NP OMG I’m a daily beer drinker and this made me snort-laugh! ![]() |
That’s so great, PP! Thanks for sharing! |
Your 1st drink was 9pm? I’d have to go to bed at 4pm. 🕓 😃 |
That sounds sad and pathetic, not fun. I'm not a teetotaler, but if you can't have a good time without alcohol and drugs, you're not actually having fun - you're just altering your mind to give you that illusion. |
oh well |
Lol ok. I'm not very concerned about a rando on the internet thinks, just wanted to add an honest answer to the thread from someone who enjoys partaking. I'm sure you know the phrase about opinions and AHs. |
I would say that my drinking increased with kids in that I started drinking regularly at home, including cocktails. Prior to kids I never really kept alcohol in the house. But when I did drink pre-kids I’d drink a LOT more, sometimes all night. Now I’d never have more than 3 drinks and that is very very rare and usually spread over hours, like Thanksgiving. |
Don’t tell PP but sometimes I bike to a brewery and have a drink! |
I love alcohol. I wish it wasnt so unhealthy :'( |
In my mid 40s, I started drinking a lot ... up to 3-5 drinks every evening, most evenings. So that's an average of maybe 28 drinks per week.
I cut back when I realized how much more I was drinking than the average American... I think this was the article I read and the graph I saw. I'm curious if it still holds true? It put me between the 9th and 10th decile for alcohol consumption. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think-you-drink-a-lot-this-chart-will-tell-you I tried to cut back one time, but then gained weight! I tried again, and used The Alcohol Experiment (This Naked Mind/ Annie Grace) and just stopped drinking over the course of two months. That was probably about 8 years ago now. I never made a big deal about "I'm sober XYZ days" or anything like that. I just decided I wasn't interested in drinking any longer. It doesn't make sense for me. Since about 2 years ago, I have occasionally had a glass of wine or champagne - I'd say twice a year. It is very seldom. I do like the taste of some wine. |
+1 |
And to people who want to know, what was I drinking? It was usually something like this: 1 beer when I got home from work "to unwind". I'd have a glass of wine while cooking dinner, then maybe a glass with the meal. Then in the late evening, I'd watch some TV while maybe folding the laundry or something, and I'd eat a salty snack (usually popcorn with something spicy like cayenne pepper!) and drink a shot of vodka over ice. Or maybe 2. That's how I got up to 5 drinks a day. Over about a decade the number of drinks I needed to have an effect started getting higher and higher - I guess that was building up a tolerance. I could see that it was just going to keep going higher and higher, hence my decision to just quit. |
I suspect all the studies linking low to moderate levels of drinking to health consequences are overstating the risk due to the existence of other factors that can’t be controlled against well.
That, and, it seems reasonable that drinking a lot of water and having a meal with the alcohol dilutes the alcohol by volume considerably, which eases the burden on the organs and probably mitigates a lot of the ill effects. We are in a moment right now where “everything is toxic” is being rewarded with a lot of attention. The long term risks of heavy drinking are well documented. I could be convinced that even moderate drinking, especially when not consumed along side food and water, carries increased risks. But 1 drink with food and water every night at dinner seems incredibly unlikely to pose a statistically significant risk to long term health… |
And judging by the goody goody answers, people are either lying or they are really boring. |
I have two drinks a night. More than I should but I eat smart, do my best to be fit, no drugs or tobacco, no infidelity, work hard, provide well for my family and I’m generous with my giving. If this is the worst flaw I will ever have I’m happy with it. |