How much do you drink and how much more do you have to before you become an old soak!!!???

[ChampagneandNappies]

.....just wondering, y'know sometimes with a workoholic DH and 3 kids, you're driven to it!!

I gave up drinking regularly after xmas
Previously we would drink, pretty much every day
3 cans of beer or share a bottle of wine, sometimes 2.
Now it's once a week maybe, if we go out, or we share a bottle of wine at the weekend
DP drinks more than me, but only 2 nights a week.
Has good effect on the waist line :)

we share a bottle of wine most nights try to have 2 or 3 off a week. And sometimes a V&T first

Crikey, I am an old soak!! I have a glass of wine at 6pm and finish the rest of the bottle - every night! If we go out which is at least 3 times a week a bottle and a half. Piffle, how the hell do you suddenly stop drinking - I just can't.

champagneandnappies, that sounds a lot to me but then I just don't drink. Pre-baby I did, so am not against it in fact your name is my favourite thing!!! (Not the nappy part...) but we don't have anyone to babysit so never go out (3 times a week! good god woman, I am jealous!) i probably have two glasses of wine in a month.

Don't know for sure but I'd imagine the amount you are drinking must be too high for the recommended daily bit...also, you must feel dreadful in the mornings - how do you do it with kids?? You may even have forgotten what it is like to feel better, if you've been having this amount a day for a long while. I'm sorry to be useless, don't have practical ideas to stop but I do honestly think you'd feel better and brighter if you had a whole lot less to drink each day. Do you want to have less?

ah yes

I like to settle down to a horlicks now at about 9pm

pre pg we drank a bottle of wine between us on a Friday and Saturday night

nothing in the week unless we went out

but once I have had the baby and given up breastfeeding I am planning to have a big glass of red every night until I am forced to stop my cod making me lose weight.

At xmas we went to London
My brothers (London bachelors one is a lawyer/dj - high living etc)
We drunk 3 bottles of wine each.
The scene the next mrning was carnage and my 11 yr old ds had given my 3 yo dd breakfast and was clearing up the mess
It was very easy to stop after that.
I was so ashamed and still am.
What if we needed to take dd to hospital but were over the limit? Or ds?

I have a Nanny which helps/hinders. I do want to drink less but it just never really happens.

I think if you habitually drink every night, you're on your way. Am currently trying to cut down radically - i.e. no drinking during the week. Did it a while back and felt soooo much better.

My problem is that I love to cook and serving up a glass of water with one of my carefully prepared dishes just doesn't seem right somehow...

champagneandnappies, i do sympathise because for years I would drink 1/2-3/4 a bottle of wine most nights (apart from when pregnant). Sometimes I would susbstitute this with 2 cans of beer instead! Then during the Autumn I decided to get a grip on myself and allow myself to still do this on Thurs/Fri/Sat, but not on Sun-Weds, unless I was going out and then I would drink. After all a bottle of wine is 10 units and I was probably drinking 50-60 a week which is way too much. I wanted to do it for my health, my complexion (which was a little too ruddy for my liking!), and so that I could be more productive in the evenings (e.g. sort photos, do admin, mending, cooking in advance for kids etc) and not just get mildly pissed in front of the telly. It was quite hard on the "off" days as it was my automatic reaction to come downstairs from putting the children to bed and open the wine. Instead I have substituted really spicy tomato juice or cordial type stuff. I find that once that early evening urge was kicked into touch, the rest of the evening was fine, as long as I had some nice food to eat and plenty of fizzy water. I felt so much better mentally about myself and also felt the physical benefits of feeling brighter in the mornings. And I still can have it some days.
I love wine, really do love it, but I just want to say it is possible to cut down.

CandN. I do think you probaby drink a bit much, but then again you knew that didn't you. Otherwise you wouldn't have posted :o

Try having a couple of nights off in the week, and build up slowly. Or try to have just one bottle between you. Or my fav trick is to have a glass when I get in - to relax. Then drink water or something to quench thirst and with supper and then another glass after supper in front of TV. Basically not drinking while eating seems to slow it down for me.

50-60 units that is, not bottle of wine!

oo-er.

I am also a bottle-a-nighter most of the time, C&N - very occasionally drink a bit less, even more rarely have a night off but usually following a more-than-a-bottle night. (Last night was 2/3 bottle and it was much easier to get up this morning )

Piffle, I need to do what you did (my not-waistline would be glad too) but I can't. Wonder if hypnotherapy is the answer?

And what you did too, bighug - for all the same reasons.

[feeble spineless emoticon]

Dh and I drink nothing during the week unless there is a special night out planned or some other occasion. We do get stuck into the wine at weekends though - on a Friday night we will plan to share a bottle of wine but usually we end up opening and finishing another one. The same goes for Saturday night.
I am not the abstemious type and will happily get well and truly pissed on a night out with work collegues now and again.....

JanH, I think it's easier for me to cut down because my DH doesn't really drink wine. And btw I have done this cutting down thing before and then it has gradually crept back up again, so I so know the feeling of "I just can't do it!"

Yes I do know it, but hey, sometimes you just need a little hint from somebody to say - bloody hell slow down! Well at least JanH seems to be in the same boat - everybody else seems to have gotten their act together! Cheers JanH. Ks - yes at teh moment EVERY day is DEFINITELY one of those bloody days - again!

Did anyone see good old Trevor McDonalds programme earlier this week? It certainly made me stop and think. It was about people like us really, just drinking wine at home to relax after a stressful day. I worked out I was way way over the 14 units a week. It just creeps up on you. Apparantly loads of people are drinking like this.

The scary thing was the liver specialist they interviewed. He said your liver can work with no obvious problems until only about 10-20% is still ok, then bang, it can pack up. No warning. The good news though is that it can recover considerably if you cut right back before that happens. That scared me enough to cut down.

There were three paople on the programme who gave up for a month. They all lost a stone each, just through not drinking alcohol. Although they found it hard to break the nightly habit, they managed to and felt fantastic.

Btw Cobra alcohol free lager is a rather nice alternative. I know, not the same as a nice juicy glass of red though...

I am tee-total [smug angelic emoticon]

not much, but used to be a soak.

I have a couple of glasses of wine on a Friday night I always have but don't drink in the week and otherwise only if I go out.I saw that TM programme and the people looked shocking and looked much younger when they stopped