Birth to 15: Blissfully sober
15 to 20: Learning to binge throughout highschool
20-32: Blissfully bingeing
32-45: "Responsibly" bingeing on weekends while raising children
45-50: Major stress hit and wine became an almost daily friend. Began at 5:00 while making dinner and stayed with me until bed. The kids (now teenagers) began to talk about my alzimers.
Now: Day 16 without my "friend"

from the moment I opened my eyes to the moment I closed them.

I know!! I had two heart attacks in 28 days in 2000 & I STILL smoked & drank & downed pills for another 8 1/2 years!!
Mind-boggling.

Everyday I would drink 6-12 beers... on Friday and Saturday, I would typically drink 15

For me it's usually 4-8 days of all-day drinking (starting at 8 in the morning before work, ending just before i shut my eyes at night) followed by 2-4 days of gruelling, sleepless sobriety. Never less than a half-bottle of red wine and a half-bottle of whiskey. Slowly increasing.

(It is the ruined sleep, I find, that causes the biggest challange to the dedicated drinker. This morning as i limped through the office towards the toilets, the earth suddenly jerked around ninety degrees and hit me in the face with the floor! Luckily, I don't think anyone else saw it.)

Sorry for sounding flippant, but drinking itself soemtimes feels like a terrible and distasteful joke. :(

Every day
 

Every day. I think I went about 5 days last summer without drinking. Then 2 days about 8 months later.

For years it was mostly wine or beer. Suddenly it was vodka. Always. Vodka stashed under the sink. Vodka hidden in my briefcase. Vodka before work. Vodka after work and all night long.

Each and every day as much as possible.
Waiting for the switch in my head to go "klick" so l would finaly feel a bit better...or not feel anything at all.


"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. "
William Blake, proverbs of hell.

Occasionally id spend an anxiety ridden day in bed but aside from that I drank to excess every day.

I drank every day all day, work or not. If I woke up at night, I'd sneak away and have a shot or 10 until I'd go back to sleep, then drank in my dreams. It was exhausting.

Started drinking regularly at 14 years old.

14-15: Friday or Saturday night binges every few weekends. Got in alot of trouble.
15-18: Friday and Saturday night drinking. Excessive but rarely to black out. The occasional mid-week drink or two from 17 onwards. Doing well at school and enjoying life. Didn't see much harm in this at the time.
19-21: 4+ times a week. Still didn't see the harm. Generally enjoyed myself, rarely annoyed anyone, but in retrospect I was quitting jobs and university courses constantly.
22-24: Generally drank all weekend, day and night, then occasionally Monday night too to get rid of the anxiety. The odd week or two off drinking here and there, but never more than 3 weeks. Mental health was really taking a hit now - becoming a moody, introspective drinker, suffering from bad social anxiety when sober.
24-25: 13 months of sobriety from alcohol, after lurching into a 7 day bender. Great period in my life. All of a sudden I was funny and talkative to friends and strangers alike, and generally an optimistic person.
25-26: Started drinking again. The odd brief week or two of 'controlled drinking', alot of Friday and Saturday binging, which spilled into mid-week about once every month or two, and culminated last week in a 6 day binge. Desperately trying to tell myself I was enjoying drinking again, but alot of depressive drinking episodes in there too.

I don't think I've honestly analysed my drinking 'career' like that before. I've always convinced myself that for most of my life my drinking was in control, and I only really lost the plot when I was 22. In reality bar a few years in my late-teens when living at home kept a check on it, its always been excessive. Even then my 'party piece' was sinking a 1 litre bottle of cheap cider to start the night before sipping on beers. That's not normal drinking, much as me and my friends thought it was a riot at the time.

I think I've cloaked my drinking problem behind the fact that binge-drinking is so commonplace among young British and Irish people. Reality is that I've always been teetering on the brink of being a daily drinker.

Everyday to varying degrees. Most weekdays I would "moderate" to one bottle of wine over the course of the evening-- and wake up feeling pretty good at work after a cup of coffee. Problem was that on weekends I'd drink more heavily, then find myself drinking off the hangover which would sometimes stretch into Monday and Tuesday.

16-17: HS, drink on weekends when could get beer; infrequent
17-21: college, drink on weekends regularly
21-23: work, drink on fri heavily, sat moderately
23-24: college, drink on fri/sat heavily; sometimes thur moderately to heavy

I would drink atleast 5 nights a week. My poison was bourbon. And atleast a pint of it when I drank.

Hi I'm a newbie here.

Day 8 of sobriety.

Have been drinking for 5 years. Started with a glass of wine and for the last 2 years a bottle and a half every night. No hangovers helped alot! I don't think I've had a sober night in at least 3 years.

Have tried moderation, but never worked, even when I didn't drink wine I would substitute beer, and even then all I could think about was the next bottle of wine.

My GP is supervising my withdrawls and touch wood am doing okay.

Your stories here are so inspiring and supportive. I am so pleased to have found this site.

Thurs - Saturday...but most recently almost daily for two weeks.

It started with just weekends..Fri and/or sat. depending on what was going on.
When I stopped working it was more often. The husband and I used to have a wed. thing where we would buy a fifth of Jim beam. After a couple months of doing this we had to start buying the 1.75l since a fifth wasnt enough. then add fri and sat.
My son got older and got in to little league and we became friends with the coachs, that would lead to drinks after games, our wed night and the weekend.
Years later we moved from MI to Iowa, then it was anytime our new friends called and said wanna have a beer. That was probably about 5 times a week, including weekends. And heavy drinking for me all the time. The only time I could control my drinking was if I went out with my girlfriends and I had to drive myself to the bar. Then I would have a few, but would leave early so I could get home and have a few more.

Every once in a while aged 12-14
Once a week 14-16
16-18, can't remember but maybe only 3-4 times a week, bad though.
18-30, everyday.

Every other day during the week every night on the weekend. A lot of times I would drink when I was performing to get rid of the hangover from the night before. During the week when the hangover was gone and the urge came on I would start the process all over again.

I was a daily drinker from age 18 till age 39.

I started off being a few cans of beer a night and sessions at weekends.

By my early 30s I drank at lunchtimes as well as an increased amount at night.

By my late 30s I was drinking up to seven pints of beer every lunchtime and vodka or whisky every night.

From Jan 2012 until I quit in Feb I drank a minimum of half a bottle of vodka a night poured into my cans of lager so my wife didn't see how much I was drinking. The vodka was hidden away and she didn't know I was drinking it, I got 3 drinks out a half bottle.

At the end I was chugging vodka neat and chasing it with lager. I could put away a quarter bottle of vodka in under 30 seconds.

When I look back on this now I have written it out my decline was obvious for all to see, never again.

I drank maybe every third or forth day. And that was because I'd go at it so hard for days on end, I'd end up with a two or three day hangover.

17-22 -- 1-3 beers once in a month or so.
22-25 -- every weekend and occasionally on weekdays. Usually a 6 pack and rarely more, no hard stuff.
25-27 -- 12 pack a day, every other day. Hid this from my parents.
27-30 -- started living alone and also work from home. Things really went downhill since that. 18 pack a day plus sharing a 0.75 L of Jack Daniels with my drinking buddy during the weekend.

Needless to say, no social life whatsoever. Put up about 70 extra pounds, already lost 15 of them thanks to sobriety. I'm on day 14 now.

When I started out I was a part time binge drinker, getting drunk on the odd weekend at a party. When I started working 5 years ago I started having a whiskey or glass of wine after work every evening to "relax".

Eventually that escalated to a few whiskeys or a bottle of wine a night. When I stopped getting bad hangovers, I thought I could drink with no problems. I drank every night to black out point, I drove my car under the influence many times and luckily I did not kill someone.

Then the anxiety started and I knew I could not drink anymore...

I was a binge drinker. On average I'd say I drank 3-4 days a week. I didn't drink on days that I worked (12 hours shifts), but then on my days off I'd hit the bottle hard. For years I was either drunk or withdrawing. Talk about a living hell!

Started around 3-5 in the afternoon during the week. On weekends I would start around 11-12. I would drink until I made myself go to bed. Sometimes 11. Sometimes I would stay up most of the night.

Drinking..
 

Well pretty much drink every night..did not realize what damage it was doing to my body till friends told me..increased drinking when my mom was given 3 months to a year to live..I just want to enjoy what time I have left with her!! How can I beat this..drinking for over 14 years..what am I suppressing..

Every night for me too for years, slowly but surely the amount I would drink grew till I had enough, permanently.

i would drink 3-4 days a week. and i was limited to that because i was still trying to do decent in school

Morning,Day,and Night for 20 years. So glad to not live like that anymore. :)

I started off with weekends, then a couple nights, eventually every night and ended up all day every day. Once i started drinking during the day it went from bad to holy ****.

I had actually been drinking since I was old enough to sneak out of my bedroom window and go to our local street/highschool parties on the weekends so of course I did not do it everyday back then but would do anything to get it. What I mean by that is that wherever it was and If I could be there, I was there. As I got older my friends and boyfriends would buy it and stuff like that. A few stores I lived by did not card me. It was really easy to get plus my mom and my stepdad/her ex boyfriend (before she was married the stepdad) had bars in their houses so there was always liquor someplace... It just basically took over my entire being before I knew it. I have had a marriage fall apart because of it and a 12 year relationship go down the drain for about 50% of it (him and I are still bestfriends. He is actually helping me through this). I always knew that sooner or later something was going to happen or I was damn lucky and let me assure you. I do not have good luck. That is when I got that adema, my stomach hurt and was swollen. I almost felt gassy, constipated andI could not eat very well because I was not used to eating hardly. Just drinking. It made my dates so mad. I could lose a date fast! Anyhow, everyone was telling my skin and eyes were yellow. THIS IS WHEN I KNEW..... I finally went to Urgent Care and he put me into the hospital PRONTO! I did not realize how bad I looked until I looked at myself now without just 14 days without any alcohol. WOW. I have a very long way to go though. I am still scared and pray that everything works out. I have confidence that it will as long as I take care of me though. I am sorry for the long post. I ramble on sometimes. It feels good to talk about positive achievements, I guess. Thank you for asking and the best of luck to you!