Is Is Possible To Drink This Much??

[Smowball]

My friends rang me and asked the following: Her sister in law has just told her that her brother ( my friends brother) is in a drying out clinic as he is an alcoholic and he has been drinking between 7 - 10 bottles of wine a DAY. She's also told my friend not to say anything to anybody and won't tell her where the clinic is. My friend for a start is absolutely shocked as she sees him every few months and says nothing untoward was showing. But she says is it actually possible to drink that amount regularly and not be dead by now? It seems an almost impossible amount to me to drink without being unconscious after say 3 maybe but I really don't know. What do you think?? Can you drink that amount and still be awake?

[237SJ]

I don't know but my friend has seen her daughter's ex's mother put away 5 bottles of wine in an evening. I think you get a tolerance to it (unless the liver starts to pack up)

[NoMercy]

I know and English chap who lived out in Spain. His wife died of cancer and he started desperately searching for a relationship because he was one of these people who couldn't be on their own. He got messed around and taken for a ride so many times and started drinking.

On time he started fairly early in the morning and carried on all day and into the evening and eventually, after drinking over 9 bottles of wine, he collapsed. He regularly drank 5 to 6 bottles though in a good sesh.

It's an illness and my heart goes out to to people whose lives are governed by their next drink.

[Smowball]

God I didn't think it was possible!

[emmie]

having once worked in a bar i can say that i have seen the gov and his mates go on three day benders and live to tell the tale. but its an illness and anyone trying to down 7-10 bottles without being sick as a dog is very ill indeed.

[NoMercy]

The most I've ever drank is 2 bottles but that's probably on my annual cheese and wine night over the course of a long evening with lots of food.

7 bottles of wine and I'd be dead for certain. But I'm only small and can't take as much as others.

[Buenchico]

As 237SJ says, heavy drinkers build up a tolerance to alcohol (while, at the same time, doing a great deal of damage to their bodies).

For example, drinking a single bottle of whiskey can (and does) kill some people who aren't used to consuming alcohol. However some experienced drinkers can get through 3 or 4 bottles of whiskey in a day. Given that, in terms of alcoholic content, 1 bottle of whiskey roughly equals 3 bottles of wine, the figures you quote seem to be possible for an experienced drinker.

[Islay]

Yes it is, family member used to sink a bottle of vodka and 4 or 5 bottles of wine in a day. In the end it wasn't the booze that killed them.

[Smowball]

God I have a real tolerance for drinking as anybody who's been for a drink with me will tell you, but I think if I drank three bottles of wine I'd be out cold. God it's incredible what the body can get used to going by what you're all saying, and that's very honest of you allen - thankyou.

[emmie]

not recently, i drank one bottle of red and don;t remember how we got home, i completely blacked out, awful.

[Smowball]

I'm absolutely stunned at all of your answers, I really am. God I don't think I'd be alive if I drank those amounts- it's just mind boggling.

[emmie]

i have known many alcoholics and their tolerance is amazing, sadly and unsurprisingly most have passed away now. One was a good friend who could drink from sun up to sun down, he died from a massive coronary, due to the drink and smoking.

[Smowball]

Terrible Illness to have

[theprof]

Well, your average bottle of wine based on an ABV of 13.5% contains 10 units of alcohol. Multiplying this by let's say 10 bottles gives us 100 units per day. This is an extraordinarily high consumption and needs to be avoided at all costs.

However, from a biochemical and physiological viewpoint, it is feasible that a persistent drinker could metabolise this quantity of alcohol daily for a unpredictable period. Mammalian livers for example, are extremely good at "bouncing-back" from the toxic effects of alcohol for a variable period of time. However, continuous alcohol use to this degree will slowly destroy it in the end with fatal consequences.

It's certainly possible to be awake after consuming 100 units over a day. I have read accounts of people still being conscious at levels in excess of this but they are not commonplace.

[pastafreak]

I'd say "not" drinking is what might kill him now. I hope he gets the necessary help,and is not so entrenched in the daily habit that he can't be healed. The body gets used to a level of alchohol, and then needs that bit more. I'd say it's easy to build up over time to 9-10 bottles a day. If it doesn't kill,it will end in some other painful way. One of our clients had seizures...very common...the last one he had was like a stroke. He is wheelchair bound now after several years of physio.
The most I've ever had was 2 bottles,usually white...probably over 5-6 hours. My limit now is is 1 bottle...and I'm a slow drinker.

[237SJ]

I remember watching a programme on the TV a while ago (Louis Theroux) whereby he shadowed the lives of people with drink problems. A hepatologist told one patient that the liver is the most forgiving organ in the body, up to a point. Once you go past that point, there is no going back and liver disease is progressive.

[DTCwordfan]

a very close Uni friend could not drink to save himself. He was a housemaster at a well-known southern English public school and he would be prostrate on two sherries, parents walking over him at PTA events - his weakness being that he didn't give alcohol up and say that he couldn't tolerate it.

At Uni, he wasn't as bad but he had one other disadvantage and that was no sense of musical rhythm and he would be under the bench/table within half-an-hour of a game of 'Harry Twitters' or 'Names of....'

He ended up running up the back end of a bus at 3am, suspected suicide, as his wife left him - and we found out he had even att ended AA meetings, some black humour about him owning up to just what he couldn't tolerate with all the excesses around him being confessed to.

More seriously, there are those who can take ethanol and those who can't - and being able to control your intake is essential......and manage it through life...many of us have our binges but then being able to say 'No' and have fallow periods be they two days a week and or a month a year is so important. And lastly, you don't have to put away two bottles of Scotch and/or 3 bottles of wine to be an alcoholic.

[theprof]

As a biochemist, the irony of this situation with the liver never ceases to amaze me. The reality is that some tinkering with the metabolic pathways that occur within the organ would have enabled us all to avoid liver toxicity at least.

A few years ago I suggested a series of modifications to liver alcohol metabolism in a learned journal about this topic and eventually got awarded a cash prize for my efforts which I spent on a new telly!

All the same, the inability of the human body to metabolise alcohol ad infinitum is unquestionably a safety feature included thankfully in our design. The evolutionary ethics of our position I'll leave to others such as my esteemed colleague Dawkins.

[237SJ]

What you you mean by tinkering? Do you mean some kind of drug that change the pathways in the liver?

[237SJ]

*could change the pathways*