How Much Alcohol Is Too Much? The Facts Might Surprise You

i drink quite alot at the weekend that dont make me and alcholic im nt dependonta on it all week !!!!!!!! x

Thanks! This info helped my school work!!!

Keepsafe!!

Hi Dr. Neill,

I had emailed you previously, (Sean is a 21-year old man who had emailed me privately about a lot of strange physical symptoms he has continued to experience after excessive drinking. -Neill)

You have the details of what is going on, so I’ll try to make this a bit of a brief update. I saw an ENT recently about this whole thing and he did a laryngoscope of my throat, including the trachea and windpipe. He visualized the area where I was having irritation and saw no irritation/inflammation or any signs of "acid", so he ruled out reflux. He said one doesn’t just develop reflux overnight or have symptoms of it overnight.

He also said since my endoscopy showed nothing that could cause this, and I was unresponsive to the antacids/PPI’s, that this is not an acid problem. He wants to do an ultrasound of my thyroid, and says that this could be psychological stress.

I am taking a homeopathic herb at the prescription of a homeopath to try and help with this. A new symptom is a burning sensation I get around my neck, specifically high up around the back of it that can spread to my shoulders at times. I also become dizzy and get heart palpitations after I eat. I almost feel semi-intoxicated after eating, which is unusual for me. I’ve had a normal EKG test at the beginning of all this, so I’m not sure if that rules out a heart cause.

I was looking into environmental allergens to see if that could possibly be the cause as well. I have 3 birds staying in the house (not mine, they are here temporarily, have been for a few years) that could possibly be causing my problems, but I’ve never had a problem with them before.

At this point I am trying to figure out if trying gin for the first time caused all this, or maybe I was leading up to some type of imbalance that happened to be set off at the time of the gin. My symptoms are very strange and many people I’ve talked to have hinted at a "body imbalance", but I’m trying to find out what it is or how I can fix it.

I have remained sober for quite some time now, but this has not cured me. The hardest thing about this is maintaining a positive attitude and mood. Sometimes I feel like I’m no longer myself because I cannot enjoy the things I used to, and my sense of well-being has suffered a bit from the annoyance of my symptoms and uncertainty as to what this is or when it will pass.

I do not intend to drink my problems away, or ignore them. I want to fix them.

Please let me know if you have any advice for me.

Thanks - Sean

Dear Sean,

I want to be clear up front that I am a psychologist, not a medical doctor, so I can’t give you medical advice.

However, your story has a strange similarity to my own–a variety of physical symptoms that the medics couldn’t explain.

I was 36 and had been sick off and on for about a year. I was hospitalized for a duodenal ulcer, which turned out not to exist. Then I was hospitalized for a gall bladder attach, only to find my gall bladder was fine. Later, due to extreme pain in my chest, left shoulder and left arm, the suspicion was heart attack. My heart was and is fine. Then it was a hernia–excruciating pain in the groin and lower abdomen–no again.

I saw a number of specialists before I finally went to the Mayo clinic in Rochester Minnesota for a full workup. All systems came out clean, but I still had symptoms, so I asked for a psychiatric referral. The Mayo clinic psychiatrist I saw concluded (or speculated) that through my excessive drinking I had developed a sensitivity (allergy-like) to alcohol.

He went on to explain “projected symptoms.” Apparently, when one’s body is reacting to a toxin, in my case, metabolically, the symptoms can be projected to some other seemingly unrelated part of the body. He said the mechanism of this is not understood, but he had encountered it a number of times with alcoholics in his practice at the Mayo. Projected symptoms obviously make diagnosis very difficult

His recommendation was that I stop drinking for five months and “see what happens.” I stopped and within a few months most of the symptoms had disappeared.

Some years later I drank 1/2 oz. of wine for a toast. A day and a half later I had such pain in the groin that my wife was urging me to check into the hospital. Then I remembered the wine. We waited. The pain was completely gone a day later.

The Mayo experience was 30 years ago. Needless to say I don’t drink.

I don’t mean to suggest that you are experiencing the same thing, but you at least could use my experience as another line of inquiry while you pursue the medical investigation. You might want to add to your list of specialists one in environmental allergens, just in case it was something concentrated in the gin with which you are still in contact elsewhere.

I wish I could be of more help.

Neill

Hi. I don’t drink much. It doesn’t take much for me to get typsy so I don’t drink while out. I may have a glass of wine on rare occassions just because I feel like one. Once a month or once every two months. When used to drink, I found that I was doing so out of depression and that caused me to stop because I didn’t want to for that reason. I sense have decided to help myself out and see a psychologist. I am married to a man who is a functioning drinker but he neglects me terribly. He pays the bills but that is not enough for me so I have some big choices to make. He wont change because he sees nothing wrong with it. Thanks for your website.

Dear Dr. Neill,
I just came across your website after a long frustrating Christmas/New Year
holiday. I have been browzing information regarding alcoholism, as I am
about at the end of my rope living with my “functioning alcoholic” husband.
He has been drinking beer since attending college, and has continued
for the past 30 years. He has a great job and he is very hard worker. To everyone around us, he seems like the perfect husband and provider. To keep the illusion, I worked hard keep him happy and help him to quit drinking by
being the best wife I could be, and then when I couldn’t, I would keep myself busy with my children and activities to hide the fact that there was a problem. I continue to make excuses to family and friends, try and fix problems and took over almost all decisions that pertained to our home
and family. My children now grown and in their 20’s have realized the problem, and not sure if it’s because they are older, or he is just getting
worse. I also find myself leaning on them for support to help
me find a way to deal with it. I can see that I continue to cause more harm than good. I worry so much also about his health. He doesn’t eat but once a day at dinner , but before that he’ll have at least
4-6 beers a day (up to 12 or more on the weekend…he just polished off 30
between New Years Eve and day.
Whenever he uses the bathroom, the bowels are very loose…and I hear many times a moaning sound or heavy breathing. This scares me. He sleeps all the
time and has absolutely no lust for life. He is bringing me down, and I am
stressed and depressed. My children are pretty much gone, and with their
absense and the need for companionship, this has also taken me to a place of infidelity due to my feelings of lonliness. I’m not sure I want to stay married to this man.
I have no feelings for him, but I don’t want to see him hurt himself anymore.
Any information or advice you can offer would be of great help. I’ll
be ordering your book as soon as I can. Our finances are now in shambles!!
I’m so frustrated!!

Hi Dr. Neill,

An acquaitance died last Monday due to difficulty in breathing and eventually choking. He has been drinking (beer) for the last 3 days. I can’t understand how this may have happened to him. Please enlighten me.

Thanks,
Ann

I will try and make this long story short. My husband did not drink for 11 or 12 years at all but has been again for the last 2 or 3. It is getting very bad. (I am so embarassed to say that he has been wetting the bed for a month or so now) It started out once in awhile and the last couple weeks it has been at least 3 times a week. I know this is not a good sign. He has heart problems and high blood pressure for which he is on coumadin and other medicine. He also has bad asthma and I have noticed him choking in his sleep lately. He has many, many tiny ulcers inside and is also on medicine for that. He was just in the hospital a few weeks ago because his hemoglobin was below 7 and normal is about 14. The doctor said next time it could be fatal. He is not taking care of himself and I am also ashamed to say that we had to file a reorganization through the courts. ( It’s a form of bankruptcy but not total - you pay back some of the bills over a three year period. I am so upset about this because I had no idea how bad things were. He kept telling me things were fine and he always goes to work so I thought they were ok - financially anyway. I am so afraid that if he keeps drinking he will tell me things are ok again until we can’t pay our taxes and then we will lose our home of 24 years. He promised me we would do a budget but even in our present situation he always has excuses for that. I love this man but I don’t know what to do now except pray. Should I seek counseling? I feel I am getting desperate and sometimes he admits he might need help and other times he doesn’t. Any encouragement would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much, CindiSu

Dear CindiSu,
I’m sorry you are in this impossible situation. Your description suggests that he wants to die and is moving in that way fairly quickly. Possibly if you left him, it would be enough a jolt to him that he would try to do something about his problem. There are no guarantees. Without such a jolt, he will probably continue on his present path.

Yes, get some support, and if you can, get some professional help to see you through this. Talk with your doctor (and your minister) about what’s happening. Part of what you are going through is grief.

I’ve been there. I was the heavy-drinking husband…until I cleaned up. I have had to watch as three of my children deteriorated and died. All three had a history of substance abuse. I feel your pain.
Neill

Dr.Neill,

I am so glad I found this website, alot of these women sound alot like me. My husband has drank for as long as I can remember. I met him at the age of 15 and enjoyed partying with him. When we finally married at the age of 22 I never took a look at the big picture. Now here we are 30 years later and my husband/friend is lost inside this obnoxiuos drunk. He`s a beer drinker, he`s not violent, but loves to complain about everything.

Our grown sons went through bad marriages and are now back at home. My husband has always worked and kept the bills paid. But we`ve never had anything more than fixer uppers in both cars and home, these things don`t get done or half way get done. He`s always provoking fights with our sons, just hoping they`ll want to go out in the yard. He doesn`t go anywhere he cant drink, so he missed their births, their graduations, their marriages and the birth of our grandson(just to name a few)My oldest son recently decided to see just how much my husband actually drinks,so he started counting the beer tops every friday collected in the coca-cola cap catcher, 1wk.179, next wk.133, next week, 111.Then he caught on to him and now he throws his caps away.

Our sex life is non existant because he cant perform most of the time,he smells, he doesnt brush his teeth and what few he has are rotting out. He has all kinds of aches and pains but will not go to the doctor. I`ve left him before, but this leads to MORE drinking and I`m scared of what this is doing to him.

Please give me some sort of idea what I`m about to be dealing with health wise for him. It`s already caused me so much stress that I believe it to be the cause of my recent by-pass surgery. I`ve tried to change everything about my life for the past 10 years, no drinking (5yrs) quit smoking (6yrs) and I`m always working on my relationship with God! I`ve started working out at the hospital gym and increased my work load, just to stay away from home as long as I can.

Thank you for letting me vent!!!!

Hi Debra,

Congratulations on working on yourself so diligently. That is exactly what you need to do to get out of the soup.

You ask what you may be facing.

You may be facing his death. My daughter died at 51 after years of drinking too much. She was not what you would call a “drunk,” but she died anyway.

You could die. You know you are already at risk. Recent research is showing that women who are depressed (your situation has to be depressing)have a greatly increased risk of sudden heart death.

You may be facing another month or decade of the same. If it’s a decade, you may not be around that long.

His death could be long and drawn out, with you as the caretaker long after he is able to work. This would probably kill you, and then he would be in institutional care.

No matter how this plays out you are not with him. The next big step in your own self care is is to go out on your own, that is leave. And that be be your only hope for a ‘life.’ If you decide to go that route, you don’t need to know how you will handle this or that detail. All you need to know is that you are doing it. The universe/God will fill in the details once you make the move.

Love and blessings,
Neill

Dear Neill, Thank you for providing this wonderful community for us, which I have just joined. I have recently started a new relationship and living with a person who has a history of alcohol abuse, but didn’t show much of it when we first got together on Feb. 1. Now he is attending school mon-fri for 5 1/2 hours per day and also works about 28 hours per week 6 days/week as a bar back (he doesn’t drink on the job).

The problem is he has gone from only drinking occasionally to now drinking almost every night after work a 40-oz. malt liquor, and sometimes a gulp of vodka in addition to it. He says it’s the only thing that soothes him, cuz he has had a hard life, and now he is stressed with working all the time, and he also blames me for the continued drinking because I am on his case all the time. Once in a while he drinks a lot more than this amount, but usually it’s just the "40" but with no dinner. He says he doesn’t want to ruin the buzz by eating food.

I love him and have kicked him out a few times but he has nowhere to go cuz of his bills and he can’t afford to pay rent in a decent area. If I stick to kicking him out he will find a shelter or sleep outside and still go to work and school but still drink. So throwing him out does not stop the drinking, but only exacerbates it, because he has more stress and drinking is how he relieves it.

What should I do? I love him and he is never violent toward me– quite the opposite when he is drinking he connnects with me and tries to get closest at these times. He doesn’t understand why it’s a problem for me that he drinks, when to him it’s only affecting him, but not our relationship. I point out his mood swings but he denies he has them and blames me for being too touchy or emotional.

Should I just ignore the drinking and let him live with me, but not drink with him? I don’t want to throw him out again, but how do I help him? He’s indicated a few times that he wants to stop, but not right now. He stopped for three weeks recently. He claims he can stop again when he wants to.

Please advise– I am desperate and don’t want to lose him to this! He is a kind and good person but is troubled! Thanks, Alyson

Dear Alyson,

Yes, don’t drink with him, but ignoring the drinking won’t help either of you.

Unfortunately, the longer you let him live with you, the more likely he is to continue his alcoholism and not do anything to to change it. One of the biggest problems with living with an alcoholic is that you become part of the problem. Why has his death wish (probably unconscious) increased while you have been together?

Suggestion: Require him to move out and ask him to do something about his drinking. The ultimatum would be that he do whatever he has to do to deal with his underlying problems, so that he no longer needs to drink…and doesn’t drink. After he has been clean for a year or so, if both of you want to be together, then go for it, but with the understanding that if he starts again, he takes the action of moving out immediately.

You could date in the meantime, but only when he has been sober for at least a day. Pay attention.

It could happen that you don’t want to continue with him. It could also happen that he finds someone else to look after him.

Remember, he’s a man, not a help project. Allow him to take responsibility for himself.

Sound harsh? It is harsh. But you could be saving both of you from a mountain of grief.

Neill

Dr Neill, even after a year could you really believe that someone had given up the drink? I have lost so much trust in my husband, because they tell you what they know you want to hear. Even my daughter 12 is sick of his drinking. I just hope his depression at the moment doesnt lead to anything. The house is up for auction tomorrow and he sits and cries and sobs downstairs, very sad and I feel guilty, even though I know I didnt make him drink. He is not a bad person. He has clicked a few times, verbally over money and the kids, etc. He is saying that he would be better off dead. He is still somehow getting to work, in a club as the manager, but doesnt eat much.

Even if he gave up for a year I dont think I could live with him again. When you have financial connections with them it is bad, especially if they go to the club and play poker machines. My husband is not very social and when he goes to the club, he just sits and drinks and wastes money, his money. We separated all accounts, but I still pay for everything, off to a solicitor to see how much I have to give him. I know what he gets he will just waste.

It is so hard loving an alcoholic, because you really want to believe that they will just stop and you will lived happily ever after, but it’s always there and I have never seen many happy endings. Go nicole and keith, wish my man had stopped drinking.

Hello, I am real curious as to the best route to take. I am in my mid 40’s, and have drank a 750ml bottle of canadian whiskey every 2-3 days for the past 10 years. I do not drink at work, and have never driven after drinking. I have a real great job, and i usually only drink in the evenings (usually 8pm-12pm, give or take).I have not had any “health issues” to date, but do “feel” the results of my bad decisions. My wife also drinks (usually beer) 8-10 beers, on average of 4-5 evenings a week. We both know that we would be better off to quit, but it has become habit for the both of us. My question is what would be the best way to quit; “cold turkey” or reduction over a set time frame? AND, i am planning on seeing the doctor about this tomorrow to make sure that i am as “ok” as i feel. I have 3 children, 2 of wich are grown and have moved on, and 1 teenager still at home, and i don’t want to be “that person” any longer. Your help would be apreciated….Thanks.

Hi Steve,

I’m glad you are seeing your doc first, because there is no way of telling how much withdrawal discomfort either of you will experience. It would be a good idea to have some medical assistance on hand, especially if you are going cold turkey. Or you could play it safe and both check into a detox facility for a few days.

Understand that stopping drinking is just the first step in a major life change. You could both benefit from coaching or counseling as you recreate your lives. Please don’t let anyone talk you into believing you have an incurable disease and will have to be "in recovery" for the rest of your life. It make take two or three years to make the transition to your new life, but then it’s done.

I personally went cold turkey–from 20 oz of hard stuff per day to zero–and had no ill effects, but the experts later told me that was both unusual and risky. It took about three years of changes before alcohol or its absence was no longer part of my identity. That was over 30 years ago.

Best wishes,

Neill

Doing better…never realized how dependant i had become.For anyone reading this, and if you are questioning if you need to stop…well, you know yourself best, and there is obviously a reason you would question it. My advice…quit now, NOT tomorrow. It is a battle, but it can be won. Many thanx to those who support and my prayers go out to the families who struggle with an alcohol dependant family member. Always try to be there if they decide to get help, but DO NOT support their habit. Thank you again for the help. I will try and post periodically.

I am in the same boat as you exactly only I have 4 wonderful beautiful children. He is choosing alcohol over us and now I dont know where to go. The pain of neglect is awful now he wants us out of the way. I have such a huge broken heart from being married to an alcoholic. He pays the bills and has a great job, is the “super hero” at work and amongst the neighbors and he is friendly and helpful to everyone but me. He says he loves me but the neglect is terrible. For everyone else out there it seems easy to just leave but I’ve been a stay at home mom for 11 years by choice and its not just that easy. My heart breaks everyday.