bongo

i'v always wondered how much i drank compared to others. in some ways it would bring me comfort to see that so and so drank 3 times the amount as me (not that it makes me happy to hear that). and in some ways, i'd feel like crap to see that i drank way more than the recommended dose per day. i'm just wondering how much anyone else would regularly drink, not that it's my business, but it seems like we can share things here. personally, i progressively worked up to a bottle-and-a-half to two bottles of 13% wine every day. that's alot for me considering it was over the course of an hour or so before bed. always a hangover, but i'm glad i'm done with all that. five days in and my mind is already clearer. still lonely, but i think it's worth it to find my place in life.

eire

during a typical binge (3 to 4 days typically) I would drink 12-16 500ml 5% cans of lagar. Beginning as soon as I woke up to when I went to bed.

madness!

Tazman53

bongo one thing I have found out in AA is it is not the amount of alcohol we drink, how often we drink, or how long we have drank that determines whether or not we are an alcoholic or not...... it is what happens to us when we drink!

For me I have found that one drink is to many and 1,000 is not enough.

catch-22

between one and one and a half bottles of wine (13%/14%, generally) every evening... and 40 fags a day... I'm broke!

Philly

Welcome,

I didn't really count but it was alot. I would say at least a pint which is 12 drinks I think. I used to drink wine and I found out Vodka would get me there faster and with less calories - big mistake. On weekends I drank from wake-up to pass out and then dealt with hangover Mondays and had a normal life during the week. It wasn't always like that so it definitely progresses which makes sense since tolerance is one of the many signs.

Good luck

problemchild

Way too much

paulmh

Way, way too much

zoomer

Enough to get me here

theaocp

I'd drink at least 1/2 pint of vodka on weekdays and 2-4 times that on weekend days. I was pretty functional, but was lacking in energy almost all the time. When not drinking, i was often irritable and my wife tells me i was mean and abusive when i was buzzed. I don't remember it being that way, but now that i've been sober for 5 days, i can see more clearly how that must have been the case.

As others have said ... too much.

Illuminated

I kept a tot of my last few drinking days. The last one was 1.32 pints of whisky.

This is an equivalent as what I actually drank that day was:

last few bottles of Leffe beer (6.6%)
remainders of the champagne bottle from New Years (12%)
remainder of the cooking wine from lunch (12%)
remainder of Cotes du Rhône from lunch (13.5%)
a good chunk out of a Pastis bottle (45%)

% alcohol content

Basically anything I could get my hands on. And I had no intention of hitting the Pastis as it mixes really badly with other drinks hangover wise and I tended to drink it out of control. But once you're going down that road the ends jusifies the means.

Needless to say the next day was pure misery plus the guilt from having had a black out... [I]while[I] my wife was talking to me about my drinking problem.

The next day I couldn't, for the life of me, remember what she had said but I knew it wasn't good (threats, ultimatums).

I don't want to do that anymore!

RufusACanal

I am always amazed when I see this question as if the answers will in some way be of service in recovery. As mentioned previously by Taz; quantities and qualities of booze never mattered, though maintaining the illusion of sanity via another drink always did until the illusion went away.

Either I am drinking and attempting to maintain drinking as a way of life or I have stopped drinking and I am learning to live free of the slavery that Alcoholism represents.

Astro

It really doesn't matter how much or what I drank, it's the effect it had on me for my entire life. I drank alcoholically from the very beginning.

When alcohol touches my lips, the phenomenon of craving kicks in. I immediately become powerless over alcohol and the ability to make sound and sensible decisions. I'm on a single track and headed in one direction, to drink myself into oblivion and/or blackout. Along the way, it's a guarantee that I'll take hostages and victimize a few people.

After reading those words, I can't imagine why I found that so attractive for so many years.

KindBird

I think this is a good question - we all need to get informed about lots of things including demystifying our pattern. It helped me a lot when I started trying to quit (keep in mind that I am a newbie) to get an idea of what my habit was.

I drank up to a full bottle of wine (13%) nightly for a number of years, and I am not a very large person so it really affected me. I did the math and realized it was equivalent to about a half-pint of vodka or the likes and somehow that shocked me because I have never been a hard liquor drinker and was shocked that what I was consuming in wine was a significant amount of alcohol. My problem was both amount and frequency - I grew duller and duller and have no doubt that the inside of my body and mind were growing duller and duller.

Keep posting, keep asking questions, keep working it.

tiburon88

The amount of alcohol one consumes does matter in regards to the physical damage and withdrawal. I drank a pint of vodka and 6-12 beers on drinking days.

tib

Latte

I had gastric bypass so I don't have to drink much to get the effects. It's not about how much I drank but why I drank. I HATE the taste of any alcohol. I drank because I wanted to escape. I no longer have anything to escape from.

bodychek

For me, my disease is made up of 2 traits (1) an obsession about drinking and (2) once I start I seldom cannot stop drinking. Where that took me at the end was that I was a nighttime "bar drinker". I usually would go to the local pub around 8pm after my kids were in bed and from 8pm to closing, as far as amounts go, I would drink between 10-20 beers and 8-16 shots of Jameson or other hard alcohol. I was a beer-and-a-shot drinker.

It didn't matter how much I drank, it was the reason I was drinking. I wasn't drinking to have fun, I was drinking to deal with life or temporarily avoid life altogether. When it didn't allow me the relief/escape anymore and stopped working I felt I only had 2 choices, quit or kill myself. I am so grateful I found recovery, being dead may not be much fun and I'm sure my kids would miss me....

"The dead only know one thing, it's better to be alive..."

least

Towards the end of my short but brilliant drinking career I was drinking from one to three bottles of wine - from the time I woke up till I went to bed. It started with one glass to 'relax' but went rapidly downhill. Glad I don't live in that 'neighborhood' anymore.

BackToSquareOne

Toward the end I was buying the large bottles of vodka by the case (I think 1.75 Liter) and averaging about a bottle a day. I doubt that I would have lived very long if I had not stopped.

CarolD

Welcome to our newest member of our Alcoholism Forum...
Illuminated...

ultimatum

Let's see... toward the end of my drinking career, I was homebrewing. So, a normal night after work, 3-4 beers at about 12-14% each. Sometimes wine, usually the whole bottle, can't let it go to waste or turn to vinegar. On a night out, usually start with a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer, a couple three martinis or manhattans at the bar and then switch to cheap beer toward the end of the evening. Then before bed have another homebrew as a nightcap.