Drinking wine each evening

[Mamabear2424]

Is it ok to drink wine every eve?? I have a glass , sometimes 2 every evening and I love it, it makes me happy. Dh says mental health more important so if it makes me happy I should just do it. I am a healthy 40 something with a professional career. I just love wine.

Yes. And people conflate ‘everyone does it, it’s normal, look at people in France’ with ‘it’s ok’.

Just because everyone is doing something, that does not mean it’s the right thing to do. That’s what we tell our kids isn’t it?

I've just caught up with all the OP's posts.

This jumped out at me:

Life just seems a bit boring and less sparkle without wine

And the fact that she is going to try to cut down not drinking and work up to 3 nights a week.

This to me suggests that alcohol is far more of a crutch for her than she perhaps realises.

Use looking forward to a glass of wine on a friday and/or Saturday night as your "sparkle." If you need it more days than not for "sparkle" and cutting down has to be done gradually and reluctantly, you really are overly reliant on alcohol.

just read that you drink 2.5 bottles a week, that’s 10 bottles a month, 120 bottles a year - looking at it like that it looks a lot of wine to me and surely a negative to good health

Millions of people do things like have a kebab every day or down cans of monster or red bull every day and are still here so why not. You only live once and wine is better than all of those ask the French

Yes i always think the french drink loads and they seem ok ! but, i think 2 free nights a week will be good for me!

Agree with @PrinciSalt

MN is a strange place, with lots of people drinking to excess, yet no desire to cut down and attempting to reassure OP that drinking almost twice the NHS recommended limit is totally fine

Canadian guidance now recommends no more than two alcoholic drinks per week https://www.ccsa.ca/canadas-guidance-alcohol-and-health

Don't the French have very high rates of alcohol-related illness? In what way do you think they seem "ok"?

Exactly, they might look unremarkable but have abnormal blood tests results. Have you had blood tests recently OP? Had your liver checked?

You know you are drinking too much. Can you go without alcohol for a week, how do feel when you think about that? As someone who was alcohol dependent, i would say you need to stop a.s.a.p. And by the way, your liver will not be healthy at all, so don't kid yourself.

High levels of alcohol consumption don't seem to be working out that well for the French....

https://movendi.ngo/news/2021/06/08/understanding-frances-alcohol-burden-high-alcohol-mortality-requires-urgent-action/

I am a doctor who works with cancer patients. It’s one of the biggest risk factors for cancer and many seem oblivious until they have a diagnosis.

The NHS drinking advice is 14 units (for women and men now) but is not a “safe”level. There is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol only a “lower risk” level. They are just trying to minimise impact knowing most will not stop drinking alcohol.
Just because we normalise it in our society doesn’t make it okay. It’s personal choice of course as to what risk you take but we should stop normalising and even congratulating high alcohol consumption.

When I was a junior dr in A&E many of the presentations on an evening or weekend were actually middle aged adults with problems secondary to their alcohol consumption - the normalised “moderate” daily or regular drinking not the type that’s renowned for taking up A&E time - for example atrial fibrillation (type of heart rhythm disturbance) in the 50 year old drinking 2 glasses a night, or severe heartburn in a 48 year old needing a work up in case it’s a heart attack.

While liver damage is commonly touted, and of course is a concern, fewer people are aware of the impact of “moderate” drinking on mental health (changes brain chemistry as it’s a depressant - literally acting on brain pathways in opposite ways to antidepressant medication), cancer risk and dementia risk to name a few.

While some European countries may have less alcohol related disorder due to the drinking culture that isn’t to say their breast or bowel cancer rates, or dementia rates, or liver disease rates etc are lower than the UKs.

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/alcohol-and-cancer/how-does-alcohol-cause-cancer

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/managing-the-risk-of-dementia/reduce-your-risk-of-dementia/alcohol

And for those touting positive health benefits of alcohol - unless it’s a doctor who’s stuck in their ways from the 60s - you’ll be hard pressed to find medical opinion now that alcohol has benefits. Any small benefits of red wine is massively outweighed by the now know risks. And yes I do know that doctors are some of the worst drinkers - habit and addiction and societal normalisation affects all! That’s all I can say.

@Mamabear2424 I commend you for attempting now to have 2 nights off a week. Try if you can to also gradually reduce your consumption across the nights you are drinking. Both these things together will make a big difference to your health.

@smileyface123 thank you for your post. I've recently decided to give up alcohol completely and posts like yours give me a boost, knowing it's the best thing for health. I'm day 22 and I have already noticed a BIG change to my mood for the better. Anxiety levels are so much lower. Im actually shocked at how quickly I've noticed a difference.

Thank you @smileyface123

This thread has spurred me on to ditch my 'no reason' at home fizz drinking and only have a glass or two when 'out' which isn't often. And to stop excess drinking at parties (probably happens few times a year).

Thank you @JanglingJack for sharing your story. I know you're not ok but hope you can find more ways to cope.

Sobering posts. Literally.

I am slim and fit. But eat too much chocolate and crisps and I am trying to reduce. I am not trying to kid myself that it’s ok to eat what I do.

I think different people would respond differently to that amount of booze. For me, I'd feel drunk if I drank 2 glasses a night and my sleep would be shit, and I would feel worse and worse as the week went on, and I'd gain weight.

Different metabolisms handle it differently. Most weeks I drink nothing. Maybe once a month I'll have a glass or two of wine and I enjoy it at the time but it does make me feel sluggish and a bit crap. For me my MH is far better without alcohol than with.

2.5 bottles per week = 250 ml/ or a third of a bottle per day. So certainly 2 glasses per day not 1. 25 units per week. Well over the recommended maximum. Not at all healthy imho.

I think you should look up what happens when you die of liver cirrhosis. So many people on the ward who 'Only drank a couple a day'. Its not a disease just for drunks and alcoholics.

You only live once.....until your liver is unable to filter toxins and they go to your brain and give you symptoms like severe dementia. Until your body blows up and holds onto so much fluid they have to drain you like Veruca Salt.

Yes. Until people realise that problematic drinking is not just about the unkempt homeless man swigging pints outside the train station, the denial and drinking will continue.

WHAT??? Joke right? :)

Idiotic.

Not a joke.
I'm a very, very light drinker. I like red wine so planned to have a very small glass with my dinner every night, bit of a new year resolution. I have high cholesterol and think it might help, also, it would be nice to have.

Anyway, you might be pleased to know that so far I've failed and not had any this year. I'll start tonight though 🙂

Going to aim for a bottle a week. I should get through that if my husband has a glass as well.

@kendodd just so you know all the studies showing red wine as being good for your health have been debunked. It is an antioxidant and does have blood pressure benefits for some but it's outweighed by the dangers of the actual alcohol. The problem with the studies is that they were comparing "non drinkers" with "moderate drinkers" without removing those that had had to give up alcohol for health reasons (like liver disease, or cancer etc) and were now non drinkers. So of course moderate drinking is going to show lower mortality than the group which included participants who were "non drinkers" because they had health problems. More recent studies have compared people who have never drunk, against moderate drinkers and the results were the opposite.
If you want the benefits of red wine without the downsides though, what about an alcohol free wine? They taste very different, so if you're going in expecting it to taste the same as the 13% wine we're all used to you'll probably be disappointed (which is why people often say they're awful I think) but as a drink in its own right maybe you might enjoy it?

It might be because I lived in France for many years, but to me having a glass or two of wine in the evening is completely normal.
Is it "ideal" for optimum health? Almost certainly not. But neither is loads of stuff that we do (driving too much, eating bacon, not flossing, drinking several cups of coffee a day, eating sugar, not exercising daily, getting stressed, sitting too much... The list goes on).
Drink your wine, enjoy it.