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Do you drink alcohol? If so, how much and how often, and what's your age?
I'm mid 40s and I used to be a social drinker, but gave it up 2.5 years ago because the hangovers, even after 2 drinks, became atrocious. Even if I ate something, spread out the drinks, hydrated, etc. Of my greater social group, though, I'm the only one to give it up. I keep hearing about people drinking less, but no one I know among my age group has slowed down or given it up.
40s and I drink pretty irregularly.
I have a bad relationship with alcohol. During my divorce ten years ago I essentially disintegrated as a person and was often away on business, so slipped into what would be 'functional' alcoholism for anyone else. Real Anthony Bourdain hours, solemnly staring into glasses of chemical oblivion at hotel bars. I was drinking generally about a 750 ml bottle of liquor per day, and often a bit more. It was better than being sober. And to be honest I'm not sure how I'd have survived that period otherwise. It is, as they say, a solution before it's a problem.
But after 2-3 months of that I started to lose my mind. It would be easiest to describe the experience as very early, very rapid-onset dementia. I'd miss every exit; forget to turn off my engine when pumping gas; as often as not couldn't remember why I'd walked into the room; couldn't read a paragraph of text and hold the ideas together in my head long enough to make sense of them. Trying to research what was happening to me while in that condition was a terrible experience. I can only think about it now without residual terror because it worked out okay.
Long story short I managed to find a doctor online who very quickly put his finger on the problem. I was astonished to learn about 'wet brain'. My whole life I'd been warned about how alcohol can damage the liver; never once had anyone mentioned that it can also damage the brain. "Stop drinking alcohol and eat lots of red meat," he told me.
By the grace of God I did, and it was no problem at all. I can be compulsive about other things but for whatever reason alcohol does not hook me beyond the next sunrise. I simply stopped drinking for several months, and ate lots of red meat, and recovered fully within about a year. Since then I've learned that I'm extremely lucky; that almost no one who drinks that much for that long is capable of maintaining control.
These days I don't drink often. Partly this is because alcohol is the only drug I've ever regretted doing, and mainly in terms of my behavior and the things I say when drunk. I've learned to associate it with regret. Also because I've learned that while I can have one drink without any problem, it does make me want a second. Turning down the second isn't hard for me, but if I have two I'll have ten.
Wine with dinner sometimes, if I know I'll be metering it out across a multi-hour conversation with lots of food in-between. A cold beer while grilling, of course, though I'm careful to not buy more than that at a time, so as to avoid compulsive additional beers. (By the way, a glass of ice-cold whole milk is much, much closer to capturing the satisfaction of a cold beer than you might believe, and is also better in its own ways.)
I will have a drink or two with friends sometimes, but always with an eye to whether the situation looks liable to spiral into more.
But overall I'm just happier without any. I don't like the way it makes my body feel, and while it granted immense euphoria in my youth I don't get any of that any more. It just makes me dumb and vulgar and pushes me deep into 'drunken racist uncle' territory at family gatherings. Better to say no thanks. Finally, in recent years it's become apparent to me that if I have a drink one day my general anxiety level tends to be higher for several days after.
At this point I'd be happy to cut myself off entirely, except that can be awkward socially and also it would just seem... sad, to me, to have to go that far, and miss out on what can be a lovely dimension of life. I love good wine, and good scotch, and sometimes a ridiculous neon blue cocktail on the beach.
And I can have those and get along. Most of the time.
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