Should I say something or not? Potential alcoholic ...

How do you drink almost 10 liters of beer in one evening and not spend all your time urinating? 30 cans of beer is 9.9 liters (2.6 gallons!!!)
He's drinking 2.5 to 3 times what it takes to go into hyperhydration. Normally happens with water, but not sure about beer. Either way, I can't imagine how he's getting that much fluid down. His kidneys must be overworked.
 
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How do you drink almost 10 liters of beer in one evening and not spend all your time urinating? 30 cans of beer is 9.9 liters (2.6 gallons!!!)
He's drinking 2.5 to 3 times what it takes to go into hyperhydration. Normally happens with water, but not sure about beer. Either way, I can't imagine how he's getting that much fluid down. His kidneys must be overworked.
I heard of someone (a family friend) who worked in a brewery. He apparently drank 3 cases (ie 36 bottles) of beer a day for most of his life. So yes 30 cans is possible. He was really thin too so he must not have eaten much.
 
That or something tragic will happen and it will stop it. I hope it doesn't come down to this.
There is an old saying, "If something cannot continue it will eventually stop." The hope with alcoholism is that it stops before somebody dies.

I've treated a few dozen patients with alcohol-related liver failure, all of them "as yellow as a duck's foot". I even got so I could predict which ones would get out of the hospital alive. Bleeding to death from esophageal varices (meaning vomiting up basin loads of blood) is not a nice way to go.

And sometimes the somebody who dies is not the drinker.
 
I'm the guy (a Specialist Occupational Physician) the HR department would send an employee to.

... the results:

a workplace occupational medicine program making a diagnosis of alcoholism and recommending treatment - between 65 and 75% success.
The reason this program works is not because the employee is afraid that I'll report them for non compliance (which they will be initially because I make it perfectly clear that I will report them). They have to know there is no way out short of quitting or getting fired. That's called "tough love" and that's what they need at that point.

The reason it works is because when they take "the treatment", before very long they're feeling much better - and their problems start to get sorted out. And that's a feeling most people want to keep going (65 - 75% of them anyway). The other 25 - 35% can't be helped - not by me and not right now anyway.

I've had young men thank me for what I did to them because I saved their lives (and their marriages and their careers too). And that doesn't happen all that often in a medical career.

I have to say, some of the nicest people I know are recovering alcoholics. I wouldn't hesitate to hire a truly recovering alcoholic.
 
A guy at my work. A super nice guy and I consider him a friend in my opinion drinks too much.

Every night after work it's a 30 pack of beer or a 1/2 gallon of whiskey.

I think he is headed for trouble like a liver problem if he keeps it up.

Should I say anything to him or mind my business? I think he would not take my advice anyway. I hate to see him doing that to himself.
"A guy at work" is not your friend. I would mind my own business unless it affects the quality of work then you tell your boss.
 
One of our friendliest, most capable and most reliable techs routinely shows up with glassy eyes and smelling like booze. He is the exception, and it’s unfortunate that he’s covered for based on how good he is.
 
Often times a family and friends' intervention will jog him into reality or at least plant the seed. He will act offended and defensive but, he may think about it later and accept the possibility by trying to cut down on the consumption. That worked for me 20+ years ago and I still go to 5 AA meeting per week. Ed
 
We all face struggles in life rather it be emotional or physical, I think the best thing to do is be a good friend, you could mention to him that your worried about him, but honestly the best thing to do is just be there for him, personally I have no friends in the real world except my wife, I take pain killers, I have hand wrist & back injuries, from cleaning bricks, I sometimes overtake them & she has to get on to me, once the pain is gone I keep taking more because being out of pain feels so good, I also have major stress in my life keeping up with bills & everything else put on me in life is hard & feels unbearable at times, so maybe I use them for both physical & mental pain, the thing to remember is not to come off as judgmental & be there for him rather he takes your advice or not, love covers a multitude of transgressions, we all bear different crosses & handle them in different ways, for some people just knowing someone cares shines a light upon them in severe adversity & helps them concor their problems.
 
What? 30 beers in an evening after work? I doubt it. A half gallon after work? The half gallon of liquor would trump the beer by far. Not sure how a person would function after all that in a short amount of time let alone live. I know alcoholics. What you’re stating as a nightly regimen is unheard of.
 
I think almost everyone on this board knows someone who has a severe drinking problem. I know some people who can drink way over their limit and their body is so accustomed to it you can't even tell. Others are sloppy drunks with slurred speech. For some reason most of them seem to live fairly long lives however they do not know what it's like to feel good. As far as the OP is concerned it will not do any good to say anything to this person because he already knows he has a drinking problem. It's good you care about him and that's about all you can do.

Unfortunately, the only one still alive is dead to me. That person was a contributing factor in the others dying too soon. Absolute scum of the Earth, but is still alive the better part of a decade after one of them. Even had part of the mouth and tongue removed from cancer, obviously caused by excessive drinking and chain smoking.
 
What? 30 beers in an evening after work? I doubt it. A half gallon after work? The half gallon of liquor would trump the beer by far. Not sure how a person would function after all that in a short amount of time let alone live. I know alcoholics. What you’re stating as a nightly regimen is unheard of.

I’m not so sure. Someone close to me used to drink a case of beer most nights. They were something like Coors, not double IPAs or something, but still a lot of beer. He luckily just got emotional, like, “I love you, man”, but was still conscious after a night of drinking. Now, he was still drunk in the morning after drinking all night, so functioning at all after that level of drinking is improbable. I’d think you’d be drunk or hung over for the majority of the day.

I was extremely close with another alcoholic who would seem mostly sober after excessively drinking. He also had a lot of missing teeth, so a little bit of extra slurring wasn’t noticeable. No stumbling or incoherent blathering. He was what I consider a functional alcoholic. He died from drinking.

Yet another alcoholic I knew would drink most burly men under the table, but she would get nasty and violent. From kinda drunk to severely impaired, she was pretty much the same. Drink, drink, drink and the only difference you could tell was how much nastier she got.

Finally, I went to college with a small group of close friends. None of us drank much at all during that whole time, except for one of us. He was a closet genius and had his stuff together, but would tell us stories about how he would black out and wake up in weird places. He once blacked out and woke up on the side of a road, bloodied from having somehow scaled a barbed-wire fence. He didn’t have any scars to prove it, but he wasn’t a story teller and had no reason to believe that a story like that would impress us - it always seemed like more of confession.

Anyway, I drink alcohol and enjoy it, but it can ruin lives, for sure.
 
What? 30 beers in an evening after work? I doubt it. A half gallon after work? The half gallon of liquor would trump the beer by far. Not sure how a person would function after all that in a short amount of time let alone live. I know alcoholics. What you’re stating as a nightly regimen is unheard of.
Alcoholics can indeed polish that off night after night. I witnessed it in a housemate during law school. He smoked weed heavily when it was illegal, and drank more than anyone I had ever seen. He would personally buy a gallon of liquor on a Friday evening and it would be empty on the counter by Sunday. He'd carry around a Gatorade bottle he'd fill with clear liquor like vodka or gin and drink it throughout the day. Guy was smart, functional, did well in law school AND worked a full time job in a professional field, so probably 70-80+ hours weekly. But a terrible person. I've seen that dude break the law many times, theft, drugs, and more. Not a good person at all. I think he's a successful attorney currently. Dude had and still has some really really bad problems, and drinking is NOT the worst of his problems, by far. I'm literally surprised he's still alive more than anyone else I ever known.
 
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