I think my alcohol calories are more like 1,200 a day - two bottles of cava must be at least 600 each, no? Food is probably no more than about 700 but enough to take me to the limit per day. On the horrible binges (that I am determined not to repeat) when I drank a litre of sherry a day I dread to think!
I'm going to bore you with my drinking story, in a nutshell!
My dad was an alcoholic which always put me off drinking but even before that, when I was 14, a friend and I decided to 'experiment' one evening with gin from her mum's cupboard. We ended up horribly ill, vomiting everywhere, my mum was called and got the emergency GP out as I was unconscious. I ended up in hospital for two days, felt lousy, could barely eat for a week and decided to NEVER drink again. And I didn't! I had a very occasional glass of lager, usually under social pressure, right up until my early 20s. My father had died rather a traumatic death and I'd been depressed for a while after. I discovered that if I bought a quarter bottle of whisky I could drink it down (neat, from the bottle) and fall into oblivion. I did this probably once every three weeks or so when the feelings of sadness were to difficult to cope with. Eventually I went to university where I barely drank, never got drunk EVER, just not interested and hated the feeling. This continued - I would think i never drank more than 2-3 units a week. Probably less. Then I met my daughter's father when I was in my 30s and I had an ectopic pregnancy which nearly killed me. I became very anxious all the time and was afraid to eat so lost a terrible amount of weight. In photos I am like a skeleton, it is horrible. I was in my early 30s then and sent to a psychologist as I couldn't eat - not anorexic at all, I knew I was so skinny, but when I tried to eat my stomach would clench and I would become in pain - no tests had shown any physical reason for it. He suggested that I drink a 'tot' of brandy before trying to eat, to relax me. And this is where my REAL drinking began. The tot of brandy did help me but turned within about 6 months to drinking almost a bottle a day. Then I got pregnant and stopped altogether. I didn't drink through pregnancy but the urge was by then always there and I longed for dd to be born so I could have a drink. For the first year or two I just had a couple of glasses of wine after she'd gone to bed but since then it has slowly crept up to where I am now - she's 13. The last 2 years have been particularly bad. I used to stick to lager, then turned to wine when my weight crept up. Then I just ended up drinking more wine than I ever had lager. It's only over the last year that spirits have entered the equation to devastating effect emotionally and physically.
And here I am now. Still unable to eat without a drink but unable to control how much I drink. It's not an easy conundrum ...