How much DID you spend a month?
 

So how much did everyone spend on alcohol when they were drinking?

I was going $250 to $300 a month.

I am sorry but I have to say it I am offended, this isn't the brag line what I spent was way too much on something that kills ppl everyday and I am so not proud of the fact that I even used let alone how much.........maybe you should of thought twice about this post because I am sure I am not alone!

Wldkatz,

Really? Didn't mean to offend anyone. I'm not looking for a winner or anything. I'm just interested.

That is why I asked the question.

How much did your car cost? You know those kill people all the time too.

How much DID you spend a month?
 

Hi,

I am new here and found this question about how much we spend a good question (was not offended). I think this alcohol stuff spends is in many ways - money, energy, life in general. So in answer to your question, for me about $150. I was mostly a wine drinker and did not drink every day. I love not having to think about it any more - the wine that is.

Millions. Billions. Brazilians.

Hey now. Let's keep it peaceful please.

What I spent is pretty irrelevant, it just doesn't matter. I drank the cheapest crap I could find, my concern was quantity, not quality. I was a complete glutton when it came to booze.

In typical alcoholic fashion, I put drinking before anything. So my children ate mac & cheese and ramen noodles if it meant I had a choice between buying alcohol or good food.

I am not offended by the question. I am thinking..it was alot less then it would have been if I had been using narcotics..prob. why I stuck with alcohol...prob bout 200 +/-, I drank hard liquor, 1/5 at a time, bout 4 times a week..cost bout 13 bucks...not expensive..but gotta think of the extra cigarettes, which when drinking had one lit constantly....amazing money we throw away.and I always felt like it was so cheap how could i go wrong in drinking...geeeez

Not offended either. I was spending between 200-300/month. I liked the big bottles of white wine, and I would get whichever chardonnay was on sale.

It sucks that alcohol is so cheap, because I think that my cheapness outweighs my desire for alcohol. I used to do coke in my twenties, but I only paid for it a handful of times. I was friends with a guy who used to buy coke all the time, and one day he told me that I should start paying for it. I told him--If I have to pay for it, I'm not doing it. I never tried any of the cheaper drugs out there, which is just as well.

I never really did the math, but like ClimbingUp I would get the big bottles of wine and towards the end I'd get what was on sale as long as it was the same style I liked. I'd say about $200-$300 a month as well. To think what I could have done with all the money instead...

Okay, I am going to do the math here. I was spending on average 200/month on alcohol for at least the past ten years (counting alcohol at restaurants and bars). That's $24000. OMG, how depressing. I had never done the math before. If only I'd been putting that money into an investment fund!!

Hi All,

I was not offended either. I have no idea how much I spent on alcohol but I would like to just have a part of the money that was spent in bars. When I was partying at home it was cheap compared to going out. Maybe we should each start a jar for funds.

Geez, it is like a forum of a bunch of could have beens.....the money we wasted..and I am sure it is underestimated....well just think..i have save about 120 bucks so far..wohoo...wel not really , have to pay off the meds..doctor, and rehab..then I start saving...:)

We've actually been discussing exactly the same thing on another thread in here, nobody there even considered being ofended I don't think.

We actually went a step further, worked out that between 5 of us we had spent nearly £300,000 so far in our lifetimes

Thats probably about half a million dollars yeh ?

That is over a 15 year plus time though.

Worked out about £50000 for me myself.

In answer to your question though, I reckon about £300 a month.

Think its a very good question, makes people sit back and think anyway.

My doc was meth not alcohol. I was spending too much. :)
I remember being so happy to take that money and pay
a bill instead of my dealer.....

It is so empowering to not be a slave to the drug anymore
especially financially! :)

Minimum one bottle of wine a night, often two, so between $300 - 400 a month. Hindsight is twenty twenty vision indeed.

Anyone heard of Natural Ice? Very cheap beer but high in alcohol. I spent about $7 a day on a 12 pack X 7 = $49 X 4 = $196 a month. Wow. I am unemployed, don't know how I came up with all the money to buy it.

I think this is a great question. Spending money on alcohol is a part of what makes some of our lives unmanageable.

So let's see.... I drank 2-3 bottles of wine a day.

Average bottle of wine $10-$20

On the low end... $600/month

On the high end... $1800/month

That is very disgusting.

Oddly enough my alcohol bill went down thanks to my addition.

I went from 6 packs of Guinness to 30 packs of Icehouse. From fifths of Stolichnaya to half gallons of Popov. I found that if I didn't eat I could get buzzed for even less.

dont think its how much we spent...

its how much we lost, and will continue to, if things dont change...

Yes I agree with you. I have three years under my belt now, and it's not something I like to think about. The "money" I spent.
But it IS part of the reality I need to remember.
With meth, it starts out so easy, and that voice still comes into my head every so often. Just $40.00 will last you so long, just think of all the things.. It used to last me a month. By the end when I joined I was going through an $80.00 bag every 2-3 days.
So thank you for that reminder that I sometimes forget. The voice likes to remind us of the easy, comforting part of our addiction, I've found it is up to me to remind myself of the reality of it. For "ME" it is a good reminder of where my life was.

:ghug

The actual dollar value was small when compared to the damage it did. I don't think it's possible to put a price tag on years lost.

I was not offended by the question at all.

I was a bar drinker, and I had to be the big shot of the bar drinking top shelf liquor. I easily averaged $1k per month.

This just about sums up my own take on it. Money comes and goes. I'm not minimizing the monetary aspect of it however, as I'm well aware that the small fortune I wasted could have served much higher purposes.
Were I handed back that money, I would probably consider it tainted and maybe donate it to charity or something along those lines. I'm not being a martyr, I just figure that I've already had my "fun" (sarcasm) and I'd be ashamed to spend it on myself unless *absoltely* necessary.

I did this calculation one morning at about 160 days and I had saved about $1500. I did this because I needed something tangible to keep me sober at that moment. And then I had to wonder where that money was?? Where did I get that money anyway?

So anyway, I also have to consider the cost of the extra stuff I bought that I don't need to spend money on today: breath mints, gum, body spray, perfume, more cigarettes, mixers, wine openers, plastic cups, all kinds of stuff I bought when I was drunk that I did not need, misc stuff in stores so it didn't look like I just came in for alcohol (though I had). Oh boy, and then there is a wreckage...legal costs, court costs, increased car insurance, car repairs, insurance bills for various alcohol related injuries, ad infinitum. Oh yeah, I should be much better off :)

I am never offended at be reminded of where I came from. I am grateful today.

The truth ain't pretty eh?

:)

I don't like war stories-but I'm okay with being honest about what I spent.Lemme see-when my fav bottle of wine was on special-it was 10 bucks.That's 20 dollars a day.140 a week.Not a great outcome.But mostly?It was 15 dollars a bottle.30 dollars a day.Put in 20 dollars a day for cigarettes too and you're talking almost half my wages for 2 weeks then gone in a week.I didn't care.

I do now.

Ridiculous.

I'm so grateful to have my life back.And some sanity.

Jules.

It's impossible for me to guess...
I was a blackout drinker...usually in bars...tipped well
took taxis....averaged $30 weekly at liquor store.

I always took $30 for a night out + credit cards
and a check book. If I did not have a date
I went out alone 6 nights a week.

That was my final 5 years of drinking.
I quit almost 20 years ago....booze was cheaper then.
:eek:

I think I'll have to join in the "Too darn much" crowd.

If I was sticking to home only my bill roughly ran 200 bucks a month (with coke to mix with my tumbler of scotch).

If I went out twice a month my bill would easily double (but not because I drank a lot when I went out). Normally I would drink VERY little while out but would pay for our entire table (I hate people picking a tab apart for every little drink so I would just pay the whole damn thing)....so with that, my bill was always high.

And NO, I am not offended. It is a very simple question. I think it is good for us addicts to know just how much we wasted on destroying our lives. We know what it did to us....we know what it did to our families.....we know what it did to our health....why not know what it did to your pocketbook. Come on people...need to thicken up that skin a bit. (if you found the question offensive....just choose not to answer)

the batteries in the calculator died...

to darn much!

So if we had put our monies together, we could have bailed out the US..LOL

I'm not offended at all. In fact, Before I retired as a CPA, I did these wild spreadsheets to figure out how long my retirement funds would last if I retired. I had to force myself to figure in $300 a month just for wine (@ $10/bottle). It always drove me crazy what a waste of money this was. In addition, when I drink wine, I snack like crazy, which adds another $50 a month. I used to think about how that would make a monthly payment on a midpriced auto. How ridiculous.