AIBU to think my sister is overreacting about our drinking?

[ByJollyQuail]

Just after some outside opinions because I'm genuinely not sure whether my sister has a point or whether she's being overly judgemental.

DH and I have been together since university and are now in our early 50s. We have two sons. Our eldest has just finished university and starts a graduate scheme in investment banking in London in a few weeks. Our youngest gets his A-level results in a couple of weeks and, hopefully, will be applying to study Economics and Maths and will be going to university sept 2026 after taking a gap year travelling. He plans to go after Christmas and is using money we saved for him to spend on whatever he wanted, he’s chosen to go travel all over South America solo we plan to meet him in a few countries.

DH retired early a couple of years ago. He's not old enough to draw his private pension yet, but we'd planned well financially and he reached the point where he simply didn't need to work anymore. I still work two days a week because I enjoy it.

We've always been sociable people and, if I'm honest, we've always enjoyed a drink. Even back at university we were the ones organising nights out, and that side of us has never really changed. We travel a lot, go away for weekends, love jazz bars with live music and dancing, go out for meals, have friends over regularly and I absolutely love hosting dinner parties. Our house has always been the one where people gather.

Life has changed recently though. Our boys are adults now and quite rightly have their own lives. They both have girlfriends, they're building their own futures and we've naturally had to take a bit of a back seat as parents. That's exactly how it should be, and we're proud of them, but it does mean our lives are much quieter than they were when they were younger.

In a few weeks our eldest will move into London for work, and next year our youngest will head off travelling before university, so it'll just be the two of us most of the time. We actually like each other's company and have always enjoyed going out together, so that's never worried either of us.

The issue is this. My sister stayed with us for a long weekend recently. One evening we had friends over for dinner. We opened wine while I was cooking and everyone had a couple of glasses over the course of the evening. The next night we went to the pub with friends and I had three glasses of wine over several hours while DH had a couple of pints and a whisky. The following evening we stayed in, cooked dinner together and shared a bottle of wine while watching a film.

A few days after she'd gone home she rang me and said she was actually worried about us. She said she'd noticed we seemed to drink every day and thought we'd normalised alcohol to an unhealthy extent. She even used the word "alcoholics", which completely took me aback. I’ve said to her we just like having fun, we aren’t drinking at 8am every morning, we aren’t arguing, we like good alcohol that’s all and we don’t really have any responsibilities.

The thing is, she's not entirely wrong that we drink most evenings. If I'm not commuting into London the next day I'll often have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. If I'm off the following day we might share a bottle. If we're out with friends we'll drink then too.

Neither of us has ever missed work because of drinking. We don't drink in the mornings, don't hide alcohol, don't become unpleasant after drinking and we can easily go without if one of us is driving, we're travelling somewhere or we're doing something where drinking isn't appropriate.

My sister barely drinks herself. She might have a glass of prosecco at Christmas or a wedding and that's about it, so perhaps her idea of normal is very different from ours.
DH thinks she's being ridiculous and says we've simply reached a stage in life where we have time, disposable income and enjoy good food, entertaining and a drink together. He says we're not neglecting anyone or anything because there really aren't many day-to-day responsibilities anymore.

I wasn't worried until she said it, but now I'm wondering if we've drifted into drinking so regularly that we've stopped noticing it.

AIBU to think she's overreacting?

I’m retired , and I rarely drink alcohol so feel free to ignore what I say! I have noticed that the people I know that have had serious health problems (in particular bowel cancer) have used alcohol in the way you do. Both my brothers have died from the disease. Neither were alcoholics but both were social drinkers, didn’t get drunk. One of them collected good wine and he and his wife would have a glass or two with dinner.
I lost a cousin and her husband both to bowel cancer, but they were alcoholics.
I do think that your sister has a point, and for your health’s sake you should perhaps consider taking a break from drinking every so often, perhaps when you’re at home.
It isn’t necessarily true that you need to drink in order to be sociable. I never drink alcohol when I’m out with friends, nobody has ever commented on it. I have a good time, and feel fine the next morning.
if you’re self conscious about it, a glass of tonic water looks just like a gin and tonic!
When my ex gave up drinking for 3-4 months he said that he hadn’t realised that he had always felt ‘low-grade unwell’ when he was drinking.
All this is what the big deal is about.

Well your step father is no modern professional expert is he 🙄 maybe read up about alcohol misuse rather than relying on outdated, ignorant, wrong notions.

I took that from my stepfather because he was an alcoholic whose first action was to reach for a drink,you may think that reading up makes you an expert but living with alcoholics and heavy drinkers gives an insight into the problem.Different professionals define it differently,l know this because for years my mother was a very heavy drinker and sometimes she would be given help and sometimes not depending on the GP and the health authority involved.
Reading up,as you put it is not the only or necessarily the most reliable way of understanding this problem.

I have a friend who is a VERY heavy drinker. Even now she's been diagnosed with a liver tumour, she's still drinking. One thing I did notice is that she's never able to just have one drink. One leads to another and another, until she has to take herself off to bed - usually before 8pm if she's started drinking in the afternoon.

This is complete nonsense and it only fuels the incorrect information out there that I and my colleagues are working so hard to combat.

An alcoholic is not just someone who needs a drink upon waking. Please stop spreading misinformation. It is stopping people with alcohol problems from facing up to them as they don’t fit your outdated and incorrect criteria.

Absolutely. My DH died of it (bled out on our bedroom floor) and he never drank first thing in the morning. Ever.

My neighbours husband bled out like this. Was dead before the amb arrived. Horrific for everyone. I'm so sorry.

And I know an alcoholic who never, ever drinks before 4pm(ish) and only ever drinks wine (a couple of bottles to the staggering drunk stage every single night).

She says exactly what you do - that she’s not an alcoholic because she doesn’t reach for alcohol as soon as she gets up (and because it’s ‘only’ wine).

People who say things like your post (which is directly contradicted by actual experts) help her live in denial.

@CandidHedgehog totally agree.

I didn't drink in the morning or before 5pm but the first bottle would take less than an hour to drink.