Battling the bottle.

[Jezza]

That's not really refraining, is it?

True. I just don't want to preach.

How can I put this while avoiding, as I'd like to, any criticism of others...

Alcohol, spliffs, E's... it's about deciding to live one's life in a different way, without these things, and realising that life can actually be better without them for some individuals.

Or, for me, realising that I could not live my life that way any more.

Plus one : thumbs up :

[mrcharly-YHT]

It's pretty much impossible to do any damage with spliffs and bongs.

Not in my experience. I know a couple of people who have large empty periods of memory due to overindulgence in spliffs.

I take it you've never come across Afgani Black.

[oncemore]

"I take it you've never come across Afgani Black. "

That was a LONG time ago....

What pray are bongs? And pills surely covers a multitude of susbtances ( I used to be very fond of speed and guiness and gin cocktails).
 
 
 

[Jezza]

I once had a very nice glass bong made out of bits of old lab equipment. The Afghan black did for it in the end - the plug of resin got so hot that on a particularly long drag the glass bowl started glowing red then exploded with a crack, spattering bits of black all over the ceiling. Silence, then a rather stunned 'Woah, man...' 

Ah yes. Pills and bongs. Possible damage might include schizophrenia and assorted types of bipolar disorder. Ask me how I know . 

[pcolbeck]

What pray are bongs? 

A bubble pipe or hookah that cools the smoke by passing it through water. Cab be a commercially made object (very popular in teh Arab world for smoking fruit tobaco) or home made from lab equipment or a plastic bottle and a ball point pen case and sellotape.

[Wendy]

50-70 units a week?  Fk me man, that's an incredible amount of alcohol, enough to see you without a working liver in a very short few years!!!

[pcolbeck]

70 units is about 10 pints a day !

[hellymedic]

70 units is about 3-5 pints a day !

FTFY...

[Julian]

50-70 units a week?  Fk me man, that's an incredible amount of alcohol, enough to see you without a working liver in a very short few years!!!

It's really not.  70 units = 10 units a day = 3 anna bit pints of Carlsberg Export or 5 pints of regular Carlsberg.

I probably got through about that per week at university, courtesy of the £1 / pint bar.

[oncemore]

70? Nobbut a drop honest! As above, I reckoned 1 1/2 to 2 bottles of gin/brandy a day comes out at about 300 p.w. If I could stick to 70 I'd not have bothered stopping.

[pcolbeck]

50-70 units a week?  Fk me man, that's an incredible amount of alcohol, enough to see you without a working liver in a very short few years!!!

It's really not.  70 units = 10 units a day = 3 anna bit pints of Carlsberg Export or 5 pints of regular Carlsberg.

I probably got through about that per week at university, courtesy of the £1 / pint bar.

Your right Liz. Don't know what happened with my maths.  Average pint these days is 5% which is 2.8 units so 70 units is 25 pints or about 3.5 pints per day.

[Chris S]

As usual, I suspect it'll be your parents' fault when it comes to how tolerant/intolerant you are to booze - in that it's set in your genes.

The BBC carried a story about a mid-forties housewife who turned her liver to jelly in little more than three years on half a bottle of red a day. That's 35 units a week.

The oldest man in Norfolk died recently, aged 106. When previously asked what he attributed his longevity to, he said "Long walks and half a bottle of red a day.".

Two people with startlingly different outcomes to the same intake, though granted - a mans larger metabolism might help a bit with tolerance.

The maximum recommended levels are complete guesses, but the stats show an increase in poor health in line with increased levels of intake - in exactly the same way as happens with smoking. But nobody can predict how each of us will tolerate long term high intakes of booze (or anything else for that matter). That's why the "Moderation Message" works for everyone.

I've found a middle ground that currently works for me. I drink much less during the week now - quite often not at all. Weekends, I might despatch a bottle of red on two nights. This blows through the recommended daily maximum amount for men (4 units) but keeps me around the recommended weekly maximum.

Will I be able to tolerate this long-term? Who knows? It's a lottery.

[bobajobrob]

I take it you've never come across Afgani Black.

It's just black. It may be stronger than other kinds of black, but then skunk can be strong too. THC content is largely irrelevant, you just smoke more or less of it to achieve the same effect, in the same way you don't drink scotch from pint glasses.

[Greenbank]

50-70 units a week?  Fk me man, that's an incredible amount of alcohol, enough to see you without a working liver in a very short few years!!!

It's really not.  70 units = 10 units a day = 3 anna bit pints of Carlsberg Export or 5 pints of regular Carlsberg.

I probably got through about that per week at university, courtesy of the £1 / pint bar.

At Uni it was a one pint per year rule on birthdays. 11am start in the Student Union bar. $DEITY knows where you'd end up.

On my 21st I finished my 21st pint of Guinness at around 11pm still in the Union bar at which point we went out on the town. It was a Thursday so it was probably Cairos, wouldn't have been Roxy because Thursday was Grab-A-Granny night (a.k.a. over 25's only).

Draught Guinness back then was usually 4.3% ABV so that's 51 units of booze in one 12 hour sitting.

I now stick to under 21 units a week. When I first tried this I was surprised at how little booze it is once you work it out and keep a tally.

My tolerance is also completely gone. I'm often slurring my words after 4 pints now, which is nice.

[Jaded]

I'm ofshen slluruuuring my wordssshhh after 4shh pintshhh now

Pardon?

[nuttycyclist]

...in the same way you don't drink scotch from pint glasses.

Is that where I'm going wrong then? 

[Mr Larrington]

in the same way you don't drink scotch from pint glasses.

Who is this "you", paleface?

Drink it straight from the bottle; it saves on washing-up

[bobajobrob]

Not sure I'd agree with that, drinking 10 units of alcohol via pure ethyl alcohol will have a different effect to drinking 4 pints of lager.

But if you sipped the alcohol over the same time period as you would have drunk the pints, the effect would be the same, no? Only without the bloat from 4 pints of liquid

[Hummers]

Have had some unpleasant physical experiences since I've started to drink again.

I can have two pints of beer and feel OK. Any more than that and I feel like crap within an hour.

I can have two large glasses of wine and feel OK. Any more than that and I feel like crap within an hour.

I've also think that my fitness on the bike has been affected by my drinking.

I really enjoy drinking beer and wine again but it seems that although I can quaff many pints down without getting lashed, the detrimental affect it has on my health is more obvious than before.

Another thing, over the period I gave up the  booze, I ate better, exercised the same amount but still dropped below 16st for the first time in about 5 years. Since I have started to drink again, this process is going into reverse. 

Of course, all of this may be due to my having a succession of colds and man-flu but it could suggest that my body is trying to tell me something.

H

[Jezza]

I was thinking of this thread earlier today when I read this article in The Times, asking whether as a recovering alcoholic, it's ever OK to drink again. It's been on my mind lately. Playing mental chess with myself again, I've started to occasionally harbour dangerous thoughts, along the lines of how I'm such a different person now after 8 years of sobriety, perhaps I actually could drink again. I've made such a virtue out of giving up purely on willpower it's become tired. Maybe if I faced up to it it wouldn't be such a huge issue. Just go out for a pint of Guinness. I'm not thinking of whiskey or anything - that'd just be mad. There's a reason they call it spirit. It is the imbibing of spirits - possession by them, a giddy warm bloodrush where you lick the last drops of liquid fire from the glass. Maybe that's why they call it liquor. No, I'm not thinking of that at all. 

Maybe there's a known condition called '8 years in' or something, which is when it starts to catch you out again. I don't want to feel starving hungry, hideously bloated on cheap lager (urp) as I so often did. But I'm so changed - I have a skill, a talent, a career, self-respect. In the old scheme of skewed priorities it was drink first, everything else afterwards. But now if I'm warm and have just had a good dinner, why not, with my cigar, enjoy a glass of John Jamesons finest golden liquid smoothness again, just a sip? But I'm just scratching an old itch there. I know if I ignore it it'll go away. Because otherwsie I'll end up like this:

“I couldn't resist the challenge,” says Claire. “Within minutes we had downed the first glass of whisky and then another and another until the bottle was empty. That was the start of a two-day bender that ended up in hospital after I knocked myself out. I understand now that I can't ever have just one drink. I never could stop at one.” [/quote]   

[Sergeant Pluck]

Some months after I stopped I had the mind games. I'd been thinking that I missed pubs, or one or two particular pubs. I thought I'd pay a visit and see if the bonhomie and the warm glow actually existed without being hammered. That's what I thought I was thinking - what was really going on was little niggling voice in my head suggesting that I might like a dose of oblivion.

Anyway, I went to the pub. I had a coke. The pub was rubbish. I hated having drinkers near me. I bought a pint. I found it impossible to enjoy: the memories of the mess it had got me into at times made it unpleasant. I also realised the utter pointlessness of "a pint" to me - the was no point unless it was the first of many.

a succession of colds and man-flu

One of the first things I noticed after stopping, once the initial phase was over, was a drastic reduction in colds and flu.

[oncemore]

For probably the first time, I "agree" with The Times: ".....only abstinence will enable her to control her drinking. For those who are dependent, just one drink is not an option. They must stop and never start again."

ONE drink is never an option for a drunk - because it doesn't get them DRUNK. And that is the reason why drunks drink. They like being drunk.

My working assumption is "one drink today, one bottle tomorrow". I expcet I said this before, but some years ago after 21 months stone dry I had two whiskies on Xmas Eve. Before that year was out .... back on half to one  bottle a day. Now that I don't have the discipline imposed by work, it would increase VERY quickly. My other assumption is that if/when I do start again, two years to live.

[RW]

I'm glad I read this thread.  It confirmed something I'd been thinking about for a while but hadn't done anything about.  I couldn't remember the last day I did't have a drink - apart from three days in July when I was ill.  I have cut down quite a bit - avoided opening a bottle of red on a work night, and drunk water in pubs.  I've been recording everything I've drunk and in the last three weeks it's been 18, 32 (bit of a slip up there) and 22.  I'll have to watch it this week, I've had 11 already - btw I start the week on Sunday.

It is surprising how little 21 units is.

[toekneep]

Your not mixing up your units with your push ups are you Robert?  Only joking.

Those figures are very impressive. I too very rarely go a night without a drink and I am currently measuring my intake with a view to whittling it down but I'm ashamed to say that I have a lot further to go to get anywhere near your levels. Last week was 57 and this week I will be please to stay below 50. My optimistic aim is to produce a graph of consumption that falls steadily until I get to around 30 units a week, I would be happy with that.

[Wendy]

I've shocked myself, downed 10 units this week, which is massive for me.