So the doctor says you're a heavy drinker?

For various reasons I found myself sitting with a doctor, and her and her nurse keep referring to me as a "heavy drinker".
Now, I'm pretty sure that I drink less than most other people that I know.

I'm likely to have more than two drinks per sitting, not drink every day, and drink once or twice a week.

Apparently it would be healthier for me to drink two drinks every day, which to my thinking, would lead right into alcoholism. But this is better than having two nights of four to six drinks a week.

Is anyone else similarly misconceived about healthy drinking habits?

I'm guessing that the majority of the population is over two drinks per sitting, doesn't drink every day, and drinks one or two days a week.
Lets call this Type 1

I guess the rest are drinking no more than two drinks per sitting on any given day.
Let's call this Type 2

Without asking for too much personal information, are you willing to answer if you're type 1 or type 2?

Comically, I'm also "inactive", even when I'm running 5k three days a week. I work at a computer, so I don't get 30 minutes of actvity 5-7 days a week.

I think I'd be looking for a new doctor.

If they're going to say these things to you they need to tell you why.

I always find it to be a catch-22 when talking about my alcohol intake with my doctor.

For whatever reason, I'm usually seeing him for a physical within close proximity to some work/client/friend party.

I'm Type 1 - two or three times a week, two or three+ drinks per sitting.

Ghostship wrote:

Comically, I'm also "inactive", even when I'm running 5k three days a week. I work at a computer, so I don't get 30 minutes of actvity 5-7 days a week.

I would be a Type 2. Usually 1 or 2 drinks a day, some days I won't. It's very rare for me to have 3 drinks in a single day and more than 3 in a day is bordering on once a year.

CDC Definition of a Heavy Drinker wrote:

For men, heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming an average of more than 2 drinks per day. For women, heavy drinking is typically defined as consuming an average of more than 1 drink per day.

Type 2.

I have 1 or 2 drinks at a sitting, twice a month at most. The usual is a single drink when I drink alcohol.
Once or twice a year I'll have more. Usually at a party with friends. In that case it doesn't exceed 6. My body doesn't want me to have more than that ever. At that level I get silly and apparently do things like pet my wife, which I get to hear about a lot afterward.

Find a new doctor. Anyone who says you aren't active running 5k three times a week is a joke.

I maybe drink once a week more likely every other week. I rarely drink more then two drinks in sitting maybe once a month I'll drink more in a sitting.

Thin_J wrote:

I think I'd be looking for a new doctor.

If they're going to say these things to you they need to tell you why.

Thank you for the concern, and your advice would be sound if this were all out of nowhere.
They were looking at me as a stroke patient. I had a couple of migraines and out of extreme caution and perhaps some miscommunication, I ended up being in full stroke work up.
So for those patients this is a particular concern. It turns out that I'm quite healthy and I jumped out of the stroke patient category after seeing the doctor.

Still, I'm pretty sure that the two drinks thing is Health Canada's healthy drinking guidelines.
You can't bank the drinks and have fourteen on Saturday. The issue is how toxic alcohol is to heart tissue. As you get older your body doesn't suffer that abuse as well.

Gumbie wrote:

Find a new doctor. Anyone who says you aren't active running 5k three times a week is a joke.

I think that this is also a Health Canada standard along the "sitting is a killer" philosophy.

I may be miscommunicating again since I'm "currently inactive" on doctor's orders due to breaking my shoulder.

Yeah, It's been a rough month and half.

I do it once, sometimes twice a week, and sometimes none for several weeks in a row. Usually have one or at most two drinks. Anything more tears up my stomach and I hate drunk people enough to never want to get even tipsy.

I drink maybe once or twice every few weeks or so. When I do, I tend to have the equivalent of a couple shots of hard liquor.

Type 1

catching up with friends this weekend for a wedding event tomorrow so when you say excess of 2 try more like 20. Which honestly isn't that abnormal from a normal weekend.

Type 3.

Drink too much, too often. 5-7 days a week, often substantially more than two drinks.

I consider myself teetering around the edge of the abyss of alcoholism. I'm not proud of it, just being honest. To date, my drinking hasn't interfered with my ability to have a happy family life or a successful professional career. It has compromised my athletic performance, and that's a sacrifice I willingly make.

I'm also aware that I'm looking down the barrel of fatherhood, so there's a certain degree of "last hurrah" mentality going on at the moment. Getting my boozy jollies in before I have to straighten up and fly right for the kids.

Also, for what it's worth, I had a "come to Jesus" moment a few years back where I got blackout drunk with an old buddy, took a sh*t on my couch and pissed in the hallway. As you can imagine, my wife was rightly furious with me, and I swore off that degree of intoxication. That vow has held - while I get tipsy often and drunk occasionally, I haven't gotten even close to that drunk since, nor plan to ever again.

As for why I'm like this? A large degree of it is cultural conditioning. Coming of age in England meant a lot of drinking and a lot of time in pubs. Some of is family habits - my mum drank more than a doctor would advise, while far from being an alcoholic.

At work we often comment that if any of us were admitted we would likely be flagged on the CAGE screening, particularly due to the C and the G.

As you mentioned I think the question of regularity vs "bingeing" comes down to what is healthful for the body. Consistently having 2 drinks a day is far less dangerous to your health (and perhaps even beneficial) compared to having four or five drinks in an evening twice a week. At that point the toxicity effects become much more of an issue.

Gumbie wrote:

Find a new doctor. Anyone who says you aren't active running 5k three times a week is a joke.

It's not a joke at all if that's the only exercise you're getting. 90 minutes a week doesn't make you "active". If you're going on walks, playing Frisbee, or doing anything physical on your non-running days then it's a totally different story.

As for your drinking types, I guess I'd be solidly in the Type 1 group. I've never felt the urge to drink every day (except during those 2 months my parents lived with us), but when I do drink it's usually in the 3+ drink range. Three or four beers between dinner and bedtime on a Friday night is just one of life's little pleasures. I enjoy sometimes drinking enough to get a little silly, but never so much that I feel any after effects the next morning.

Modern medicine is about certain extremes. Their recommendation seems to always be on things you should never do-get drunk, smoke, eat rich food, eat fast food, etc. It is also easier to just cast a wide net over a pack and a half smoker, and the guy who relaxes with a stogie or a pipe when he gets home from work.

It helps them not have to think too much if you have to ask if smoking 1 cigar on New Year's Eve is going to give you cancer, or if it is OK that you went to Chicago for a weekend and lived off of Beef Sandwiches, pizza, and ribs but normally you stick to lean chicken and veggies.

If you can find a doctor that might listen, let me know. I have a passport.

To your direct question. My colleagues and myself had a lot of fun with the AA diagnostic test. A yes in 1 or more means you may have a problem with alcohol.
Do you drink to get drunk? Yes...kind of the point. I also have sex because it feels good, and I eat fried chicken because it tastes good.
Have you ever had more to drink than you intended? Yes, sometimes you get free shots, or you get carried away. And I called a cab or walked home.
Have you ever woken up with regrets after drinking? Yes, normally the mixing of that drop shot with that goldschlager dare.
Have you ever had sex with someone you would not have sex with normally while drunk? Yes, in most instances I was trading way-way-way up.
Have you ever thought you need to drink less? Yep, got damn fat in college, so I cut back.
Have you had more than 1 hangover in the past year? Yes, but to be fair my friends buy cheap kegs.
And so on.

Type 3.

Maybe by "heavy drinker" they just meant you're a drinker who's overweight? Or this guy:

IMAGE(http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/thumb/0/08/Heavy.png/250px-Heavy.png)

Yeah, I'll have to confess to type 3. 2-3 a day, 5-7 days a week.

I also walk 3-4 miles a day, 5 days a week.

Make of those two facts what you will...

I should also note that in my head, my over-consumption of booze 5-7 days a week is balanced by my over-exercising, 5-7 days a week.

In no small measure, my obsession with endurance sports allows me to maintain a reasonable weight and fitness level while still being a shameful boozehound.

tanstaafl wrote:

Yeah, I'll have to confess to type 3. 2-3 a day, 5-7 days a week.

I also walk 3-4 miles a day, 5 days a week.

Make of those two facts what you will...

The closest booze store is 1.5-2 miles away?

He must be buying those tiny bottles.

If your Doctor tells you you're a heavy drinker....take a shot?

Type 3.... Mostly I'm fine. Not alcoholic.... but if drink doesn't make me happy then nothing will... right?

Mostly I drink 3-4 times a week. Usually 3-5 pints (though not always and not consistently... so one particular week I may not drink at all, say.). So, it's difficult.

LouZiffer wrote:

Type 2.

I have 1 or 2 drinks at a sitting, twice a month at most. The usual is a single drink when I drink alcohol.
Once or twice a year I'll have more. Usually at a party with friends. In that case it doesn't exceed 6.

Pretty much the exact same here, except it doesn't exceed 4. I've no desire to ever be drunk again, and don't even like being buzzed (social lubricant—I don't actually like being talky like that).

I really do drink only because I like the taste. But I'm cheap and try to watch my weight, so I don't buy beer often, occasionally treat myself to one at a restaurant (damn rip-off), and bemoan the calories.

Obviously I'm a blast at parties.

KingGorilla wrote:

If you can find a doctor that might listen, let me know. I have a passport.

As part of a physical before starting a job I answered that I'd have one drink most nights they said "Officially, that's too much and you should have some days off in between drinks, in practice, I do the same thing". I liked that doctor.

Ghostship wrote:

Apparently it would be healthier for me to drink two drinks every day, which to my thinking, would lead right into alcoholism. But this is better than having two nights of four to six drinks a week.

My vague recollection (and it's been a long time since I looked into any of this stuff) is that from a physical damage POV your live can detox 1-2 drinks without much trouble but more than starts to cause damage, so a few sessions over that threshold are more of a problem than several sessions under the threshold. Just because it's better on the physical side doesn't mean it's better on the psychological front. For quite a while I was in the habit of having a beer after work every day but I found that it had become as routine as my morning coffee. Since it was only one drink (well, 1.4 strictly) that level is technically not too much of a problem, but I've been cutting back recently - partly because because I didn't like that it had turned into a habit, but largely because I want to cut down my calorie intake since the belly's no longer flat, and habit-beer seems like the easiest thing to jettison.

I'm type 1 and per this definition a "binge drinker":

Binge drinking-consuming more than four drinks on one occasion for women, and more than five for men, at least once during a two-week period.

When the University came out with that definition we all felt like a bunch of degenerates for a while.

In Japan they have this thing called "nomi hodai". It basically means "all-you-can-drink". On the days (usually Saturday nights) we opt for nomi hodai, I'm a heavy drinker.

Depends on the doc. Per guidelines, there are some things that make sense and some that are not. The important thing to consider when tackling the guidelines is that they're generalized rules culled from large population studies. Your MD is probably just covering his ass.

In practice, people have widely different toxicity tolerances. In some population groups, the difference may be quite dramatic. There are such things as people who are "fast acetylators" vs. "slow acetylaors." Basically, it's a difference of how fast the liver metabolizes ("acetylates") compounds within the body. It's thought that fast acetylators process much faster, reducing half-lives by half or more. This genotype is quite prevalent in Asia.

I've put in enough sedatives to knock out three grown men in a small, skinny 12-year old boy and he was no worse off than just being a little chattier than usual.

I used to have a couple pints of beer after work at the local pub and I never got worse than slightly buzzed, and that was only if I chugged the beer real fast. I only got drunk enough to affect my walking once, and that was when I downed an entire case of gin in one night. I've never had a hangover; never passed out; never threw up or even got nauseated from drinking too much. Rate of drinking matters more than amount. Most of my friends (and I) could probably down a drink at lunch and two at dinner and it wouldn't even buzz us. That's three drinks a day.

These days, I don't drink alcohol much at all. Too much calories, not enough taste. Also, it's bad for my gout.

I'm definitely a Type 1. Though only because they define a portion size rather small for someone tall. I limit myself to two drinks; but the portions are probably 1.5 of what is recommended.

I drink 1 to 2 beers each night... homebrew of course.