Drinking is a pastime that millions of people take part in every single day and knowing where the limits lie is the best way to be sure you are not drinking too much alcohol or beer. When someone asks, “Do I drink too much,” it becomes necessary to define just what an acceptable, both socially and health wise, amount of alcohol is for an average adult.

How Much is Too Much?

According to Dietary Guidelines for Americans, moderate drinking is anyone that drinks one alcoholic beverage per day for women, or two alcoholic drinks per day for men. This means that if you consume alcohol every day, you are likely going to be considered a moderate drinker as many people go for longer periods of a week or more between their alcoholic beverages.

There are also defined amounts for heavy drinkers. A heavy drinker is anyone that consumes five or more drinks at the same time or same sitting on five or more days in the past 30 days. This means anyone that drinks five days out of 30 and has five or more drinks on each of the days that they drink. This can also mean people that have more than one or two drinks every day or very often. In most cases, heavy drinkers have an drinking problem and are what many people would consider alcoholics.

What is Binge Drinking?

The most dangerous type of drinking that generally leads to a great deal of issues and even leads to other events that are not directly related to the drinking but are a result. Binge drinking is defined as any drinking that results in the blood level of the person drinking being brought up to 0.8g/dl blood alcohol concentration. In most cases this takes four drinks for women and five drinks for men over a two hour period.

What are the Symptoms of Drinking Too Much?

There are several symptoms of over drinking that you can look for in yourself and in others. The first is loss of inhibitions, if someone starts to act differently and starts doing things they would not normally do they may be intoxicated. Vomiting, nausea, dizziness, faintness, racing heart, blurred vision, and loss of memory are all short term things that you can look for.

There are also long term effects that carry over to the next day that you can look for as well. As alcohol metabolizes in the system it does tend to hang around for more than one day. As your body comes down off the high that the alcohol provided, you will experience things like head ache, pain in the extremities, sensitivity to light, nausea, vomiting, and more. These are all called a hangover and the side effects generally tend to dissipate after several hours and after you have eaten and drank plenty of water.

If you or someone you know has a problem with alcohol you should seek help immediately. Not only does alcohol make us do stupid things when we are under its influence, it can also cause a great deal of long term problems both health wise and socially.

Always drink responsibly!