The RIVM calls men who drink more than 21 glasses a week, and women who drink more than 14, excessive drinkers. Heavy drinking means 6 glasses or more in one day at least weekly for men, and 4 or more for women. The Dutch Health Council goes further: any amount of alcohol can be harmful.
Those two answers do not clash, but they answer different questions. One is a statistical threshold, the other a health recommendation.
Below you can read where each definition comes from, why Belgian advice sounds different, and from what level of use blood values start to move.
How much alcohol is too much according to the guideline?
The Dutch Health Council advises that any amount of alcohol can be harmful, and that drinking no alcohol is healthier and safer. An earlier version still mentioned a maximum of one glass a day. That maximum was dropped because new research showed no safe lower limit.
So there is no number that gives you a free pass.
What does exist are definitions the RIVM uses to map the population. Those thresholds describe risk groups and are not personal advice.
What is excessive drinking and what is heavy drinking?
The RIVM uses two separate definitions. Excessive drinking is about the weekly total, heavy drinking about how much you drink in one day. Someone can be a heavy drinker without being an excessive drinker, and the other way round.
| Term | What it covers | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excessive drinking | total per week | more than 21 glasses | more than 14 glasses |
| Heavy drinking | in one day, at least weekly | 6 glasses or more | 4 glasses or more |
| Health Council advice | health risk | no safe lower limit | no safe lower limit |
Both definitions count standard glasses, not pub glasses. A generously poured glass of wine at home often counts as one and a half to two.
What exactly counts as one glass per drink type is covered in what a standard drink is.
Does the Belgian advice also apply in the Netherlands?
Search for this and Belgian sources often come out on top. Belgium uses its own advice, with a weekly maximum for adults that differs from the Dutch wording. For the Dutch situation, the Health Council and the RIVM are the appropriate sources.
That difference is not a detail.
Anyone applying a Belgian weekly maximum and assuming they are within the Dutch guideline is comparing two different things. So always check which country a piece of advice comes from.
From what level of drinking do blood values move?
Blood values respond later than people expect. An evening of heavy drinking usually leaves gamma-GT or CDT untouched; those markers respond to a pattern of weeks to months of heavy use. What a single evening does show is EtG in urine, and only for a few days.
Picture this: someone drinks 8 glasses every weekend for 4 months and nothing during the week.
That weekly total stays around 32 glasses, well above the RIVM threshold of 21 for men. His %CDT can still come out at 1.9%, neatly below the usual limit of 2.8%. CDT mainly responds to prolonged and near-daily heavy use, not to a weekend pattern.
A normal result is therefore no proof that use falls within the limits. The weekly total in standard glasses says more here than your blood result.
What gamma-GT does and does not say is covered in gamma-GT too high. The full set of markers is in our overview of proving alcohol use.
Why does your own glass often count as more than one?
A standard glass in the Netherlands contains about 10 grams of pure alcohol. That comes to 250 ml of lager, 100 ml of wine or 35 ml of spirits. At home almost everyone pours more generously, and that is where the gap between feeling and counting starts.
So a 200 ml glass of wine counts as two.
Anyone drinking two of those glasses an evening at home is on four standard glasses. Across a week that is 28, which puts someone in the excessive drinking category without it feeling that way.
What happens with binge drinking?
Drinking a lot in one evening loads your body differently than the same number of glasses spread across a week. Your blood alcohol level rises higher, and the peak lasts longer. That pattern falls under the definition of heavy drinking as soon as it happens at least weekly.
The effect on your blood pressure and night's rest is the quickest to notice.
You can read more about that in binge drinking and in alcohol and blood pressure.
What I mostly take from these numbers: the limit you feel yourself is almost always higher than the limit the RIVM uses. Two glasses an evening feels modest and still lands above 14 on a weekly basis.
If you want to know where you stand, count your glasses in standard glasses for a week and discuss that number with your GP.
Every blood test result at Zuivertest includes a professional assessment from a BIG-registered doctor. For treatment decisions, discuss your results with your GP.
Sources
- RIVM, Leefstijlmonitor, alcohol use among adults, 2025 figures.
- Gezondheidsraad, advice on alcohol: any amount of alcohol can be harmful (accessed July 2026).
- Thuisarts.nl, "Ik drink vaak alcohol" (accessed July 2026).
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