I posted this on a thread in another forum, but I thought it might be useful here.

We all know (hopefully!) the benefits of recording what we drink. The important thing here of course is that we trend in the right direction, until the point we reach our goal - of either sustained safe drinking or abstinence.

If we have the latter goal, then the absolute size of our 'standard drink' doesn't matter - once we've got to a point of having none then we're there! However, if we have a goal less than that, it is useful to have some standard reference that we can compare to the AMA guidelines or whatever

Personally I find the UK units the easiest to work with, so I'll outline my 'little tricks' based on those - they can easily be adapted to other unit sizes. The UK guidelines by the way are more or less:

No more than 21 units per week for men and 14 for women AND no more than 5 units per sitting for men and 4 per sitting for women

You can work out the units in standard drink bottles/cans fairly easily. E.g. a standard pint of lager here is 4.3% alcohol and equates to 2.5 units. A bottle of wine is ~8-10 units (depending on strength) 13.5% (a standard red) is 10 units, 9% (a weak white for example) is about 7 units. There are typically ~ 4 glasses per bottle (depending obviously on the size of the glass!)

If however, you're a spirit drinker like me then it can be more difficult - particularly when you're drinking at a house or a party, i.e. self-measured rather than formal pub measures. Here is a little trick that you can use.

A standard spirit over here (whiskey, vodka, gin, brandy etc) is 40% alcohol (80 proof for you americans!)

Take a glass that you would normally use and pour water into it up to the level you would normally pour your vodka/gin etc. Now grip the glass so that one of your fingers is level with the top of the water. If you normally take ice then add ice if that makes the level easier to judge. Now keeping your grip empty the water into a measuring jug. Repeat this 5 times in total (i.e. 4 more times). Note the volume in the jug in ml (e.g. it might be 550 ml). Multiply this number by 8 and note the answer in litres (in our case it would be 4.4). This is the number of units of alcohol in your 'standard drink'

For US units you can pour 4 drinks into the jug and divide the fluid ounces figure you get by 6. This is the number of US units in your standard drink. E.g. you pour 4 drinks and find it is 15 fluid ounces. You divide by 6 and that gives you the answer - your typical 'standard drink' has 2.5 US units of alcohol.

Hope that helps someone keeping track..........

good to see some thoughtful advise!

They sell these drinks here at a certain pharmacy that to me looked like single shots (1 unce 80 proof 40% alcohol)

wasn't I suprised to find that a slightly larger bottom radius and longer bottle by a half inch had nearly doubled my intake?

thanks for the post!