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I know a guy whose mother died in her forties ostensibly from alcoholism. She was a functioning alcoholic - she would only drink at home at night, but she would take Tylenol every morning because she had a headache. It was the combination of the two things - alcohol and Tylenol - that destroyed her liver.
She drank about a bottle or so of wine every night.
Yeah, that will do it. Acetaminophen is even acutely toxic to the liver, whereas alcohol is not acutely toxic to the liver. I have not taken any acetaminophen in over a decade. I always figured I drink too much for it.
Well my father died at 48 from alcohol and cigarette abuse. He was drunk every weekend and a couple of days during the week. He would drink several beers a day.
I had a good friend that disappeared into the bottle and died just days after her 59th birthday. She would drink a bottle of wine a day. She did that for the ten years that I knew her.
I lost another friend almost two years ago at 63. He drank every day, quit for a few years, and started drinking again months before he died. He was also a smoker. He had a massive heart attack in the car on the way to the hospital.
Everybody is different but all three of them died way too soon.
As someone else mentioned, it sounds like your father was hiding his empty bottles. He didn't die from several beers a day.
I doubt your two friends were alcoholics. Alcoholics are usually not wine or beer drinkers. They usually progress to vodka or gin. A lot of people die from heart attacks. There are usually other reasons for a heart condition such as being overweight.
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Originally Posted by kitty61
First of all, alcoholism and death from it is not characterized by how much you drink or for how long. It is based on how alcohol use is making detrimental impacts on your life but you keep drinking despite that.
It might be weekend binges.You don't have be drinking every day or all day. Poisoning can happen any time not necessarily years from now. Strokes and coma are common. No two peoples' bodies handle alcohol the same way. However women do not have the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) in their stomachs, the enzyme responsible for metabolizing alcohol that men do.
It is very sneaky. It can start out with coming home from work stressed out and going for the wine right away. Having a couple glasses to unwind. It is a progressive disease. .It changes behavioural patterns in the brain until you are totally locked in to the vicious cycle. Without you noticing it you are no longer coming home to a couple of glasses, it becomes 3 and then 4. You get the gist.
It is true that someone can still be an alcoholic without drinking for decades. They call this "in recovery." This is why a recovering alcoholic can't have one drink. They can't stop at one.
I've heard stories of people becoming an alcoholic as early as age 13 after their first drink. It seems with most people, it is more of a gradual process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KathrynAragon
I know a guy whose mother died in her forties ostensibly from alcoholism. She was a functioning alcoholic - she would only drink at home at night, but she would take Tylenol every morning because she had a headache. It was the combination of the two things - alcohol and Tylenol - that destroyed her liver.
She drank about a bottle or so of wine every night.
Both alcohol and acetaminophen on a daily basis are not a good idea. It supposedly will not cause problems to take both occasionally.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ukrkoz
ANY routine alcohol consumption is considered alcoholism. That's if you were to listen to honest opinion. Not one, convoluted by alcohol producing companies and their on payroll scientists.
You drink regularly - you are alcoholic, no matter what the excuse.
As of how much, OP? So you drink and fear her destiny, so you are trying to figure, where is the safe threshold?
I'll give you precise number.
Nothing. Not a drop. THAT is 100% safe measure.
Also, keep in mind one thing, you will almost never hear about again, due to alcohol propaganda.
DO NOT DRINK MIXED DRINKS. Their toxicity is much higher, than straight quality ethanol. And gods save you from drinking ethanol mixed with anything sweet.
And, btw, I worked for patholgist before. I KNOW what cirrotic liver looks like. Or, kidneys. Or, chain smoker lungs.
Your opinion is extreme and inaccurate. Any routine alcohol consumption is not considered alcoholism. The majority of people can be social drinkers. Medical experts recommend no more than two drinks a day for men and one for women.
There are many people who abuse alcohol but who not alcoholics. These are binge drinkers who get abuse alcohol, but can stop with no issues. Many college students and other young people fit this category. They go through a period in their lives when they drink excessive amounts of alcohol. For most of them, they outgrow this pattern as they get older. These people don't hide their drinking.
The third category of drinkers are alcoholics. These are people who have a serious problem with alcohol. These people often hide their drinking because it is so excessive. If they are in recovery, which is a minority of alcoholics, they don't drink at all.
Several whole beers? My guess is he might have had a liquor bottle or two stashed in the garage or closet as well.
If you follow many of the hard drinking musicians from the 70's, or even many movie starts from 1940's, most of their health issues are related to heart disease, not liver problems. Many have their first signs of heart issues in their 30's and it just continues from there until they plop dead in their 50's. Granted, it doesn't help that most of them smoked 20-30+ years. Others have had cancers of the esophagus or stomach.
A lot of this stuff is genetic. All the older men I know in my family drink 4-6 beers every day after work and maybe a little more on the weekends, starting when they were 18 years old until their 60's, 70's, and 80's. I've never known one to have liver problems or other issues due to their drinking. Most of my family is overweight, including several obese individuals, and we've never had anyone with diabetes. Good old Italian genetics I guess.
Heart disease is one of the things cause by alcohol consumption. Refer to the links I posted.
But your response kind of proves my point. People blame their heart disease on everything but drinking. I'm not saying genetics and other lifestyle factors don't contribute, but so does alcohol. By a lot, actually. People think it just affects the liver. It doesn't.
Even in the example you used, you say they drink 4-6 beers every day and then go on to say there are several obese individuals. Um, you know they could be related, right?
But just because my grandfather, who smoked for 50 years, lived to be 92, doesn't prove that smoking isn't that bad for you. Same for drinking. I find that people tend to get almost obstinate when it comes to admitting that drinking is bad for you. They'll admit that eating too many donuts is bad, smoking is bad, but mention drinking, and they become defensive and insist it's not. Science says otherwise.
I am 78 and I drink about 6 to 8 ounces of scotch per day and always at home. First drink at 5pm. Second about 6:30pm. Sometimes 3rd at 7:30 while preparing dinner. I do a 3rd about every other day. I know the 4th is going to give me a hangover so 3 is my limit.
I had to give up drinking for my Type II....and I am glad I was able to do so.......though not thrilled at all being a Type II.
I find it interesting, if not fascinating that for the amount I was drinking a night, a bottle of wine, sometimes with a shot or two (but with the hard stuff too, I was out like a light), a house still with a full bar and a wine cellar, that I could go so absolutely cold turkey and not be tempted back.
But.....we watch ER and Abby, we see the movies of "Days of Wine and Roses" and how people can't take the stress, fall off the wagon, and go back.
With me, there is no justification to even "just a little" because I know that even with just a little I won't be able to say no to more, so I don't.
My problem is that for all the stress of life, of the world that I use to forget about by "well five minutes after a scotch, I won't care of the difference between the big and little hand", I still don't have a way to handle it aside from sleep or not thinking about it.
Of course, there can be many other problems besides liver damage and death.
A good friend, who was a chronic alcoholic, had numerous health issues before he died in his mid sixties. According to things that he said, as well as his family told me, the heavy drinking effected many parts of his body. This included atrophy of his brain, which caused significant problems, nerve damage in his legs and arms, which effected motor skills, gastro-intestinal issues and other issues. He broke bones and had various injuries by falling when drunk. He had serious problems with his teeth. After losing many teeth, his dentist told him that he would lose all of his teeth because of his drinking (I'm not sure why, possible due to his poor nutrition).
So in his case, he had damage to his arms, legs, teeth, stomach/intestines and brain, as well as his liver. So, damage basically to his entire body.
He had periods where he was completely sober for several years. When he was sober it was because he attended multiple AA meetings per week. He was also a group leader (or whatever it is called) at one of the meetings for many years. One time he had been sober for almost ten years and had one drink after his brother's funeral and within weeks he was back to very, very heavy drinking and being drunk virtually 24 hours a day.
That's how it was with my friend. I knew her from when we were in our 20s and worked together as secretaries. She quit her job when her supervisor asked her to go to the Employee Assistance Program, and then sunk into drunken homelessness, living in a boarded up abandoned house with three men in exchange for doing their laundry and cleaning and God only knows what else.
She was having seizures and ending up in hospitals and finally something snapped in her and she wanted to be sober. And she was, for seven years. Got a job and then a better job until she was working at a prestigious law firm as a secretary, had a nice apartment, a new car, and a life. We reconnected when I was divorcing, and together we stuck our toes into online dating, took trips to the Caribbean, went to concerts, and just had great times together. She was one of the best friends I ever had.
And then she met a man and she didn't want to tell him she was an alcoholic. He would take her out to dinner, and he always had one drink before dinner. She figured she could have one drink before dinner, too.
I had to cut myself off from her when she became so wet-brained that nothing she said made sense. She was dead of cirrhosis at 51. I mourn her still.
I read about a woman who died of "chronic alcoholism". She was only in her mid-forties. For people that die at that age from alcoholism, how much do they typically drink per day, and for how long?
As many here have mentioned determining how much a person actually needs to drink to die as a direct result of alcoholism is difficult.
I've been a member of AA for the past 28 years and have a friend who did of alcoholism. This man choked to death on his on vomit after he passed out at home from a night of drinking. He was someone who sadly was never able to get sober.
But alcoholism wasn't listed as cause of his death. Maybe a coroner's office might have listed alcoholism as having contributed to his death had the body gone through a more complete autopsy. But there was no need for that. There was nothing suspicious about how he died. He was home alone and passed out from too much booze. Then choked to death on his own vomit. He was 51 years old at the time.
Heart disease is one of the things cause by alcohol consumption. Refer to the links I posted.
But your response kind of proves my point. People blame their heart disease on everything but drinking. I'm not saying genetics and other lifestyle factors don't contribute, but so does alcohol. By a lot, actually. People think it just affects the liver. It doesn't.
Even in the example you used, you say they drink 4-6 beers every day and then go on to say there are several obese individuals. Um, you know they could be related, right?
But just because my grandfather, who smoked for 50 years, lived to be 92, doesn't prove that smoking isn't that bad for you. Same for drinking. I find that people tend to get almost obstinate when it comes to admitting that drinking is bad for you. They'll admit that eating too many donuts is bad, smoking is bad, but mention drinking, and they become defensive and insist it's not. Science says otherwise.
I think you misunderstood my post, I was agreeing with you. Many people just look at liver problems when alcohol can cause a variety of serious medical issues. That's why I mentioned that many hard drinkers died from heart rather than liver problems.
The obese individuals were non-drinkers, old Italian ladies who liked their pasta. My only point was that genetics plays a role, not that people have immunity from the ill effects of drinking.
Both alcohol and acetaminophen on a daily basis are not a good idea. It supposedly will not cause problems to take both occasionally.
Right - that's why I made it a point to state that she took acetaminophen every morning.
Her son was really angry with her after she died. That has always stuck in my head.
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My guess is he might have had a liquor bottle or two stashed in the garage or closet as well.
