When it comes to booze, how much is too much? I’ve been a guest on a number of podcasts lately and one question was asked more than a few times by various hosts so I thought I’d address it here: How much alcohol is too much?
The short answer: when alcohol impedes your life and your relationships in any way—it’s too much. Still, can I quantify what’s too much? No, I can’t. Instead, I’d like to point out that quantity is only one factor and not the largest one when it comes to determining whether or not a person has a drinking problem. It’s more about what alcohol does to that person when they do drink that’s important to note. How does alcohol impact your emotions, your dreams, your aspirations, your decisions? Can you honestly contemplate the above questions and say, no problem?
Here are a few more questions that you can ask yourself:
Do I function poorly when I drink?
Is my life comprised of one bad decision after another and in all of the bad decisions alcohol was a factor?
Do I have kids, a spouse, family members who complain about my drinking?
Do I suffer consequences as a result of my drinking?
The first issue with trying to quantify an amount is that physiologically, we are all different. There is no way to predict exactly how our body will react to alcohol until we ingest alcohol. For example, most of us know someone who drinks heavily and doesn’t seem to have any consequences: their health seems fine (for now), and their life clips along; perhaps they’ve never suffered consequences as a result of drinking. Is that person an alcoholic? Or are they just a heavy drinker? It’s hard to say for certain but if they can drink with impunity and they don’t care about the physical harm the alcohol is doing to their body, that person will probably continue to drink—or maybe one day they wake up and decide to stop drinking. A problem drinker is someone who may have consequences from drinking but physically, they’re not dependent on the alcohol and will not suffer withdrawal symptoms when they do stop drinking.
What may be too much alcohol for one person may be an okay amount for someone else. Healthwise, alcohol is disastrous for all because alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen. If a person drinks heavily or even every day, the alcohol will most likely catch up with them in the form of some sort of physical consequences: liver disease, heart disease, pancreatitis or cancer…our bodies were not meant to suffer a daily onslaught of alcohol without it doing some damage.
Alcohol is metabolized in the liver but our stomachs also partake and produce gastric alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), a chemical that attacks alcohol molecules to help break them down into aldehydes. Aldehydes are toxic to the body and are known carcinogens. Every time the body has to break down alcohol, aldehydes are produced and allowed to roam free in the body. It only makes sense that the more a person drinks the more aldehydes that are created and the greater the likelihood a person could end up with some form of cancer.
Physiologically speaking, women have less alcohol dehydrogenase in their systems and the harmful effects of alcohol are not metabolize as well as alcohol is in men.
I equate ADH to be similar (for illustrative purposes) to activated charcoal—the thick black tar-like liquid that we used liberally when I worked in a level 1 trauma ED. Activated charcoal was used for those who overdosed on pills or ingested some other harmful substance. The charcoal doesn’t always bind up or prevent one hundred prevent of ingested substance from reaching a person’s brain or bloodstream, but it does drastically cut down the amount of the poison or drug that will enter or be metabolized in the body. ADH is the body’s charcoal. It does what it can to combat the harmful effects of alcohol. Women have ADH, but women have less of it than men, and therefore, cannot metabolize alcohol as efficiently.
Women also tend to have more body fat and less water content. Alcohol likes to mix with water so it only makes sense that if women have less water in their bodies, the alcohol we do ingest is more concentrated in what water we do have. A few drinks for some women may make them feel drunk, but another woman, perhaps if she’s an athlete and has more muscle mass—well she may be able to drink a bit more. Regardless of how alcohol makes you feel, research is solid in that even a few drinks a day leads to an increased risk of cancer.
Alcohol is not a harmless substance that big alcohol companies would have you believe it is. My hopes is that someday alcohol will be the new tobacco; that bottles will come with warning labels and that more people will educate themselves on what alcohol does to our physical being so people can make the informed choice of whether or not they want to guzzle down cancer-causing cocktails or perhaps opt for something nonalcoholic while they still have a choice. Once addiction sets in, the power of choice is gone and the beast is on your back. It’s only when people are willing to step out of the fray and choose recovery, can they regain their health, the power of choice, and decide once again what they will and won’t put into their system
Lisa is the author of the award-winning book, Raising the Bottom: Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture. (Now available in Audio format too!) For the past twenty-nine years has worked with hundreds of women to overcome alcoholism, live better lives and become better parents. She was prompted to write Raising the Bottom when she realized after twenty plus years of working in hospitals, that doctors and traditional healthcare offer few solutions to women with addiction issues. You can start reading for free on Amazon. Follow her on Twitter @LBoucherAuthor and Instagram.