How much drinking (to pass-out stage) is normal per week?

[amitten]

I have a friend who gets that way about 3x a week. (This is someone in their 30's). To me that's alcholoism, but what do you say...? :toast:

[LeftyMom]

1. Drinking to passing out isn't normal ever.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. ZERO ...

Your friend is in serious trouble...:scared:

[MissMillie]

4. yep

no doubt

[Celeborn Skywalker]

3. I honestly think it depends on how it affects other aspects of his or her life.

As far as physical health goes, I imagine he or she is not doing his/her liver any favors.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. His liver would be the least of his problems, IMHO...

Passing out three times a week from excessive alcohol use is just not normal, and would affect all aspects of his life...

He needs AA at a minimum, and maybe hospitalization for immediate detox...

I mean, really!

[Celeborn Skywalker]

9. Well I'm in college

So perhaps my perspective is a little off. :P

[RetroLounge]

23. and passing out drunk has what positive effect?

:shrug:

RL

[Celeborn Skywalker]

25. none positive.

I was just saying I thought alcoholism had to do with how other things besides frequency of drinking.

[RetroLounge]

34. Well, in that respect, I think you are correct...

Some drunks function well...

They just hate themselves inside...

RL

[La Lioness Priyanka]

5. passing out is not normal drinking ever. especially after college.

[Midlodemocrat]

7. Passing out from drinking is NEVER normal.

[hippywife]

8. I'll add to the chorus

and say never.

[rateyes]

10. Your friend needs intervention. nt

[SacredCow]

11. I can't understand how people do that....

The times I've imbibed to that stage, I suffered through such awful hangovers that the mere thought of alcohol made me queasy for weeks subsequent.

I'll echo the responses that say he probably needs some help.

[Midlodemocrat]

13. I have a friend who routinely gets that blotto with no hangover

She is taking tamoxifen for breast cancer and for some weird reason as soon as she started taking it, she stopped getting hungover. She is coming to grips with it now and Tuesday at bunko, she only drank water. Thankfully. We were getting worried about her.

[Kucinich4America]

18. Hangovers are caused by two things

dehydration is the obvious one, and drinking water will helpt that obviously. The other is impurities in the alcoholic beverages, such as the preservatives in cheap beer, or sulfites in wine. I can drink beer all night long and wake up feeling great the next day, but if I drink any quantity of wine, I'll need a couple hours in the morning. As far as the hard stuff goes, probably depends more on what you mix it with, if you do mix it with anything. Sugar and alcohol will lead to puking, if you do too much of it.

The other thing you can do, besides water, is eat something greasy after drinking and before you go to bed. If there's a fast-food drive through window still open at 2 AM, use it. Of course, this might be more problematic for the Vegans.


Not that I drink in those quantities anymore. Grew out of that a long time ago. Never became an addiction in my case, thank God.

[Midlodemocrat]

19. I know. It's interesting though, that the tamoxifen has stopped her

hangovers. Obviously when you get to be middle aged with kids, you can't get blotto all the time, heck ever, but I would guess that with most folks it is the fear of the hangover the next morning.

[SacredCow]

20. I've not found the greasy meal to be helpful at all....

quite the opposite, actually. :puke:

The worst hangover I ever had was from a binge of single malt scotch and I drink my scotch basically neat- just one or 2 cubes of ice per serving. With the sheer amount I drank, there was no avoiding being sick for the next 24 hours.

On edit, I also have seemed to avoid full-on addiciton. I tend to go in phases with my drinking, and will often give it up entirely for months at a time, just to prove to myself that I can. Having grown up with a number of alcoholics in the family makes you wary of such things.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

15. Hangovers can be avoided.

When I was drinking more often, I used to make sure I drank 60 oz. of water and took a couple of advil before I crashed. I never woke up with a hangover after I did that.

[SacredCow]

17. That only works if you don't pass out before drinking the water!

:) But yeah- the bulk of the nastiness from a hangover is from dehydration and I routinely finish off my evenings of drinking with several club sodas, then a couple of glasses of water and some aspirin or motrin when I get home.

Still, if I drink to the point of passing out or even just "stumbling drunk," there's very little I can do to circumvent a hangover.

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. That's binge drinking

The primary characteristic of alcoholism is the inability to stop drinking without intervention, and we don't know if this is the case with your friend. No one does except he or she.

Either way, though, it ain't good.

[huskerlaw]

14. Agreed on the never

It's not normal to get that drunk. Sure, we've all gotten wasted at a party, and a large percentage may have even passed out. But I'd wager a bet that it was in college, and it only happened once or twice.

A 30-year-old should never drink that much. Your friend has a problem.

[SPKrazy]

16. When I Drank, I Drank Until It Was Gone

and sometimes even after that...

passing out was rare. Gagging myself to puke before going to bed so I wouldn't get the bedspins and get sick later was routine.

Passing out, is pretty nebulous, to me it means unconscious, unarousable, and heavily intoxicated to get to that point.

Drinking and then crashing hard, isn't the same thing as passing out.

Alcohol problems are really defined by the effect it has on a person's life.

If it is interfering with their life, then it is definitely a problem.

If it is not, then it may only be a symptom of a problem that may develop.

:toast:

[Westegg]

21. None times per week is the right answer....

...You don't describe what "passing out" means, so I'm assuming it means basically drinking until you're gone/done/out of it incoherent and then you go to sleep, or fall over and lie there. I would often drink a lot and then "go to bed early," which is not necessarily the same, but was still, in retrospect, a problem for me... Heavy drinking to that extent might have been considered part of the "rite of passage" of a 20-year-old college student but it becomes more and more difficult to sustain (or explain) when you're in your 30s. Your friend should consider stopping for a while, and if he/she can't manage that, he/she should start taking the problem seriously and get help.

[RetroLounge]

22. It's completely normal. And only 3x a week? What a wuss...

of course, from my alcoholic perspective, drinking to oblivion *was* completely normal.

Your friend needs help.

Other "normal" results:

Dying of alcoholism.
Dying from an alcohol related accident.
Killing someone else while drunk.
STD contracted while drunk.
Homelessness.
Loss of job
Loss of friends
Loss of liver
Loss of, uhm, what's that word, uh, memory...
mental institutions
Jail
Death

Hope he gets help...

RL

[SallyMander]

37. Wish i could recommend your post

:thumbsup:

[bigwillq]

24. That's too much, imo.

I drink quite a bit each week, like 4-5 nights, but sometimes only 1 or 2 a night, but never to the point of passing out. I don't think I've passed out from drinking in years.

That person needs help.

[Deep13]

26. Drinking to pass-out is never normal. nt

[JanMichael]

27. Sadly, your friend has a problem

Most people can only say, "Man, I drank so much that night in 19... that I passed out!"

Seriously. That should happen ONCE if ever.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. That's either alcoholism or someone who is too empty-headed

to amuse himself in any other way.

When I was a college professor, I used to encounter students who drank to pass out two to three times a week. Their excuse was that they were "bored"--on a college campus where there was more to do than any human being could possibly do in a lifetime. They were total pop culture zombies who didn't know or care about anything that hadn't been on TV in the past couple of weeks.

[triguy46]

29. None. Binge drinking is a form of alcoholism. Friend needs help.

[LynzM]

30. Passing out from drinking is bad.

I'd say that it's acceptable a few times in college while you are maybe naive and learning. After college, I'd say that honestly, "ever" is more than I think is healthy, agreed.

[matcom]

31. Why don't you ask Midlo on Tuesday (Bunko) Nights?

:hide:

[sasquatch]

36. Hey, it isn't her fault that they made boxed wine so delicious

[Stuart G]

32. How many votes do you need??? I'll add mine too..your friend is a drunk....and

an alcoholic too. and also an alcoholic addict, and an alcoholic drunk......... well 30 ain't so bad.
..I know some who are 18. Yea, they can become one at 30, 20, 40, 18...what do you think?

[XemaSab]

33. That would be alcoholism

I'd call more than once a year a problem.

Ditto for barfing, pissing the bed, and getting arrested. :(

[Bucky]

35. Your friend is on a slippery slope leading toward Republicanism