety after having more than a couple of glasses.

For a couple of years I was drinking 1-1.5 bottles of wine a night, possibly 3-4 times a week? Mostly alone. I was absolutely psychologically dependent. I used to 'plan' my drinking evenings, what food I'd have to accompany the alcohol and completely look forward to them like a normal person would look forward to eg a trip to the cinema. I used to crave the first drink and like a PP, would find evenings when I didn't drink boring. When I moved in with my now DH, I'd buy a bottle of wine at the station for us to share mid-week, because that was normal, right? But I'd also buy a couple of mini wine bottles and keep them in our room and sneak out throughout the evening to have a swig. I used to keep the empty bottles in my wardrobe and every so often take a trip to a public bin to get rid of them.

Deep down I knew it wasn't normal, but my parents were/are (not very) functioning alcoholics (my mum is just 70 but has had dementia for around the past 10 years and lives in a care home - dementia is mixed dementia so has in part been caused by a series of mini strokes, which I believe in part to be caused by alcoholism). So it was what I grew up with - parents drinking wine heavily at home - occasionally they would say they were 'on the wagon' and have 2-3 days maybe of not drinking, then a Sunday afternoon beer would maybe creep in and it was back to 3-4 bottles of wine a night between them, 4 times a week. But obviously because they didn't drink in the morning or drink spirits, they weren't alcoholics.

My DH helped me realise that it wasn't normal and I really got into running (probably also addicted but at least it was healthier!) and it got to the point that I didn't want to drink on a Fri or Sat evening because I wanted to run the next morning and the high I got from running was much superior to the drinking high.

Now I am pretty much teetotal (I had a glass of prosecco on Christmas Day which I felt the effects of the next day!) which was probably the first drink I'd had since last Christmas. I think in the past five years I've averaged about 1-2 drinks a year. I actually don't like the loss of control feeling you get from those first few sips which is what I used to crave!

Have two young DC now as well which has also completely changed my mindset because 1) I struggle enough as it is with the sleep deprivation - I want what I do have to be the best quality! and 2) I don't want them growing up like I did to think regularly drinking at home is normal.

Which it really isn't - I think as PP have said, we do have a culture of low-level alcoholism.

Sorry if that completely went off on a tangent. In essence, yes this is definitely problematic drinking. However much they deny it, I can guarantee it will be affecting their health, relationships, it will be causing sneaky behaviour and lies.

I would drink a half bottle of vodka on a friday and Saturday nights alone. But I lived alone.

When DP moved in i stopped as i wasnt bored anymore.

they don't live with me, whenever we spend time with them they drink this quantity My dad is an introvert - whenever someone visits - family members included - he needs to drink, in fact he'll have drunk loads before we arrive because it makes him feel more sociable - it's twisted because he is better company without it!
I think the term alcoholic isn't very useful. Focus on the negative impact of the drinking - it will affect everyone's health to a degree but apart from that - does the person become belligerent, drive while under the influence, spend the grocery money on booze and run up massive debts?

I was drinking a bottle and a half of wine a night, many years ago. I thought I might be an alcoholic and, to prove that I wasn't, I stopped drinking. The first day/night was easy. The second night, I started to hallucinate, imagined that all electrical appliances were talking to me, all sorts of things. I travelled to work and had a massive seizure. I had no idea that this was related to alcohol withdrawal and that I was physically as well as psychologically addicted to alcohol.

I wish I could say that I stopped then. As a PP said, alcoholism is a progressive illness and over the next few years I became much worse. I've been sober for 12 years. Nobody can force sobriety onto anyone else; they have to want it, and want it badly enough to make it a priority. I still attend three AA meetings a week. Sometimes you have to hit lows, then lower lows, before you really get your act together, because that's the only alternative to a horrible death.