Does drinking a bottle of wine every night make you an alcoholic?

[LyraSilvertongue]

I ask because I was having a conversation about drink with a (male) colleague and he says he drinks a bottle a night. I was a bit . He's quite small, shorter than me, so the men can drink more thing doesn't really apply. Do you think he's addicted?

Wheresmummy is a name change, noone would post like that first day, surely???

I dunno - depends on how close she was to flouncing I suppose. Perhaps we should have directed her to flouncers' corner

ps while I'm posting on this thread, I do think that a bottle of wine a day is a bit excessive. Should have made that clear in my earlier post.

i dont think anyone has suggested a couple of glasses of wine makes you an alcoholic in fact i think people have mostly said its nothing to do with quantity its all to do with whether you are controlled by alcohol

i dont have the off button either, i also drink too quickly especially if i have to stand with a glass in my hand and/or meet new people

i also lose track if people refill my glass or buy rounds

but basically i like the experience

but i am pretty good most of the time now and do a lot less it is tea time get some wine

that is because i gave it up for a year and lost lots of weight

but i do have mental health problems which do make it more difficult for me it is all bound up with moods as well and a genetic dispotion i think

No name change, but I'll flounce off to somewhere with beautiful music, hearts, flowers and marshmallows. And red wine.
I'll come back next time I want a fight.

Disneystar, if you've never been drunk there's no way of describing it. Being a bit tipsy can actually be very pleasant but being completely pissed can be bloody awful.
Twelveredroses, such a sad story about your dad. Six litres of whiskey a week is a hell of a lot. Has he no interest at all in stopping?

Wheresmummy, it's not all fights on MN. Stick around for a few days before you decide whether you like it or not

I've never been drunk as i either fall asleep (especially with red wine) or i feel very sick. Not fair!
Or you could say, very lucky!

wheresmummy, I thought your first post was spot on

Something no-one seems to have mentioned really is that a bottle of wine a night must have a fair whack of calories in it if nothing else. So in order to keep from putting on weight you would need to cut back quite a bit on food. If you didn't you would put on weight. That means you would be getting quite a lot of your daily calorie intake from alcohol instead of proper food.
That is of course over and above any damage the alcohol itself will do

So whether he is an alcoholic or not I cannot say but a full bottle of wine every day is too much to drink for anyone if they want to maintain a reasonably healthy diet.
A small glass or two (max) on a daily basis is fine. A whole bottle is not really.

The thing that would worry me and would make me feel that perhaps he may be an alcoholic is that he needs to drink a bottle. If the bottle were bigger would he NEED to finish that too. Anyone who NEEDS to finish something be it a packet of bisucits or a bottle of alcohol has the real potential to become an addict.

He could be exercising to work off the calories

Yes but that is quite a lot of exercise to work off every day. I've no idea how many calories in a small glass of wine but say 150,. As was pointed out earlier a bottle is about 9 glasses. That is 1,350 calories just in wine every day. You need to do a lot of excercise to use that xcess up every day.

Actually I looked that up and wine is probably nearer 100 cals for a small glass but that is still 900cals - which is a lot.

600 cals ..there are 6 x 125ml glasses (small) in a bottle I think

I still think one bottle a day is too much.

If I were to say I was eating 600cals a day of junk food every day, I'd rightly be told that this was not a good idea from at 'healthy eating' aspect. Wine is not only 'empty calories' the alcohol in it is actually not good for you in large quantities.

Double the reason to restrict intake to a couple of small glasses a day over the week.

Just for the record - I do agree that it's probably not healthy - don't think it makes him an alcoholic though

As said I'm not sure it makes him an alcoholic either but as others have said if he is finishing the bottle because he finds it difficult to leave any then he may have the potential to be an alcoholic even if he isn't one at the moment.

My DH is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober for nearly three years with the help of AA and following many detoxes and one long, final stay in rehab. There is the WORLD of difference between an alcoholic and a heavy drinker. It is all in the luck/bad luck of the draw. Some (few) alcoholics are born that way - usually 2nd or 3rd generation (like George Best) - basically they should never start drinking. Some people, aware of this risk, never ever do have a drink. Bit like the women who have many relatives with breast cancer who have a masectomy (just in case). A heavy drinker can carry on doing so for year and may, nor may not, end up damaging their liver. Just like a heavy smoker may or may not end of lung cancer. An alchoholic cannot do without a drink and suffers from physical symptoms (which can and do kill) if they refrain. This is why a "real" alcoholic should never detox/go cold turkey without medical supervision. It is also naive to think of a stereotypical alcoholic, there are many functioning alcholics out there who hold down good jobs but they will probably fall over the edge at some point where it totally takes over their lives. AA teaches that an alcoholic either stops or dies. Not a great choice. My DH seems to have managed although, as they say, it must always be a day at a time. It is socially limiting living with someone who doesn't drink but at least he is alive!!

A friend of mne drinks a bottle, maybe more as they buy those cartons from the supermarket and don't drink in measured glasses, a night. She never has a headache but does sometimes feel a creeping nausea, she calls it as the day progresses but which is never bad enough to put her off having another drink when it's 'her' time after work and kids. The definition of a functioning addict.

She knows it too. Occasionally will say that she knows she shouldn't be drinking as much but mostly just avoids the issue. Her partner drinks with her so their is no incentive for either of them to stop or even cut down. She has said before that she wouldn't know what they would talk about in their free time if they didn;t have a glass in their hand in common.

I know she worries though as she refuses to go to tyhe doctors abotu anything. She has a terribly bad back and rather than go get a referral to a hospital physio she goes to a private osteopath, which isn't helping. She's just too scared there will be somehting wrong and also that she wil;l haveto admit to the doctor how much she drinks and smokes.

Funny thying is it could save her life as it's probably the only thing that would get her to face things without lying to herself.

She has two young kids. I do worry about her and them.

Hi, I'm new on Mumsnet but as I've recently stopped drinking this feels like a good thread to kick off with ...

Like a lot of posters, I drank a lot during my twenties and slowed down in my thirties when kids arrived. Couldn't cope with the combination of hangover + and early mornings + dependents needing caring for. A few years ago a couple of my friends went into AA and it started our whole social group thinking about their drinking. We all drank to a certain extent, but it was noticeable that some seemed to know their limits where others just kept going. Clearly it was a problem for some but not others, and a lot of that was down to attitude.

I was determined not to give up 'forever', so started cutting down and giving up for extended periods. I always found that total abstinence was relatively easy - as with smoking and food, I'm an 'all or nothing' personality - but cutting down was just a joke. Still, I hung in there, not drinking for months at a time and then finding, once I'd given myself permission to get down off the wagon, that I drank in an unhealthy way. I'm convinced that it's not so much about whether you can 'go without' a drink or not, it's about how you think about it. I can control my drinking, but it's always on my mind. So I've stopped, although I still read threads like this and question whether I was right to do so or not. But I'm happier not drinking, and I think that's the bottom line.

I'm aware I've banged on about this for far too long, but thanks for the opportunity, as it's been whizzing round my head for months ...

Up until a month ago I was a bottle of wine a night girl (at least). I recognise the "creeping nausea" Monkeytrousers describes.
Anyway - a month ago I stopped. Completely. The first few days were hell - blinding headaches, trouble sleeping. But - a month on, I have lost 8lbs in weight (no dieting), my skin is plump and clear and my hair seems to be thicker.

Trouble is - I like my wine. I want to crack open a bottle of Chablis on a Friday night and enjoy a glass or two of red with Sunday lunch - but I'm scared if I start again I'll go back to my old ways. Help! How can you enjoy a couple of bottles at the weekend without going back to a bottle a night? I don't know if I can . . .

Sounds like you have a similar problem with the 'off button' as I have ... Don't know if controlled drinking is any better, to be honest, and that's why I found it easier to stop altogether. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

There are different ways of being an alocholic, its not all about frequency; you can not drink for weeks and then have a binge; it's all about your ability to control (or rather not) your relationship with it. In reality, most people with drink problems don't think they have one and lie to themselves about there intake and dependency. Also, you can be a high functioning alcoholic and hold down a job and family. hmm.

oh, i realised that looked like i was calling fairytaleending an alcoholic! I wasn't. I was sort of replying to an earlier thread not realising it has all moved on. The thing about drinking is the off button; problem with alcohol is that it buggers your judgement so you dont realise when you should be using that button; I am coming round to feeling that since i had my little one that i am better off not drinking at all as when i get the opportunity to go mad and act like a condemned man at my last meal! I grew up in the north east where its a big binge drinking culture and i cant seem to shake that as my way of dealing with alcohol. I either drink one glass or go mad.

Sparklefish wrote...
"There is a wide specrum peoples relationship with alcohol. It is very complicated. What maybe be excessive to one person can be the norm to another. There are alot of factors involved"

IMO and experience the spectrum is thus
TeetotalHopeless Alcoholic
Total Control Total loss of control

Most lie between the two extremes.
IME drinking a bottle of wine a night is not alcoholism, but it is dependency. Limiting to a bottle of wine means the person still has some control.
An alcoholic loses all control.
Both are in the area of problem drinking though.
My mother was an alcoholic. When she drank it would be 24/7. She would drink a bottle of vodka and pass out for hours. Then wake up and go find where the next bottle of vodka was stashed. What time she drank at was immaterial to her, time no longer mattered. She would wake up at 4am down a bottle and sleep til 1pm, night or day it didnt matter.
She was admitted to hospital several times and told she was going to die. That didnt matter. My sister got pregnant she was told she wouldnt see her only grandchild if she kept drinking. That didnt matter. She threatened my dad with a knife and physically attacked myself and 2 brothers. She attacked hospital staff to get home to her vodka when she came round in hospital. The police and ambulances were regulars at mum and dads house. None of that mattered to her.

There is a world of difference between a problem/dependent drinker and a fully blown alcoholic ime

A bottle a night is only too much if it's making your life worse somehow. If you're enjoying that bottle of wine and it makes you happy then I recon you'd be needlessly depriving yourself not to. Loads of things want to kill you and one of them will eventually, and when your'e 90 and peeing yourself in an OAP's home will you really look back on your life and think 'Goodness gracious, I'm glad I gave up that bottle of wine every day that I enjoyed so much all those years ago in order to live to this grand old age'
I don't know why people feel guilty all the time about harmless things like this, it's mad. Imagine trying to prise a bottle of red from a French grand-mère, she'd punch you in the face, after she'd put her fag out.