Does "amount of drinks" sound stupid in English?

Number is better for things you can count. Amount is a quantity but not really something you count. You could say ,” amount of alcohol.”

No, not "really stupid" at all. It's a very subtle misuse of the word and people would still understand what you're saying. "Amount" just usually isn't used to refer to objects. 

You could say “reduce the amount you drink””, with the amount referring to alcohol. This reduction could be by consuming fewer drinks, or reducing the alcohol in each drink.

I think this is an unusually difficult case. You’ll get responses telling you that “amount” is for uncountable quantities, and “number” is for countable ones. Those comments are correct. But, weirdly, I think we’re talking about how much of an uncountable intoxicant (alcohol) a person had in this case. 9 beers or 4 shots might be about the same amount of alcohol. But, each of those 4 shots or 9 beers is 1 “drink” on its own. Therefore, I posit that “amount of drinks”, when referring to someone’s *alcohol* consumption or level of intoxication, is an acceptable way to discuss. I welcome any counter-arguments. I’m less than sure.

It's incorrect, but it's a very common mistake among native speakers so many wouldn't notice.

The prescriptive answer is that "number of drinks" is correct. Colloquially, most people won't notice you getting this "wrong", at least in the US. So probably correct it going forward but don't worry too much about what's already done.

I have a number of eggs but I have an amount of milk. Use "number" when you can identify individual items e.g. a number of drinks. Use "amount" when you cannot separate the total into smaller units e.g. an amount of alcohol. Similarly, I have fewer eggs and I have less milk.

"reduce your intake" "Reduce the intake" "Reduce the/your daily consumption"

Number of drinks I've been asked. Number of drinks per day/week etc.

"Reduce the number of drinks" is better grammatically, but you'd have to add "per week" or some other time limiter for it to make sense. And it's still not quite right. "Reduce the amount you drink" is what you're looking for. It's idiomatic, and means alcoholic drinks. Same as "I drank a lot last night" doesn't usually mean you drank lots of bottles of Evian.

Not a stupid mistake, it's fine enough for everyday conversation and no one would correct you. But talking about for a masters, my first thought before reading the rest of the post was that "number" would work better there. As others have said, amount of alcohol works, amount of drinking too but number of drinks, number of beers, number of drinking sessions etc.

I think technically "amount of drinks" is grammatically incorrect, but I wouldn't even blink if someone said that to me. it sounds perfectly normal to me

Drink is uncountable so, Amount of drink. Drinks are countable, so Number of drinks.

“Amount of drinking” is better. Or “number of drinks”. But most people won’t notice if you say “amount of drinks”.

You could have an amount of drink. Singular.

It’s one of those things that would identify you as a non-native English speaker, but we would still understand.

"Really stupid"? Naww. 

Amount of drink Number of drinks

It's like the distinction between 'how much' (quantity) and 'how many' (number): How much alcohol did you have? How many drinks did you have?

I would say that "number of drinks" is more grammatically correct, but "amount of drinks" is the more common vernacular. I rarely say "number of drinks" unless I'm trying to emphasize the specific number's importance. The number of drinks he had was three. The amount of drinks he had was a lot.

Yeah, a little stupid. "The amount you drink" is what you're looking for. "Reduce the amount of drinks" will be often heard as "Reduce the amount IN drinks." The latter seems to suggest that the drink recipe should cut the number of fluid ounces of alcohol used in the drink recipe. I understand this was fake counseling with a fake client. But presumably you undertook the video assignment as a "live fire" exercise. To that extent, An effective live-fire counseling session for alcohol abuse must focus on the AMOUNT of alcohol in tot, NOT the NUMBER of drinks. Because, as we all know, an alcoholic can easily cut the number of drinks he consumes, by doubling the size of the glass. So your choice of words kind of misses the mark for the assignment.

Number is used for countable nouns, amount is used for uncountable nouns. It’s the same for less and fewer respectively.

Tbh a lot of native speakers do say stuff like “amount of drinks” even if it’s more correct to say “number of drinks”

I’m American and think of it as a mistake that native speakers sometimes make. If I have to put a label on it: “Non-standard” (and not just informal).

Definitely not stupid. Very understandable but, yeah, that's "wrong" if that means it sounds a little off.

Was that your advice to them, just to repeat that sentence?