Alcohol Consumption

You are going to do what you want. You are 3 months out. If your surgeon gave you permission than why bring it here. 

You are a waste of our time. People gave you honest responses and you are arrogant and rude. Do me a favor, stay off the streets while you are drinking, it reacts differently with us and we don't feel as drunk as we may actually be. You will end up locked up with all of that in your system or worse, killing someone. You be the know it all and we will sit back and watch.  

I brought it up here to see if anyone else had the same reaction . . Did you even read my original post?

Who is being judgmental and rude now? Saying I am going to get locked up or kill someone for going out and drinking alcohol. 

and never once did I pretend to "know it all" that is why I came on here looking for advice.

Well, you do indeed seem to say over and over that you know better than long time veterans. 

And it's natural to want to hear affirmation of our choices and behaviors. 

You want to hear someone who is a veteran, successful with weight loss, tell you that what happened is ok and that they've experienced this without consequences. 

Nobody is telling you that. Not one person.

This is a support site. We offer support. Support means that we speak the truth, based on experience. We do it in a caring spirit. Sometimes it is framed as "tough love."

I think it's interesting that your own support group didn't include a medical professional and that you apparently received no response there that was one of deep concern.

Here, your responses do indeed indicate deep concern. 

I have maintained direct contact with 100 post ops in my 7 years of pre op and post op experience. And of those 100 - 9 of them have become active alcoholics post WLS. And I mean true alcoholics - not just people who drink socially, or drink too much, or drink more than they wish to. All of them have had significant regain of weight but could not deal with that issue until the alcoholism was under control. And a few of them simply aren't there yet. 

I wish you well. But if you come to OH just wanting platitudes and passive head nodding....sorry. That would be dishonest and just a lot of BS. There is a lot to be concerned about in your behavior and your responses here. 

To be honest, I don't understand why people decide to test their limits. Be it food or drink. The "I just wanted to see what my tolerance is" is a pretty poor reason.

When your doctor gave you permission to try alcohol I'm pretty sure he meant a small glass of wine, not 5 vodka and waters and one tequila mixed drink.  Whether you can tolerate it or not is really not the issue.  The issue is, why would you even want to know whether you tolerate alcohol when you are only a few months out from surgery?  

You seem to not want to hear the facts.  We've seen a lot of people come and go from these boards with the same issue.  Some of them leave in a hearse from drinking themselves to death.  They all claimed to not have a problem with alcohol.  Alcohol cross addiction is a real thing.  I've never met an alcoholic that planned on becoming one.

I can drink a glass of wine, get drunk in ten minutes, and in less than an hour I'm sober again.  We metabolize alcohol much faster than we did before surgery.  If I paced myself I could drink all night and go home feeling sober.  My blood alcohol would be through the roof and I would not feel it.  Just because I could drink all night doesn't mean I should.  You are playing with fire.

I'm sorry you think I don't know you and what is going on with you.  No one, thinking clearly, decides to "check their tolerance just to check their tolerance" 3 months after surgery.  Its a sign of something else.  

I wish you all the luck in the world.  You might not have enjoyed the responses you got here, or maybe you have, but I hope in a few days you are able to sift through the anger you are feeling and see that everyone is saying "stop what you are doing and seek help" because they care and are giving support.  

Good luck, my dear.  I truly hope it was just an young, impulsive, naive, cheeky thing you did, and you just blindly do not know the way it looks to come on here asking this.  And I hope that, if anything, the way everyone has reacted to your post makes you see that there is something very inherently wrong in what you did and you will thing twice to do it again.

If I posted something on a site and every response was one of disbelief and utter concern -- I would think to myself, "Whoa -- maybe there's something I hadn't though of!" -- because it's usually not the norm for everyone else to be wrong and me the only person to be right about something.

You've a sister who's an alcoholic. 

Obesity is often a symptom of addictive eating.  Cross addiction is a real issue for post WLS patients and you now have three major risk factors: WLS, a sibling with an alcohol problem and alcohol tolerance.  

No one here, other than someone who's become an alcoholic can relate in any way to drinking six drinks in an evening --- 

So, to answer your question: NO this type of tolerance isn't normal. 

Eloquent and on point as usual Katherine the Small.  

Increased tolerance to ,alcohol may mean trouble. 

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa28.htm

Alcohol and Tolerance--A Commentary by 
NIAAA Director Enoch Gordis, M.D.

Tolerance can be a useful clue for clinicians in identifying patients who may be at risk for developing alcohol-related problems. For example, younger patients who are early in their drinking histories and *****port that they can "hold their liquor well" may be drinking at rates that will place them at risk for medical complications from alcohol use, including alcoholism. The fact that tolerance to all of alcohol's effects does not develop simultaneously is also important; people who are mildly tolerant may exhibit more symptoms of impairment when faced with unfamiliar activities, such as driving in an unknown area, than when they are engaged in routine actions, such as driving home from work. Lastly, although we know that initial sensitivity to alcohol may play a role in the development of alcoholism, the role of tolerance in maintaining addiction to alcohol needs further exploration.

Tolerance and the Predisposition to Alcoholism

Animal studies indicate that some aspects of tolerance are genetically determined. Tolerance development was analyzed in rats that were bred to prefer or not prefer alcohol over water (26,27). The alcohol-preferring rats developed acute tolerance to some alcohol effects more rapidly and/or to a greater extent than the nonpreferring rats (26). In addition, only the alcohol-preferring rats developed tolerance to alcohol's effects when tested over several drinking sessions (27). These differences suggest that the potential to develop tolerance is genetically determined and may contribute to increased alcohol consumption.

In humans, genetically determined differences in tolerance that may affect drinking behavior were investigated by comparing sons of alcoholic fathers (SOA's) with sons of nonalcoholic fathers (SONA's). Several studies found that SOA's were less impaired by alcohol than SONA's (28,29). Other studies found that, compared with SONA's, SOA's were affected more strongly by alcohol early in the drinking session but developed more tolerance later in the drinking session (30). These studies suggest that at the start of drinking, when alcohol's pleasurable effects prevail, SOA's experience these strongly; later in the drinking session, when impairing effects prevail, SOA's do not experience these as strongly because they have developed tolerance (30). This predisposition could contribute to increased drinking and the risk for alcoholism in SOA's.

And there is much much studies that link increase tolerance to alcohol to alcoholism. Google that.

People here ~ we have seen enough..and hear enough. Here and IRL. 

I love fact finders.