Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

[Tipplerette]

Deadly risks for couples sharing a bottle of wine over dinner | Mail Online

This is my drinking pattern.

This is reality of my daily habit.

I am going to put this in my arsenal.

I need a bigger aresenal because the one I've previously used to disway me has not been working.

My wine intake is killing me softly.

When am I going to stop?

I brace myself for your stern replies.

:upset:

[resrchqueen]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

I am right there with ya Tipp... I can control my intake when out socially but home alone...all bets are off. I should never open a bottle when I am alone. PERIOD. Its drinking out of boredom or to reward myself for all the chores I have done which is just plain stupid.

[Kaslo]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Tip, I was there when I quit for good. I didnt think I had a BIG problem, and most of my friends and my husband didnt either. Then I did the reading, and I had a friend bite the dust, (from drinking). I am a toxicologist, and I took a hard look at my physiology. I had the following:

Stomach gas, bloating, etc
Fine red lines on my face
Clubbing in the finger tips
Edema in the ankles
Dehydration and memory loss
Sore lower back (kidneys, gall bladder)
Pain when I bent down in my middle


Then I found I had elevated enzymes, that my blood was thin, I was anemic and arthritic, (had to have two hips replaced) and I figured at the age of 57, I had maybe another 10 years before I ended up like my friend, as I would drink a bottle a night with the DH, except I would do most of it, then occassionaly crack another one. I had AF days. I thought I was ok. I was not.

Dont wait till you are my age, and your liver might not heal itself. You KNOW what your situation is.

Peace to you on this fine day. Love your name, but wish not for what it conjures up... you can not get old gracefully on this toxic substance, Tip.


Kaz

[bouchard01]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Good Information Tip ... It's the same with me, you know it. I can't and don't open that door, at least for today. Let's do this!

[Sunbeam]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

You will stop when you are ready. When you are ready to quit, you will make a plan, and keep changing the plan until you have a system that works for you.

[Tipplerette]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Kaslo;1383551 wrote: Tip, I was there when I quit for good. I didnt think I had a BIG problem, and most of my friends and my husband didnt either. Then I did the reading, and I had a friend bite the dust, (from drinking). I am a toxicologist, and I took a hard look at my physiology. I had the following:

Stomach gas, bloating, etc
Fine red lines on my face
Clubbing in the finger tips
Edema in the ankles
Dehydration and memory loss
Sore lower back (kidneys, gall bladder)
Pain when I bent down in my middle


Then I found I had elevated enzymes, that my blood was thin, I was anemic and arthritic, (had to have two hips replaced) and I figured at the age of 57, I had maybe another 10 years before I ended up like my friend, as I would drink a bottle a night with the DH, except I would do most of it, then occassionaly crack another one. I had AF days. I thought I was ok. I was not.

Dont wait till you are my age, and your liver might not heal itself. You KNOW what your situation is.

Peace to you on this fine day. Love your name, but wish not for what it conjures up... you can not get old gracefully on this toxic substance, Tip.


Kaz

PRINTING THIS ONE RIGHT AWAY AND PUTTING IT ON MY FRIDGE. YOU MAY HAVE JUST SAVED MY LIFE. A THOUSAND THANKYOU'S.

Please post this somewhere where the general population can read it. It is a real slap in the face and a wake-up call.

[Byrdlady]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Yep, take it from me, it's not going to get better unless you make the changes. HOPE is not a strategy. As you can see, Alcoholism is a progressive disease...wouldn't you agree? Where do you think you'll be in a year from now? 5 years? Yep, right here wondering where 5 years went. You can wait until you hit bottom (that's no fun, trust me on that one) or you can reverse the engines and change course. You know where you are headed now...and you know what to do, no? You've been fighting this for a while..it doesn't get any easier, just pick a day and draw the line! We will help you in every way! It feels BETTER, not worse! You can do this! B

[Kaslo]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Well I didnt want it to be a slap, but I hope a wakeup. Yeah. The thing is Byrdie is right. It IS progressive, and after so many years of thinking I was a terribly clever wine lover, I had drunk myself into a habit. I obsessed on it and suffered from it on a daily basis for YEARS.

And once you quit, after you have pushed your addiction over a certain line, it makes falling off the wagon a horrible bumpy ride to get back up on top. Read some of Sausages stuff. And she is YOUNG. So dont kid yourself.

I think my liver, throat, skin, brain, gall bladder, kidneys etc have sort of forgiven me, but my cartilage has not, and I have major arthritis now. So keep that in mind too. It does catch up with you.

k

[RunningCourage]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Byrdlady;1383758 wrote: HOPE is not a strategy.

Wow - if that's a not call to arms, i don't know what is. Like it Byrdie!

[LibraryGirl]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Kaslo were you overweight as well? The article is insightful, but we keep hearing one way and then the opposite. NO one is disputing that alcoholics need to quit drinking. NO one. I'm not saying anything here to try and start a debate, please.

[Sunbeam]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

LG, I also have major arthritis at the age of 58. I am not overweight. I imagine the excess alcohol contributed to my condition. I was not ever a daily drinker.

[LibraryGirl]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

I was thinking of some of the other symptoms, Sunbeam, like edema. Thanks for sharing.

[Tipplerette]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Hey guys, when I divorced my husband I left with three kids and no money. My friends asked me how I had the courage to do it. The answer was "I finally hit a wall." I had no choice but to leave. The wall was hit by a minor incident; a little repetition of what had transpired hundreds of times before. You know the straw that broke the camel's back. I feel that I have hit the wall with my drinking. I do not have a temper and never get mad but after reading Kaslo's symptoms, warning and knowing her drinking patterns were the same as mine, something broke through. I yelled at myself in the car all the way home from work. Luckily it's only and 8 minute drive.

I have a few of Kaslo's symptoms but have weathered the drinking quite well physically. I have access to the inevitable results of not stopping drinking just by visiting my mother who is suffering with alcohol related seizures and is in very poor health. We are both little ladies (120 pounds 4'11") so the impact is far greater than some.

I did not drink last night although the house was full of drunk people (little get-together with the friends we haven't seen all summer) and I know it's only another day one but this thread combined with some loving support I received on my "Tail Between the Legs" thread has pushed me to the wall. There have been many more emotional threads and conversations but it was all leading to this seemingly random moment. I don't drink. I don't HOPE I won't drink. I know I won't drink.

By the way, I had a blast while being dead sober last night. Feel great today. There are not the usual, "Please God, help me stay strong prayers". I am strong and will stay strong.

Thanks again Kaslo.

[Sober Visitor]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Hi Tips,

I can really relate to your internal conflict and wanting to have your cake and eat it too. I think it's something we all have to come to terms with in order to break free.

Can you pinpoint what is holding you back? Is it fear (that was a biggie for me), faulty thinking and beliefs (that was a biggie for me), not wanting to do the work (that was a biggie for me), and so on. As they say, for many of us, it's not just a drinking problem; it's a thinking problem. Perhaps starting a new thread about what you think is holding you back and how to challenge it or posting about it here or in your "Tail Held High" thread may help to get you unstuck.

I spent years knowing I should stop but allowed all of the things mentioned above to keep me trapped. It wasn't until I challenged my thinking and beliefs that I was able to change them (thanks to Allen Carr) and fully commit 100% (no ifs, ands or buts) to stopping the madness once and for all. The daily debating and self-deception was torture for me, almost as bad as the daily drinking, so it was actually a relief for me to come to terms with the fact that alcohol can no longer be an option for me.

For me personally, I had to SLAM that door shut, because no matter how I slice it for myself, alcohol is a toxic substance, full of empty calories and nutrition, and too many other real and potential negative consequences. The fact that it's legal and socially accepted doesn't make it any less toxic or damanging to me. I can't eat gluten or refined carbs either. They also make me very sick and cause me to crave which is so indicative of an allergy (craving that which you are allegeric to despite negative consequences). Have you ever taken the test in Seven Weeks to Sobriety to see what kind of drinker you are? If not, and you'd like to, here's the link:

https://www.mywayout.org/community/f2...self-5100.html

I love living my life sober and being free from all the inner turmoil and problems that alcohol caused me and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. You can too!

Sheri

[Kaslo]

Sharing a bottle of wine most nights

Hi Tip, no worries. I bet you turned a few heads on the drive home, lol! What ever it takes. I am really glad I might be the impetus...but its really yourself, and your realization. When you are finally DONE you know. That is all.

I originally cracked open this thread to address the question raised by LibraryGirl. She asks if weight was not the cause of my arthritis. I have to answer this one carefully and I dont want to cause offense, either. LG is correct weight gain is a huge contributing factor to the development of cartilage loss. The question faily put might be if I had been a skinny alkie would I still have developed severe arthritis? The answer is probably yes, as both the alcoholism and the arthritis were inheritied conditions in my case.

However lets not just apply this to Kaslo but to the general population. Weight gain is related to alcohol consumption.

Alcohol alone is a causal factor in cartilage degradation in the absence of weight gain.

Alcoholism is a progressive condition (or disease) and it worsens with time. It leads to inactivity. Alcohol is huge amounts of empty calories, and if you are adding this to a normal or even excessive caloric intake, together with the addiction progression... = weight gain. Many arthritic people find themselves treating themselves with AL as its an effective pain killer. This snowballs the problem of arthritis and AL.

You have to consider your entire health profile. In my case I had an injury early on and was warned I would have terrible arthritis. I was not told that AL abuse would worsen that. I recovered, and then worked in the bush for many years and didnt really develop AL addictive behaviours until I was in my 40s but for ten years or more, I really abused it and myself. and I developed a habit, became more senior in my field (Im a tox person, and a stress ecologist), became less physically active, gained a lot of weight. Lost 30 pounds of it and then Helen died, following knee surgery, massive bleed, then liver failure, and it became clear to me she was a daily wine consumer, she claimed not very much but every day, and we KNOW that it was this that killed her. She had also contributed to her cartilage loss and need for a knee replacement from the constant drinking over a 40 year period.

I saw the writing on the wall.

There are several health indications from over-consumption of alcohol. They are additive over time. If you are a woman, especially a small one, (Tip!) and you have a predisposition to both alcoholism and arthritis, and start down the path of least resistance to overconsumption while telling yourself as only alcoholics will do, that is ok, its good for you, fun, relaxing, yada yada, you are adding up all of the contributing factors to a number of life degrading conditions.

It is no secret. The US health authorities list alcohol over consumption as the third leading cause of death in the US. Third after heart disease and cancer, and they argue that alcohol contributes and is even causitive of both of these front runners.

So my advice to you LG is dont assume that lack of weight gain alone witll prevent you from having arthritis. Weight gain will contribute to it, though.

Lets just assume person EX call her Rhonda drinks wine every second night, 3/4 of a bottle. Its above the limit that over time leads to habit formation style drinking, which leads to binging or steady consumption. If Rhonda is lucky enough to remain a skinny alcoholic thats great, but other fates await her. She is ,in fact statistically and inevitably going to develop a variety of symptoms and its only a matter of time before they start to show up in her health profile, as she ages. The hospitals around the world, palliative care facilities are full of Rhondas. Too bad she kidded herself.

To be fair, we can also play the scenario that Rhonda woke up at the age of 35 or what ever, realized she was going to end up like her sister / mother/ father / aunt, and she did her damdest to cut back to a GLASS OF WINE A WEEK. That would erase all of the progression. Well some of it. And possibly be of benefit, good cholesterol, etc etc. If she was already past the stage where she could totally successfully cut back to one glass a week and never go back into progressive alcoholism, then fair play to her. Have a nice life Rho, you diserve it. However, the odds of that actually happening for most people are very very very low. Once we go through that door of progression, its very hard to get back.

So that is what I wanted to say, sorry its so long winded. If people are interested I would post the definitive research articles on alcohol contribution to arthritis. Its one of many conditions that alcohol contributes to. Throat cancer, breast cancer, etc etc the list is huge. And weight gain is on that list.

We all do it to ourselves. We are all responsible for ourselves. Its our choice. I chose not to drink.

Love to all on this ethereally beautiful September day in Kasloland.

k