http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2758988/French-actor-Gerard-Depardieu-65-admits-drinking-14-bottles-wine-day-despite-having-quintuple-heart-bypass.html
 
The article touches a good point, something I realized a while ago - how alcohol consumption is glamorized and how people who try and remain sober are often picked upon.
 
I remember a girl at work who once told me how hard it was for her as a severe alcoholic - maybe even more because she was a young lady in her 20s. People didn't take her seriously and would pressure her to come have a drink w/ them after work, they wouldn't believe that she really was an alcoholic. But as she told me - last time she had had a drink, it ended up being a 3 day drinking binge...
 
That's when I started noticing just how much BS people spewed about alcohol in our office - and everywhere. Mostly it was all talk and posturing, by people who lived a very boring life but wanted to come out as rebellious and cool. They'd have 3 beers w/ their colleagues after work on friday and maintain that illusion. The most important wasn't to actually drink those few consumption but to start talking about it days ahead, just to make sure that no one forgets that you're in the cool kids club.
 
Of course, it's all bravado. We're still a very immature species...
 
Me, I have my own love/hate relationship with alcohol, with generations of alcoholics on both sides. I consider myself lucky to have that sense of danger inside me which has kept me on the right path despite my strong potential for abuse. I've always felt like I had to be able to make music and write, that this was my life and that I could't let anything interfere with that. Funnily enough, my wife is exactly the same - singing quite probably saved her life. 
 
Anyway, I can't imagine how terrible Depardieu must feel, even just physically. 14 bottles PLUS Vodka and beer and all? Poor liver! At this point I'm guessing that that's why he can't quit - being sober would probably kill him, he needs the stuff to numb him.

1-2 cups of wine per day is actually good for you (though I only drink wine about once every ten years it seems).
 
14 bottles of anything (except water) isn't healthy at all!
 
Oh yeah, and having nothing to drink all week then downing 14 cups of wine on one day isn't good either.
 
I consider myself VERY fortunate that I can either drink or not (even if everyone around me is).  Tonight while playing our first night of dart league I will have two drinks (either a NICE microbrew beer or a simple vodka drink like a madras or Cape Code) and that's all.  Mostly just to patronize the home bar and to relax a little.  I used to have my own English pub in the basement of my house (the best dart pub set up in the Portland Oregon area actually!).  I had over 100 types of booze plus Widmer's Drop Top on tap.  If no one stopped by for three months, I didn't have any (and it's not like it wasn't RIGHT THERE). But, with friends over, we all had a blast.  Of course, I also had rooms and sofas for people to sleep if they had too much and I even had a nice breathalyzer when it was necessary to prove to some that they weren't ready to have their keys back.
 

You can see some of the bar area to the right, the kegerator was in a different area.  Oh yeah, and the guy in the red & black shirt is former World Champion Bob Anderson (a.k.a., the Limestone Cowboy). 

Wow - that looks like an awesome place that you had! :) 
 
I worked in a bar for years - it was a pretty unorthodox establishment where the staff was regularly as drunk or even more imbibed than the customers. We lived in that place, often passing out on this long seats after-hours... I "worked" 5 or 6 nights a week but most of us were there 7 nights a week, and there was always one of us in a good enough shape to get the others drinking.
 
But when I finally left, I went on for months w/o drinking or feeling like it. As I said, the minute I can focus on my music or writing, it becomes the priority. At one point, getting some beer in me was the only way I knew to force me to take a break, because both things are absolutely incompatible.
 
Though a bit of wine can be a good thing, I'm actually quite sure that there are other ways to get those same benefits. I think some people are dead set on proclaiming the virtues of alcohol - funnily enough, it's often the people with the least healthy lifestyle.
 
Me I start from the principle that alcohol is piss and that if you really want to get overly anal about your health, you shouldn't drink it. But life would be boring, wouldn't it?
 
Which is why, once a week or so, I indulge. Life w/o Guinness just isn't as sweet (and it's hard to get really drunk on that stuff). :)
 
The weird part is that I'm not a social drinker (which my wife was worried about at first, but then, I'm not a social anything). I just dig sitting in the studio, listening to music, watching videos, shopping for equipment and having a few cold ones. 
 
 

I work for an alcohol company and honestly what GeGe says (sorry, no accents on the e's on my iPad) is total b/s. This guy is well known for mouthing off and self promotion. If he drinks as much as he claims regularly, then he would be terminal if not already deceased.

Drink more quality, but less quantity is a well known phrase we all use in the drinks industry as we try and combat alcoholism, which, lets be honest, puts a stain on those social drinkers who enjoy a tipple from time to time and of course us, the producers.

Rain : Gerard "Le Porc" is prolly one of France's best exports to Russia - ils peuvent le garder !

Cheers,
Jerry

I'm also lucky in that alcohol has never been a big attraction for me. In fact I never really liked it. I don't like the taste of alcoholic drinks to be honest. And I hate being drunk, it seems to affect me differently to most people. It gives me severe insomnia and I lie awake all night feeling crappy. Now the old green stuff...well that's a different story, if someone passes me a hit of that then I will always take it no matter what the circumstances, and if I have any of the stuff at home then I will always partake of it in the evening. I can't not. Which is why I said goodbye to it a few years ago - I hate the feeling of being tied to anything. And that stoned haze feeling is so nice, it just enhances everything for me...music, sex, reading, doing the dishes, you name it. Very dangerous. So now I just leave everything alone and I think I feel a lot better for it. Couple of special occasions a year and that's it. 

 
Binge drinking is getting out of hand. Social media doesn't help. Facebook has become a vehicle for cute memes and puns which validate everyone's alcoholism. Almost every female Facebook friend of mine is posting things like this 4 or 5 times per day now:
 

 
And they ARE drinking because they're posting photos of them doing it. It's like everyone's lives have become so crappy that all they want to do in the evening is drink themselves into oblivion (and post nostalgic YouTube videos on Facebook)
 
I've noticed this cult has spread to the little sandwich board advertisements outside of pubs these days....have you noticed they all have "witty" little jokes on them which make light of the current booze epidemic? They're all the same too, like crappy flow-charts both paths of which lead to "Get Drunk" and so on. Here's an example, I see this same thing all over New York and it's getting so boring: 
 

 
 

joakes
I work for an alcohol company and honestly what GeGe says (sorry, no accents on the e's on my iPad) is total b/s. This guy is well known for mouthing off and self promotion. If he drinks as much as he claims regularly, then he would be terminal if not already deceased.

Drink more quality, but less quantity is a well known phrase we all use in the drinks industry as we try and combat alcoholism, which, lets be honest, puts a stain on those social drinkers who enjoy a tipple from time to time and of course us, the producers.

Rain : Gerard "Le Porc" is prolly one of France's best exports to Russia - ils peuvent le garder !

Cheers,
Jerry

14 seems quite an extreme figure indeed, especially if one is to do that regularly. Having personally interacted with seriously heavy alcoholics, I know that some do imbibe phenomenal quantity.
 
It would be stupid for me to take pride in it, but just for reference, the first night my wife and I spent chatting on MSN, I drank 4 bottles of wine plus a six pack. At the time, I weighted a mere 160 lbs. I could still hold a coherent conversation at the end of the night, though I had to type with an eye closed and was probably very slow. But I did't pass out or anything.
 
That's over the course of an evening, say between 10 pm and 5 am.
 
Which is why I didn't think it wasn't entirely impossible for Depardieu to (extremely occasionally) reach 14, considering that 1 : he's one huge bastard. 2: he has the "training". 3: as many stars who drink heavily, he may be counter-acting the effect of alcohol by snorting a certain white powder which, in his world, is often practically as innocuous as chewing gum.
 
That being said, I totally agree with you that 14 bottles of red a day will kill anyone in no time.
 
I never cared much for him (except maybe for Astérix et Cléopâtre which is an all-time favorite of ours) , but, en effet, his move to Russia left me caring even less. 

sharke
I'm also lucky in that alcohol has never been a big attraction for me. In fact I never really liked it. I don't like the taste of alcoholic drinks to be honest. And I hate being drunk, it seems to affect me differently to most people. It gives me severe insomnia and I lie awake all night feeling crappy. Now the old green stuff...well that's a different story, if someone passes me a hit of that then I will always take it no matter what the circumstances, and if I have any of the stuff at home then I will always partake of it in the evening. I can't not. Which is why I said goodbye to it a few years ago - I hate the feeling of being tied to anything. And that stoned haze feeling is so nice, it just enhances everything for me...music, sex, reading, doing the dishes, you name it. Very dangerous. So now I just leave everything alone and I think I feel a lot better for it. Couple of special occasions a year and that's it. 

 
Binge drinking is getting out of hand. Social media doesn't help. Facebook has become a vehicle for cute memes and puns which validate everyone's alcoholism. Almost every female Facebook friend of mine is posting things like this 4 or 5 times per day now:
 

 
And they ARE drinking because they're posting photos of them doing it. It's like everyone's lives have become so crappy that all they want to do in the evening is drink themselves into oblivion (and post nostalgic YouTube videos on Facebook)
 
I've noticed this cult has spread to the little sandwich board advertisements outside of pubs these days....have you noticed they all have "witty" little jokes on them which make light of the current booze epidemic? They're all the same too, like crappy flow-charts both paths of which lead to "Get Drunk" and so on. Here's an example, I see this same thing all over New York and it's getting so boring: 
 

 
 

That's EXACTLY what I meant!

I've had a martini at about 6pm and then (almost always) three glasses of vino during the rest of the evening daily for the last thirty years and I still feel great.

Course, I AM going for a liver ultrasound tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

yorolpal
I've had a martini at about 6pm and then (almost always) three glasses of vino during the rest of the evening daily for the last thirty years and I still feel great.

Course, I AM going for a liver ultrasound tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Best of luck for that! 
 
If genetics are in it for anything, my liver should resist even a nuclear catastrophe. My dad... I'm sure he's held together by nicotine and alcohol, in a Keith Richards sort of way. He's undead.
 
My grandfather was quite an alcoholic but, unlike my old man, always a true gentleman and real fun to be around... First thing I remember about him is that he'd jumped at sea to save a drowning coworker. Not the first time it happened, either. 
 
He managed to save the guy. But he himself was then thrown against the rocks by the raging sea. Broken bones, contusions, pneumonia, etc. The doctor were sure he wouldn't pull through it. But he did.
 
And for as long as he lived, it seems that the doctors were always issuing those same dreadful warnings - he always seems to only have a few months left. But he lived - and he cursed life because he hated being ill or wounded. I remember him staring at the cemetery through our window and cursing because God just wouldn't come get him... I loved that big old man.
 
He passed away when I was in my mid 20s.

He sounds like a bit of a lightweight to me !