| Are you fat? Alcoholic beverages can spike your BP, but being fat contributes more to high blood pressure. It seems hard to not be fat with that much beer drinking. Even at the low end of your stated range, you are gaining 20 pounds a year unless you're running marathons and not eating. Which I guess I wouldn't believe. The main difference between beer drunks and other types of drunks is that beer makes you hungry and it's almost impossible to not get fat. I used to be sort of like you. I would have 2-3 pints a day 3 days a week. Over a few years this was enough to make me gain about 45 pounds. I developed high blood pressure. I quit for a year and a half out of vanity and to save money. I lost 25 pounds without thinking about it and my blood pressure went back to 122/70. I then lost the rest of the weight through exercise and a restrictive diet. Unfortunately I am single and live in NYC so my social life suffered a bit. The default thing to do is meet for drinks. If you're just drinking seltzer the girl tends to think you're either an alcoholic, rapist, or worse... a mormon. I got into going to a popular craft beer bar just so I'd have a place to go and not seem like a teetotaling weirdo. Somewhat strangely, after 18 months off, I now find beer, even fancy beer, mostly disgusting. I'm not sure I could drink 2 pints if I tried. I find it hard to choke down a single pint. The ridiculous $12/beer movement is great for me, I can just get a single "cask" whatever-it-is and leave it sit there for the duration of the date. The point I'm making is that I had drinking habits maybe a notch lower than yours but was able to reign it in to 1 or 2 beers a week, that I nurse over 2 hours. All that said, being a drunk is not really compatible with success and 6 beers a night 4 times a week in your late 30s is being a drunk. Any drinking that gives you a hangover is bad behavior. And, definitely that much BEER is going to make you blimp out and worsen your high blood pressure. Either reign it in, and if you can't, you might need to stop completely. In addition, the fact that you're reaching out anonymously to a hacker forum, and begun your post saying you cut down "substantially" to drinking 6 "high alcohol" beers a night 4 times a week seems to indicate you have a much worse problem than you want to admit. Everything you've written down sounds like textbook definition of functional alcoholism. |