Question by agua4211: Alcohol abuse, am I ok?
: I am 27 years old. I eat healthy, am at a healthy weight and exercise. The problem is I have been drinking habitually since I was 21. I drank once a week and averaged 8-10 beers on that day ( usually sat). I started to get pain in my right side so I decided to cut back and drink no more than 3 beers in one sitting. I went to the doctor and the blood test showed everything in the normal range. My bilirubin level was 0.5 (normal range is 0.1-1.4). Can I assume that those years of drinking didn’t do any serious or permanent damage to my liver and kidneys? Of course I am refraining from drinking excessively anymore but my doctor said I don’t need to go beyond this blood test. What do you all think. Am I pretty much ok after these years of being stupid?

Best answer:

Answer by yeah, it’s me.
that’s binge drinking, and it’s actually more dangerous. it makes you think that you are okay with your drinking, but you can die easier from alcohol poisoning with binge drinking. college students do it all the time, and they end up at the hospital all the time with that. some don’t make it.

you are still doing damage to your liver. hopefully, you will not suffer lasting effects, but don’t count on it. why and how can you drink that much in one sitting?

Answer by Audrey
Ok, it takes some SEVERE drinking to do a lot of harm to your liver, and i’m talking, at least a few drinks a day/everyday for about 10 years. If you really haven’t been drinking more than once a week or so, your liver is still fine, and the good news is, any damage that you have done IS reversible by abstaining from alcohol or cutting back even more.

It might help for you to understand that there are 3 stages to a damaged liver/liver disease caused by drinking:
-first, there’s the ‘fatty liver stage’ (reversible)
-followed by alcoholic hepatitis (this stage severely compromises the function of your liver; includes pain, and yellowing of the skin; however, it is ALSO REVERSIBLE)
-finally, the last stage is alcoholic cerosis

Now I take it that since your doctor says you’re ok, and you say you’re reasonably healthy, you definitely don’t have alcoholic cerosis, because it is even worse than alcoholic hepatitis, and and you would need a liver transplant. This is the only stage of liver disease that is NOT reversible. But you’re not there, you don’t even have alcoholic hepatitis ;).

So my answer is yes, you’re pretty much ok after all this time. A lot of people are in much worse conditions than you. Just don’t start drinking more.

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