# Drinkers: How many in a normal night of drinking? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 13, 2012, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879 "2012-12-13T00:40:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/41 "2012-12-13T19:28:48Z")
I’m a lightweight and a violent drunk. So I answered 1, and even that’s a bit generous. I’ve been known to order a drink and nurse it the whole night. Lucky for me, when I’m out drinking I’m with either my best friend, my boyfriend, or both, so if someone gives me shit for not drinking I usually have someone there to rush to my defense. ---
**Author:** ![randomface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5fc32e/32.png) [@randomface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randomface)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/42 "2012-12-13T20:17:09Z")
I generally don’t drink but maybe two or three nights a month, but when I do, I generally end up drinking for at least ten hours hanging out with friends (get off work at 6, drink at a bar until 2, go back to someone’s house and eat and play video games or just bullshit with my friends, everyone goes to sleep around 5 or six). So “only 12?” isn’t as bad as it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/43 "2012-12-13T20:19:17Z")
Every other weekend or so I’ll have 1-2 margaritas or something, but you have to understand I take medication that greatly intensifies the effects of alcohol. I’ve never been much of a drinker. My father is an alcoholic. I understand why because I think alcohol is one of the most amazing things, ever. Which is why I don’t drink it much. ---
**Author:** ![FordPrefect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@FordPrefect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordPrefect)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/44 "2012-12-13T20:47:05Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > I’m pretty surprised at these results. I’m always thinking I should drink less - mostly for weight issues, not because I have problems with alcohol - but it appears I’m in good company. I agree with this. I tend to have a beer or three 2 - 3 nights during the week, sometimes none sometimes 5 if I am out for wings. Fridays and Saturdays are another matter and they can be relatively normal or crazy if my wife has purchased tequila… 3 or 4 pints, then either a few glasses of red wine or a couple of dry gin martinis to take me through to bed. Unless my wife bought tequila, we’ve been known to polish off 3/4 of a bottle of the goddesses’ pee and a ton of beer more than once. Yikes. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/45 "2012-12-13T20:58:23Z")
Man, I suddenly feel a bit better about my own level of consumption. Most nights, I’ll have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner and a whiskey or two afterward. We hit a happy hour maybe two nights a week. I’ll usually have a pint of Guinness and a couple of bourbons, followed by another whiskey once we get home. If we’re partying hearty, I might have five drinks without food, but pace the last two with water or coffee. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/46 "2012-12-13T20:59:48Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > I don’t care about normal. I care about me. > > I used to be able to drink anybody under the table. I come about it honest—family of bootleggers and alcoholics. Now I drink just enough to keep a grip on the table leg. > > I drink almost every night and think my posts brilliant. In reality, I think the entire SDMB has me on ignore. > > How many drinks a night isn’t the quotient. It’s _how do they affect me?_ Different every time. > > What was the question? You’re drunk right now, aren’t you? > [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I understand why because I think alcohol is one of the most amazing things, ever. Which is why I don’t drink it much. Funnily, this is why I drink it much. ---
**Author:** ![DeweyDecibel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DeweyDecibel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeweyDecibel)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2012, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/47 "2012-12-13T21:50:10Z")
I voted 4-6 for “a night of drinking”. If I’m going out for a nice dinner, alcohol not the focus, then usually 3 glasses of wine or so. But if I’m wanting to celebrate then I’m in the 4-5 range. That’s glasses of wine or mixed drinks (G&T, craft cocktails, etc). I don’t like beer all that much, just one or two with a burger or pub food sometimes. If I drink more than 5ish drinks, I’m sick for at least a day. I tend towards horrible multi-day hangovers. I don’t drink more than a glass of wine very often (less than weekly), more because of the calories than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/48 "2012-12-14T03:05:03Z")
As Albert Collins said: > [@](#): > > Every day, baby > When the sun go down > I get with my friends > And I begin to drown > I don’t care > What the people are thinkin’ > I ain’t drunk > I’m just drinkin’ ---
**Author:** ![FordPrefect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@FordPrefect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordPrefect)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/49 "2012-12-14T04:38:48Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Funnily, this is why I drink it much. Ditto! “Awkwardly” I am 3 glasses\* of wine into this Thursday night, am I alone? \*using a unit of measurement we call “Robin Pours” in honour of Robin Scherbatsky’s epic wine pour in some lame HIMYM episode involving Ted’s sadness. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/50 "2012-12-14T04:39:31Z")
> [@markdash](#): > > If you’re asking for the mode of the number of drinks I have when I do drink, the answer is 1. I have 1 drink more often than any other number of drinks. Average is probably closer to 1.5. I am a wild man. I answered “1”, but this is more accurate. I’ll have a drink more nights than not, but it’s _ **a** _ drink. Even when I’m doing what passes for “partying” nowadays, I won’t have more than three drinks anymore. At that point, there’s some trigger in my head that irresistibly reminds me that if I drink more, I’m going to feel like crap the next day. And to think it only took me about 30 years of drinking to learn that! ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/51 "2012-12-14T04:57:20Z")
I _always_ quit at the last one. ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/52 "2012-12-14T05:23:54Z")
I don’t drink often, and it’s usually one drink before dinner. Even at parties and such, I’ll generally only have 2 or 3 over the course of the night. I drank considerably more in college, but I discovered that: 1. It takes an awful lot to get me drunk, and I don’t like cheap booze. Getting drunk regularly was either prohibitively expensive, or an exercise in gulping down lots of unpleasant drinks. 2. Weird shit happens when I get drunk. (I never did fully reconstruct the chain of events that ended with me waking up on horseback in a forest.) 3. I don’t really like the feeling of being drunk, anyway. Anything past “slightly relaxed” bothers me. ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/53 "2012-12-14T05:49:19Z")
\*\*Drinkers: How many in a normal night of drinking? \*\* Don’t drink at all during the \*night \*mostly. On my days off I meet the local ‘coffee club’ at 11am sharp, only we don’t drink coffee. Two hours of lively discussion on politics, the weather and whatever is on the mid-day news. Around 1:00 we are well prepared for our afternoon chores operating power tools or heavy equipment while continuing to drink all day. But I never have a drop after dinner, it’s uncivilized. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/54 "2012-12-14T06:07:40Z")
If I drink (which I haven’t for a long time but am recently getting back into), it’s 1 night a week. Maaaaybe 2 nights, on very rare occasions. And I don’t drink casually, I only drink to get drunk. I get drunk off anywhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of a fifth of most hard liquors. So (a little napkin math here) between 6-9 drinks, once a week. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/55 "2012-12-14T12:04:37Z")
> [@Dallas\_Jones](#): > > continuing to drink all day. In order to truly “drink all day” one must begin on awakening. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/56 "2012-12-14T13:50:31Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > Funnily, this is why I drink it much. I just don’t want to become an alcoholic. ETA: Interestingly enough, the average response to the poll - 4-6 drinks - is considered binge drinking. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/57 "2012-12-14T14:23:36Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I just don’t want to become an alcoholic. > > ETA: Interestingly enough, the average response to the poll - 4-6 drinks - is considered binge drinking. What we in North America consider binge drinking, is what the rest of the world considers an apéritif. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/58 "2012-12-14T14:57:03Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > ETA: Interestingly enough, the average response to the poll - 4-6 drinks - is considered binge drinking. Wel, then I will chip in. 🙂 I am one of those people for whom alcohol has little attraction. I like the taste of wine, but after two sips, I’ve had enough. I wished I could drink more wine; in moderation, red wine is very healthy. I like sweet liquor, but mostly because of the sugar in it and then I’d rather have real candy instead of the liquid kind. After the about three times I got drunk on purpose, I think : “Been there, done that, it was interesting the first two times, but no need to do it again”. My husband is the same way. We have bottles of wine and liquor for guests, but if we don’t have guests, they collect dust. Then his mom will stay with us for a week and suddenly we need to buy new wine bottles. Oddly, some people see our lack of interest in drinking as us wanting to be morally superior, or us having more willpower or something. We don’t. We just have tried it and we don’t particularly like it. It is easy for us. That was why it was so easy for me to have weight loss surgery, where after surgery you can’t really drink alcohol anymore. So a typical night of drinking, for us, is opening a small bottle of wine, sharing it over dinner with our guests, us both having a tiny glas, and both of us usualy throwing out most of that glass after dinner. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/59 "2012-12-14T20:12:47Z")
Hard to say. I can easily put back 4-6 in the space of 2 hours of hanging out at a bar with a buddy. Heck, dinner with my SO typically consists of splitting a bottle of wine and maybe a cocktail (so 3 drinks). But it’s not like I can keep that pace from 7pm until 5 in the morning. So I have to question when people say like 18 to 30+ drinks in one night. > [@Leaffan](#): > > What we in North America consider binge drinking, is what the rest of the world considers an apéritif. I don’t know. It’s sort of like the “Why Are Americans Stupid” thread I started. Everyone says Americans can’t drink. But we do seem to spend a lot of time getting drunk. We just seem a bit more schizophrenic about alchohol as a society. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879/60 "2012-12-14T21:24:31Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > I just don’t want to become an alcoholic. If I had the money to retire, alcoholism would be my dream. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drinkers-how-many-in-a-normal-night-of-drinking/643879.md?page=4)