If you drink this much per week, you are considered an alcoholic according to the guidelines.
Recently, I have been training with a personal trainer and I find it enjoyable, intense, and at times incredibly confronting. It may be an investment (she trains me once a week now), but my motivation was so incredibly low that I didn't know what to do anymore. And that hunger and especially that thirst for wine and other alcoholic treats doesn't get any less, you know. But I still want to stay a bit fit. Long story short: I train with a personal trainer. And she does it well. Very well.
Because besides the fact that she spends an hour a week exhausting me, she is also very interested in my eating and drinking habits. Now, the eating is going fine (especially during the week), but the drinking... Ai. I feel guilty every time to tell this very fit trainer that I have once again half drowned in a wine barrel. Well, I just love socializing, never want to be the first to go home, and I also lack a backbone. So yes, drinks go down just fine with me and no, there are more of them per week than I can count on two hands. Much more.
Maybe a bit naive, but I thought that many more people would reach that number when they went out for drinks. That doesn't seem to be the case; I came across the site of Brijder and could take a test to see if I might be an alcoholic. It also stated what the general guidelines for that are.
The result of the test was that I am a risky drinker (yes, I also like to live dangerously) but I found those guidelines particularly remarkable.
The first signal of alcoholism is:
Excessive drinking: you drink more than seven (female) or fourteen (male) standard glasses of alcohol per week.
Aside from the fact that I really find this a very strict measure, I also want to know why women become alcoholics faster than men. Generally speaking, women indeed handle alcohol worse than men, but the fact that men are allowed to drink double what we do to get the same label I find quite remarkable.
By the way, another signal is that you drink four drinks (female) or six (male) within two hours, which I also see happening around me during an average Friday afternoon drink.
Interestingly, until about eleven years ago, students could not have an alcohol addiction because ‘they drank standardly much more than average’. On one hand true, on the other hand, I don't think that's entirely how it works. But well, what does this risky drinker know about it? And then she is also a woman.
