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?

wellwomen drink because you can buy wine in the supermarket or the corner shop its not exactly a guilt trip is it

and most people do it

i dont think there are complex reasons it is just availability and cheapness and acceptability

i actually find it easier to drink less wine than to mn less tho

so easiest not to smoke then not to eat chocolate then not to drink cofee then not to drink wine and then not to mn

I can't bear to eat a nice meal without a glass of wine, so I drink almost every day (unless we're having egg and chips ). I feel fab, have loads of energy, and am achieving a lot at the moment, so I can't see the booze is doing me much harm. Maybe I'm in denial, but I come from a family who drink in a similar way to me, and no one has had any alchohol related illnesses, so its a risk I'm happy to take.

And I love the taste of wine, real ale and lager.

And pubs are amongst my favorite places to be, to the extent I go on my own sometimes, I love the community atmosphere.

it's cheap and available in Europe, too, zippi.

but you don't see the problems there that you do here.

so i do think there's more to it.

oh i think there are problems infrance and spain with alcoholic disease

and in bars you see plenty of drunk frenchmen

but they just dont look drunk

which in fact i suspect the majority of mns who have drunk their usual bottle of wine or more dont either

i imagine people here watch more tv too

we are just slobs

But zippi, 'Britain has seen the biggest rise in mortality from liver cirrhosis in western Europe following a two-fold rise in UK alcohol consumption over the past 50 years, a report in The Lancet reveals.'

Not Europe, whose levels of disease are dropping.

There is something about Britain's culture that is behind this, and not just cheap and accessible, because it's actually cheaper in Europe to drink and very acceptable.

I am by some of the responses on this thread.

As far as I saw it, the op was using her friend as reference, so that a discussion might be had on whether such amounts of alcohol constitutes a dependency in general, not because she was intending to encourage him in the direction of the nearest AA meeting.

I think a bottle of wine a night is excessive. I also think that just because you say you?re not dependent on alcohol, doesn?t mean you?re not. Remember one of the major symptoms of alcoholism is denial. Alcoholics rarely admit to having a drink problem until they come to the realization that they have a drink problem and seak help for it. Also, you don?t have to drink all day and all night to be an alcoholic, that?s another of the major misconceptions about alcoholism. So you can still be sobour for 2/3 days of the week and go out binge drinking every Friday and Saturday night and could still have a problem with alcohol.

As a non drinker I have always been bothered by just how normal drinking is considered to be, and how it is actually considered less normal not to drink than to drink.

I am predominantly te-total. Not because of any moral objections to alcohol, but because I just don?t like the taste. Beer, wine, all ghastly imo, unless you drown it in gallons of lemonade, in which case what is the point? But try going out with a group of friends and ordering a coke while everyone else is ordering alcohol. ?oh you can?t have a good time if you don?t have a drink? is a comment I?ve heard regularly. Or ?we?ll have to spike your drink one day to get you drunk? was something I also experienced when I was younger. Not drinking is like being an outcast. In the opinion of a lot of people you should only not drink if you?re driving, otherwise there must be something wrong with you.

So I think this normalizing of the need for alcohol is something that needs to be looked at before we can do something about it.

I love wine and when I was pregnant I missed it so muc, life seemed to have its shine taken off it. I don't know if that makes me an alcoholic or not.

All I know is that socialising in pubs is dull as shite without alcohol even if its just a couple of drinks. All of our friends drink over the recommended weekly amounts some are healthy some are not.

However I do find that if I drink on more than 2 consecutive days I'm irritable, forgetful, clumsy and disorganised (well more so than usual).

Therefore drink 4 nights a week approx, on school nights 2-3 glasses and 1 night at the weekend maybe a bit more. Have to admit though after 2 nights of abstinence I'm usually craving it a bit!!

i think a lot of it is down to personality

people who say they dont like the taste or just dont like drinking always seem to have a different kind of personality to me

like a controlled one lol

What I think we are bad about is self-moderating and there does not seem to me to be a socially acceptable way of doing this..

If people are drinking too much, really the only available support is AA. Now I think they are excellent, but it involves you "surrendering to a higher power" and accepting that you cannot control your drinking. It has a strong support network, but is all a bit cloak and dagger-y, and (I think) involves looking at lots of other areas of your life.

As an analogy, after I had my first child I couldn't shift about 10lbs. I just knew that if I didn't I never would. So I did WW on-line, learned some really interesting things about food and quickly and easily(ish!) lost that 10lbs.

I would love to see some sort of - I don't know, programme, that says - you know what - drink is nice but if you are getting a bit too fond of it here's what to do - and then you cut out for 2 days a week or whatever suits you (there would be different "drink aware" programmes). So you learn how to moderate your drinking in a socially acceptable way (for example if you went out for a drink after work, you would feel quite happy going "ooh, no I'm on "Drink Watchers" and I've had my units for this week so I'll just have a soft drink" etc.

We have this all or nothing, polarised, heavyweight/lightweight view of drinking, and the middleground is uncharted.

but anchovy lots of people do have the same dificulty giving up food and losing weight in fact more people have a problem with food than drink

they do try but they never succeed

That is so true anchovy. Drink is a demon! Well no it isn't. But like many things it is damaging in excess.

I think we drink so much because of peer pressure, fewer social brakes (eg it's fine to vomit in the street and nobody will shun you for it - quite the contrary) and more freedom for women to do whatever we like, which is obviously a most excellent thing, but one effect is that women will do some bad stuff, like be more violent, and some unhealthy stuff, like drink like fishes (she says, as a bit of a fish herself). Our grandmothers might have felt a bit racy having a sweet sherry or a g&T and then thought, more than that is too much. We have a totally different perception of alcohol. It's like portion sizes. People 50 or 20 years ago would have looked at a bagel we'd eat today and think it was far too big.

its like eating a whole pizza taher than sharing one between 4 or 5 people

Pizza Express had to increase pizza size simply because all the other chains were serving giant pizzas so people thought that was a 'normal' portion size and the PE ones weren't big enough to satisfy, but of course they were. A kid's portion is enough really.

Yes, Zippi, but the analogy with weight is that the apparatus is there to help you with weight loss. (I know its difficult, by the way, and more difficult for some than others).

Using weight as an analogy, its quite socially acceptable for me to say to mates "Oh bugger, I've deffo put some weight on recently, what am I going to do to lose it?" And they will all say - Oh, try WW, have you thought of GI based stuff, Cambridge diet is good but not great for health. Its socially acceptable to say "No thanks, I'm not going to have a pudding, I'used my WW points for today/ that doesn't fit in with my diet etc".

It would be nice if it was as socially acceptable to say "Oh bugger, I think I'm drinking too much"; have an objective way of finding out; have several different options for dealing with it (in the same way that different diets suit different people); and then have the social support to follow it through. Currently it seems as though the only option is AA in a church hall somewhere with its notions of "hitting rock bottom". Why can't there be some fairly practical intervention way before then.

I don't think that's really true though Anchovy. I often hear 'oh, I think I've had enough now' or 'I'm giving it up for lent' or 'I only drink at weekends' or 'ooh, i had a bit too much to drink last night so giving it a rest today' and that's completely socially acceptable.

Message withdrawn

Yes, MsDemeanour, I agree, but following my analogy through, that's the difference between "cutting things out" and going on an actual diet system. I do not think there is anything available as a widely understood and socially acceptable "programme".

In the same way you can go to a nutritionist and get a personal programme tailored for you (and then say "ooh, my nutririonist says I shouldn't eat xx") it would be great if there were also "alco-tritionists" who worked out a plan for you, but there was no stigma etc attached.

i think a lot of people beieve that they could stop drinking or cut down and are surprised at how hard they find it

well the definition of not being able to control your drinking without outside support is that you are a n acoholic which is probably why people dont go down the route of drinkwatchers

there is a drink aware website i think which does what you suggest

Thank you wannabe and msdemeanour.
I think this has turned into an interesting debate. It made it to the home page

do i not get a thank you then for bumping it a trillion times with my interesting views

Anchovy I think there is a website that does that
It is not promoted much though

I LOVE a drink too
Too much probably
I find it relaxing and fun

DH and I try very hard to keep each other in check, when it is creeping up we try and get it back down

It is very hard though.

I can happily drink half a bottle a night, even more happily half a bottle and another glass... I have all but given up spirits as I was having a v&t then half a bottle of wine but the v bit was getting bigger and bigger. That has helped a lot. And I try and have three nights a week off and usually manage two. I am constantly aware of how much I drink and I do consider myself to be a problem drinker. However I want to moderate it as (a) I don't really like being very drunk so drinking huge amounts in one go is not really for me (other than on occasion) and (b) I don't want to give up.

I do worry about the long term health issues though. I drank a LOT as a teenager and in my 20s. I do feel i renewed my liver a bit when pg though!

this is an intriguing little snippet of an article on treating alcoholism with lsd

Hi Countess Dracula, you could've written that post about me and my dh! I did hammer the booze in my teens and 20s and me and dh do try so hard to cut down/cut back and yet I don't really like being hammered just a bit tipsy and woozy.

The porblem for me is boredom, I do find the monotony of life boring and am somewhat of a stimulation seeker, in fact I meet quite a few of the criteria for a diagnosis of adult ADD! I find having a few glasses of wine in the eve helps releive this monotony, especially after a particularly dull day at work.