calmself

Many countries say consuming 14 drinks/week for women and 21 drinks for men is safe. Two questions:

1.How can this be true since it is poison basically and it can and it will put the drinker on a slippery slope? Isn't this the evil design of the alcohol industry?

2. At your peak,how many standard drinks were you consuming each week?

MantaLady

It's actually 14 units for women and 21 units for men not drinks. So a can of beer (average size of 568ml) at 5% ABV equates to 2.95 units, which means to stick within the so called guidelines a male should not have more than 7 cans of 5% strength beer a week.

To work out units for any drink you take the ABV (alcohol percentage) times the ml (size) divide by 1000 and then you get the units in that drink. I can say I probably drank over 60 units a week (sometimes much more) which is 4 times the recommended amount.

I had to do a course after a DUI 5 years ago so had to learn how to know what I was drinking and calculate how long it would take to be sober to drive etc. Not that it did me any good as I just stayed home and drank more hence ending up at SR and getting sober.

january161992

i didnt drink everyday
i didnt get drunk every time i drank
my last drink was 1 beer and then 4 hours later 1/2 of another
the old timers spilled more than i drank

when i got sober i still had money and stuff

and i am an alcoholic

as a senior in high school my life was death and blackness and i hadnt yet drank

its MUCH more about my unmanageable life
its MUCH more about my selfish self- centered nature and self- centered fear

im the problem not the drugs/ alcohol

really important information i didnt know when i was new

ScottFromWI

You'll find conflicting info about pretty much every substance you can consume saying it's either good or bad for you. Alchohol is no different.

Bottom line for me though is that the only quantity I can safely consume is zero. What other people think doesn't apply.

MantaLady

In fact this has brought to mind how sneaky my consumption was once I learned about the units thing. I started getting bottles of wine with only 10.5% ABV which was 8 units. It takes 1 hour per unit to be processed by the body and you have to start that clock 1 hour after you stop drinking making 9 hours before I could drive. So...I used to get wine on the way home and make sure I had drunk the full bottle by no later than 9pm. If I had more after 9pm.....I used to work from home the next day. Thanks for the post calmself as it has reminded me of the madness of it all and how calculating I had become to make sure I got my fix.

Like Scott says, my recommended weekly intake is and always will be 0 units, life is much more rewarding this way!

gettingsmarter

I used to judge how much more I needed to drink based on how close to vomiting I was. Just on the edge of spewing was my desired space. That's how much.
Didn't always work out though. Not real sure how much I was drinking in the end.

Enough to be miserable is how much.

lessgravity

This.

Hevyn

At the end of my drinking career, it was in my system 24/7. I stopped counting how many.

least

Same as Hevyn, I was drinking all day, every day. I'm so glad I'm sober now.

REM700

I still remember how much I was drinking. I'd buy three 1.75ml bottles of vodka every Friday night on my way home. Usually plow through one bottle Friday and Saturday and open the second on Sunday. Then I'd have a bottle and a half to last me through the work week.

That went on for years; makes me sick to think about it.

FreeOwl

Neither of these questions hold interest for me anymore.

I remember times when I’d torment myself with them.

It’s so much happier, easier, more free and joyful to no longer care - because NONE drinks has proven to be very healthy for me. Other people can do what they will.

August252015

I laughed so hard the other day when someone said "those guidelines aren't meant for alcoholics!" Indeed, the right amount of red wine and the health of my heart, for example, is none.

Andante

Huh... always wondered what a "unit" is. I knew it was smaller than a "standard drink" but didn't know how it was calculated.

Here in the U.S., a "standard drink" is a 1.5-ounce shot of liquor (at 40% ABV), a 5-ounce glass of wine (12%), or a 12-ounce beer (5%). I believe the guidelines are one standard drink per day for women, or two for men.

There are lots and lots of substances which are safe -- or even healthful (vitamins, as one example) -- to consume in small quantities but poisonous in larger ones. The guidelines have nothing to do with the "evil designs of the alcohol industry." People have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years -- long before there was an industry to market it.

At my peak, I was drinking the equivalent of 10 to 15 standard drinks a day, sometimes even more. Hmmm, 5 to 8 times the recommended maximum consumption? That couldn't be a problem, could it?

As others have stated, the total consumption nowadays is zero, so these questions are of academic interest only.

D122y

I drank off and on. Sometimes daily, sometimes weekly. Sometimes 1 beer, others half a fifth of whiskey.

I tried every kind off moderation, every type of booze.

If not for SR, I was a gone.

I have the desire to quit, plus the education.

Now, sometimes I suffer, but usually I thrive.

I got 3 hours of sleep last night. When I was drunk, I would be sick. Now am fine.

Thanks,

goodbyeevan

I remember when I used to Google things like this. Trying to rationalize and get around my problem. (Not saying you are). I never came close to staying in those guidelines. I just assumed that was for super uptight religious types, like my parents. Not for me. I'm young, I like to have fun, I work at a bar, surely I'm in the same realm as everyone else I know. Well a few years later, and it didn't matter. I knew i was blowing the recommendations waaaay out of the water. By then I was physically dependant on alcohol. Enough to be miserable, indeed.

Forward12

It varies by country, but the levels they state are the maximum levels that can be consumed safely. For the US for instance 3 drinks a day for woman and 4 for men, with a maximum of 7 a week for women and 14 for men. Though the prefered amount is 1 a day for women and 2 for men.
Of course this is of no use to alcoholics as most of us would put down a weeks worth of the maximum amount in a day.

calmself

goodbyeevan, I am not trying to rationalize drinking at all. A drop of poison is poison however you look at it. My peak consumption was about 14 drinks a week.
Generally it was about 8-9 standard drinks per week (2 days a week), no more. I hated that too. Hated it totally. I could not even handle that. No harm in admitting.

AnvilheadII

i didn't know i was supposed to keep track!!!!