Anyone drink 4-5 bottles of wine per week and how is your health ?

[fartoobig]

Mid forties. Just wondering g if it impacts you? I enjoy wine as it brings me back to when I was really happy.
I am Going through immense stress and sadness now.
No hangovers but feel mildly better on days where I haven't had wine the night before .

I don't drink that much no. That is A LOT of alcohol. There's no way your body wouldn't feel better NOT drinking that much. You say yourself the drinking is about your emotions. Tackling those would help your mental and physical health. It sounds obvious, but your question is also obviously off-track.

I suppose it doesn’t matter about anyone’s health, does it? It’s a bit like doing a straw poll on those of us who smoke a few packs of cigarettes a week. My grandad smoked all his life and died of natural causes at 96. A sample of 1 (or 20) is meaningless.

Drinking so much is terribly bad for you. I mean you might dodge a bullet, but you might not. It will affect you the way it will affect you, regardless of what anyone here says.

Treat your body like it’s your best friend. Look after it. Be good to it. Appreciate it. I’m so sorry that you are so sad x

I used to drink that much over a weekend, every weekend. I got sick and tired of feeling sick and tired - Monday mornings were horrific. I hated my job and couldn't separate 'having a good time / relaxing' from 'loads of booze'

I had a month off the booze and it totally reset my relationship with alcohol. I started drinking again but at a fraction of the levels I had been drinking, and have kept that up for around 15 years. I feel, and look, about a million times better for it

Are you starting to question your relationship with alcohol OP?

It’s almost certainly affecting your performance and your ability to get the most out of life. Especially if you are in your forties.
You should try to cut find a more positive hobby

Of course it will impact you, you might not see it at the moment but the long term effects will. Functioning alcoholics exist.

No - and that is a pretty heavy drinking. The govt recommend 14 units a week, one bottle of wine is about 10 units so you are drinking 50 units a week.

You are an adult, but this isn’t at all healthy particularly if its more than just a week or two, I’m sure you are aware of the health impacts of alcohol.

You are looking to change the way you feel inside putting in something from outside. This never works, be it alcohol, food, drugs - whatever, the relief is only short term and not only are you kicking your problems down the road you are also making them bigger and creating more of them.

As humans we are supposed to feel sadness it is how we process, we allow ourselves to feel these things - its when we try to not feel it and push them away problems start. I would seek out some counseling or therapy, you can afford it considering how much you spend on booze. You need to learn some healthy ways to deal with how you are feeling - ways that are not self destructive - and this can be done and ia often very straightforward.

I gave up booze 3 years ago just because I was bored of it and have never felt better. Growing up in an alcoholic family I saw first hand the crap it causes.

Good luck, there really are alternatives to drinking.

Thats a huge amount....and randoms on the internet reassuring you that they do it with no problems won't change that.

Thats a fair bit and a huge amount of sugar to be consuming.

It would be worth looking at trying to reduce it and managing your stress some other way.

It sounds like you have a lot on your plate.

Yes, exactly this, I realised I drank because I was stressed but I was stressed BECAUSE I drank. Its short term relief but actually makes everything else in your life harder to deal with.

"I enjoy wine as it brings me back to when I was really happy."

This bit is the concerning but, OP. I think you really need some support. That may or may not include reducing or stopping drinking, but your definitely need to find yourself the support you need to address your mental health.

just drink that amount of water and youll be fine. Thats all it needs. Not that amount of wine.

That’s an insane amount of wine and I’m not sure how what other people do makes it better. Sorry to hear you’re having a tough time.

I went through a phase of this over lockdowns
no particular reason except I really enjoy the taste of wine
the quality of the wine made a difference to the “hangover” if I drank the bottle in one sitting
some times I’d feel perfectly fine (which is a bit scary on reflection)
I’d definitely be more tired and more likely to eat junk than if I hadn’t had wine
some days I could have two glasses a few nights in a row and feel absolutely fine

the biggest side effect or consequence however was my skin definitely suffered and changed appearance so that’s my biggest motivation for cutting back

The problems you are suffering are no doubt from the alcohol you are consuming.

Your not experiencing hangovers because your body in now alcohol dependant and is used to the amount of alcohol you are drinking.

My MIL was the same, drank vodka like it was tap water, was able to function normally but always needed a drink. She was even taking vodka to work in a water bottle. She died a year ago, of hypertensive heart disease. She was 56.
She went to sleep and never woke up.

Alcohol puts a massive stress on your body, invisibly always remember that.

I did this over lockdown. I gained weight and had frequent heartburn and indigestion. I don't think at all atm as I'm pregnant but before then i reduced it to half a bottle a week.

I definitely don't drink anywhere near those amounts, but if I did I would be overweight, I would have an upset stomach, blotchy and swollen face and my breath would stink. If you are already feeling bad for other reasons, why add poisoning your body to it?

I’m binging one or twice a week recently, as opposed to daily drinking. My health is getting worse I’m getting kidney pain the next day, this weekend I felt if I had heart discomfort (not sure how to describe) this has shit me up when Googling it. Not to mention the anxiety the day after. I don’t think I’ll last 5 years at this rate has really scared me which is a good thing.

Not to mention the massive weight gain in just a few weeks

I drink more than I should, but less than you. I feel fine, but I got a smart watch recently and it is very noticeable that my resting heart rate goes up when I've been drinking, and the watch records much higher stress levels on the day after drinking. It definitely has an effect.

I used to drink more - not quite that much but probably half a bottle a day so 3 - 4 bottles a week. I’ve gradually cut back the last year to less than a bottle a week (spread out).

I genuinely feel little difference. I didn’t feel any real impact from drinking more and my bloods were all fine. I stopped as I wanted to cut back as it wasn’t healthy and worried more long term - and the cost.

Don’t really miss it but I only drank because I liked it, not for any emotional reason. I’m quite sad I’m not full of energy 😂 but I think it affects different people differently. I’m sure it’s helping me long term though.

I come from a family of drinkers. It will catch up with you and if you don't stop it'll catch up with you in the end. My mum drank a lot in her 40s but as she was still working and parenting she was 'functioning' and didn't appear to be an alcoholic. As we left home and she went sick from work (with depression) it built up and she's now in her late 60s with Korsakoffs (alcohol related dementia) and requires support from carers. If you knew her 20 years ago you'd think she wasn't the sort to succumb to alcoholism but it doesn't discriminate.

It's done irreversible damage to my heart.

I drank wine like this for a period of about 10 years, though I was younger. It began to impact on my mental health, my relationship, my parenting and my job, so I went cold turkey for a bit and completely reassessed my relationship with alcohol. I can drink moderately now, but I don’t drink at all for much of the year, and I feel a lot better for it. I also don’t drink wine at all anymore because I just don’t think it works for me. So I’ll have a couple of pints of beer or cider now and then, mostly in the summer. Overall my weekly unit count is probably 2-4 in the summer and 0 for the rest of the year. I strongly suspect that if I tried to drink as you do now (I’m also in my mid 40s) I would feel very unwell.

It does no harm to consider one’s relationship with alcohol so I hope this thread helps you to do that.

There was a thread a couple of weeks back started by a poster who had just cleared her father’s flat after he had died there from alcoholism. The details she gave were shocking, upsetting and, erm, sobering! Lots of other posters on the thread told similar stories and one of the details that came up time and again was that many of these alcoholics had been fine and functioning well for a long while until very suddenly falling apart and becoming very ill. Even though I knew excess alcohol is very bad for the health, I was shocked to read that it is fairly common for people to be ok for a long while and then suddenly very ill. So just be aware that the physical damage from alcohol doesn’t always give fair warning that it’s happening until it’s too late to do anything about it.

No, but I used to. There is nothing that hasn't improved since I stopped.

If you're questioning your relationship with alcohol, there's a lot of help and advice out there to help cut down or stop altogether. I'd recommend Club Soda (Google it, they have a website and also a Facebook page)

Can you tell me more about this as I have my concerns? Symptoms and diagnosis. Thank you