The warning comes as research found that the UK tops European tables for online alcohol sales, with more than three times as many consumers buying via the internet than the global average.
As many as 21 per cent of UK consumers have brought alcohol online, behind only China and Japan.
The global average is around eight per cent, according to Nielsen’s Global Connected Commerce study in September 2016, which surveyed more than 30,000 respondents in 63 countries.
Now, one of the UK’s leading experts on alcohol addiction warns the ease of buying low cost wine and other types of alcohol over the internet is fuelling a rise in drinking among older people and threatening their health.
Priory consultant psychiatrist Dr Niall Campbell said: “The post-war generation in particular – baby boomers – are drinking more.
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“We also know that men and women drink more at home nowadays, and the increasing ease with which you can add a cheap box of wine bottles to the weekly online shop, delivered to your door, is fuelling the problem.
“Some major supermarkets are selling wine for around £3 a bottle. Female ‘baby boomers’ drank more when they were younger, because more went out to work where the drinking culture was already established by men, and then they continued to drink more as a group.
“Sometimes people are ‘self-medicating’ with alcohol for stress – from looking after ageing parents, and debt-ridden adult children who have returned to the family home, while all the time holding down an exhausting paid job.
“Or they are caring for grandchildren. Women and men might begin drinking more after a forced early retirement because the sudden abundance of free time can leave people with the feeling they’ve lost purpose in life.
“They might have suffered from loneliness after the death of a spouse, or friends, or a divorce.
“But this sort of drinking habit can have devastating consequences as you get older. In two-thirds of the cases of alcohol abuse in later life, people have had a drinking problem that got worse over the years.
“I would strongly urge people in their fifties and sixties, and older, to ‘think before they drink’, especially if on medication.”
The body’s ability to process alcohol decreases with age putting the older age group at more risk than younger drinkers.
Excessive consumption leads to early deaths from liver disease, heart disease, stroke, and cancer, and fuels depression and anxiety.
Both sexes may also have problems managing diabetes and high blood pressure, and heavy drinking exacerbates dementia.
But women are particularly at risk as they do not tolerate alcohol as well as men, and start to have alcohol-related problems at lower drinking levels than men.
And even moderate drinkers in their youth could find that the same amount of alcohol they used to drink will lead to trouble when they are older.
Dr Campbell, who is based at The Priory’s Hospital in Roehampton, south-west London, delivered his warning as he offered advice on how to cut alcohol consumption in the run-up to Christmas.
This include drinking out of smaller glasses and choosing drinks with lower levels of alcohol.