I Can’t Drink Now Like I Used to a Few Years Ago (26M), is that Normal?
During college and a few years after (maybe til 23/24) I drank almost weekly and don’t get drunk that easily. In terms of beers, maybe I get tipsy at about 6 and give up at 10.
But now, I drink 2 and I get tipsy, and maybe tap out at 4/5.
Is that normal?
Drinking 10 beer in general is not normal. You got yourself pretty damaged by alcohol and now your body is suffering the wear and tear.
I recommend cutting it down to 1 or 2. Your body will thank you.
Welcome to old.
It happens quickly.
You’re gonna love hitting 30. Good luck staying up till 1am, forget about pulling an all-nighter.
I’m 30 and do this easily enough when I drink.
It’s definitely killing me though and the next 3 days are hell.
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33 here - if the staying up is enjoyable then 1-3am is fine. Hangovers are worse than when I was 23, but I’m usually back up to speed by lunchtime.
Of course this is heavily influenced by how much water I drink while I’m out. Hydration is important folks!
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Pulling an all-nighter is still doable, it just requires greater amounts of caffeine.
That’s a funny way to spell cocaine
The body is amazing at adaptation. In a high alcohol environment, prolonged over time, like college, you can adapt that situation and build a tolerance.
Now you’re a little older, you probably don’t drink as much, your physical activity may be different, you’re more in tune with how your body should feel, so you’re noticing it more.
It’s not a bad thing!
yeah, I drink like once a month at most these days. maybe that’s it.
It least getting drunk is cheaper now!
Are you in the same shape you were in college? General fitness doesn’t necessarily affect your tolerance, but it definitely affects how quickly you bounce back from a rough night.
That’s more it than most of what is said in that thread, yes getting older plays a role, but when I see people crying about staying up after 1 at 30, those are people that do not get out of their comfort zone.
Source : I work shifts, with many people the same, we’ve learned to go around schedules and usual hours of sleep because we have to get used to it. For alcohol and drugs, see addicts that do it for extended periods of time/for life.
Notice that those addicts also have a severely degraded quality of life. Your comfort zone is not something always meant to bend or break, if your body is not happy you should be considering why the alarms are sounding. Cirrhosis and COPD are not fun lifelong conditions.
Just wait until the 30s when you start feeling the hangover effects BEFORE you go to bed.
You’re gonna love your 40s…
Oh yeah, my first forties two day hangover was pretty enlightening.
The last time I had a hangover I was 35. It was on business travel in the middle of a multiple country stint with lots of jetlag. I felt like shit for 3 days.
So I learned my lesson and have never had a other hangover.
I’m a nurse, not a doctor, just gonna chime in here that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a thing:
In general, any kind of sudden changes to your normal functioning are things you should probably be discussing with a physician, even if you’re young and otherwise healthy. The really encouraging news is that, if this is indeed caused by a health problem, you’re young enough that it’s really likely you can completely reverse it and get back to 100%. And if it’s not, then no harm done by seeing a doctor and confirming that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(Also, not to scare you, but no I wouldn’t expect to see that dramatic a decrease in alcohol tolerance over the course of just a couple of years at your age. I think it’s worth talking to a doctor about this.)
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What about the increased hangover? Is that more normal?
When you’re older? Absolutely. Hangovers are a day-long event at least. Sucks. You don’t bounce back and be a little tired for half a day like when you were younger.
If you’re younger and have an abrupt change in how you handle alcohol, and have a bad relationship with alcohol and drinking, yeah…might be a problem.
Older as in after your twenties?
I noticed I couldn’t shake hang overs after 25. They ruined my whole following day so I just cut out that nonsense.
More like 40 or 50.
oh no
You’re getting older. When you reach your 30’s, you’ll feel tired the next day because you had a couple of beers. You’ll feel like crap for a couple of days if you get drunk.
41 here. Getting drunk on a Friday wipes me out for a long weekend. It’s touch and go whether I’ll be capable of work on Tuesday.
You’ll feel shitty just from staying up “too long”. Getting older sucks, and I’m not even close to 40.
Wait until you hit the “feeling shitty and ruining your entire day by sleeping too long” stage. Its a really fucking treat… At some point, you’ll realize you can cheat by getting up and then taking a nap or 2 later (not too long though, they have to be short naps). But then you will slowly enter the next stage which is “I can lose consciousness during the day at any point, and often do involuntarily, but once the clock hits 8pm, I am wide fucking awake and likely to stay that way until 5am.”
Not even 30 yet myself and I get tired round 9pm. Couldn’t even stay up to 1-4am if I wanted too now.
Enjoy it. A night out is now cheaper.
I’m 40, and I maybe have 2 drinks a month. Used to be able to drink a lot more. And I consider this change a good thing. As far as I can tell it’s normal.
I’m not sure its a good thing. I’m in the same boat and all I can think is my liver is not operating as efficiently as it used to. And since its not, then drinking 2 beers is prob as harmful to a half operating liver as 4 beers would be to a fully operational one? But thats not based on any scientific investigation, just my gut (pardon the pun).
Oh, I mean it’s a good thing that I don’t try and force myself to party like I did in my 20s. I prefer this quieter lifestyle. I am sure you are 100% correct: everything deteriorates with age, and our livers are not exempted from that rule. All the more reason to drink less.
Agree on the partying thing, although I had a night out in Sept with my other 40 something school friends and it was the best. But was probably the best because its a rare occurrence that we’re all together and can go out!
Yup. Drinking gets harder as you get older. UNLESS you continue to drink at an unsustainable rate.
I’ve met plenty of people who continue to drink like they are still in their twenties, but you’d be better off with a few bad hangovers than what THOSE people have going on in their lives.
I’m 5 years down the road and… Well let me tell ya, it gets worse
I’m 40 this year. More than 2 beers and I get a hangover before I even go to bed and insomnia the next day.
Aged 18/19 I could slam 12 beers and a few shots and wake up feeling nothing.
Time is a cruel mistress.
Your body builds tolerance to alcohol, which means you can drink more and not feel the effects as much.
When you stop drinking or drink less and more infrequently, your body’s tolerance lowers, so you’ll feel the effects more than when you were drinking heavily.
In my 30s here. I spent my 20s getting shit faced drunk almost every day. I can’t drink anymore. The hangovers are just too severe. I would rather be sober and deal with all the boringness that comes with it than get hungover. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.
It’s fairly normal to suddenly find hangovers are a big problem as we get older… it feels like one day you’re able to go out, knock back a hideous amount of booze, then bounce back the next day ready to do it all over again… and all of a sudden those two pints of beer create the hangover from hell.
Not sure about tolerance though. What country are you in… is it easy / cost effective to get a liver test done? It might be down to lots of perfectly natural factors… if you lost weight; if you have a different diet (some foods ‘soak up’ alcohol better than others and cause it to be absorbed more gradually, if you’re drinking on a salad instead of say, pasta you’ll see a difference); you could be drinnking different beers.
Also, if you’ve had significant weight gain, this causes your liver to get fatty, which puts a strain on it; I’m not a medical professional but would think that could have an effect too.
Just an aside:
Fatty liver disease is so associated with alcoholism that it’s the default!
the other term is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease :)
Both come from an overabundance of carbohydrates in the diet. Alcohol is converted very efficiently into blood glucose which is interesting. Before diabetes became super common, most people only got their excess carbohydrates from drinking.
/End aside
Interesting, thanks. My mum has it (FLD), but she rarely drinks, just quite overweight unfortunately (cue the mum jokes lol). My dad has a condition I call ‘microliver’, he went through years and years of blood tests then liver biopses before a surgeon opened him up for something more than a core sample… and in his words “laughed at how small the liver was”. He gets drunk exceptionally quickly!
So genetically I’m double-fucked. Starting to get the same ‘weird’ gamma GT levels in my blood tests and being told I’m an alcoholic (as my dad did for 2 decades in the air force before they discovered what’s up), I do drink but prob about once a fortnight. I’m much taller than him though so maybe I just have a miniliver instead of a microliver :)
If you’re worried about developing fatty liver disease, you might want to look at a ketogenic diet. But I don’t want to get preachy, I’m happy to give you more information if you want it.
Reducing the carbohydrate load, reduces the amount of visceral fat stored in organs, which makes the liver more performant and healthier.
I am in a constant struggle atm to lose weight. Am 6’ tall, but 94kg so definitely technically overweight (and it’s fat, not muscle, do they make bras for men? Cause I’ve got hairy tits right now).
You’re right, last time I cut down on carbs combined with drinking green tea the weight melted off (though I was also doing a lot of pushups daily which also helped). cries in love of pasta
I’m a big advocate for the ketogenic diet (when followed correctly), but even just cutting down carbs is a great way to reduce weight and lower your A1C. Cutting down sugars from a typical diet can lead to withdrawals that are almost as bad as cutting smoking. We eat too much sugar as a species.
Am in the final stages of buying a house (hopefully), landlord evicted me over repairs so I’m temporarily living with my dad… he’s a bit of a feeder, I did make the point to him last night that if he puts food on a plate in front of me I’m going to eat it (brought up to eat everything I was given, ‘starving kids in Africa’ etc) and he agreed he’d stop offering me food all the time. I’ll defo make an effort to eat more protein & less carbs, thanks for the headsup!
Going keto can be hard. But you can try eating clean keto for two meals, and then having a normal carb meal socially. That limits your carbohydrate intake to a small window per day. Your body processes it out of your system and three or four hours. So most of the day your body’s working in keto.
It’s hard to do, because you’re constantly going to be craving, but it’s more socially acceptable especially when you’re living with a feeder.
I really like metrics, so I got a keto mojo, and I can measure my blood ketone levels everyday. Helps me stay on track. If you like data that might be an option for you
“Yo momma so fat she has fatty liver disease” just doesn’t hit the same.
hahahaha. Yeah it’s a bit too on the nose.
I did gain about 15 to 20kg.
I should just tone down on drinking.
I’d say that’s significant. Your liver is probably kinda creaking under the combined strain.
Have a serious think about your drinking, as if you are actually alcoholic / addicted then it could be harmful to go cold turkey instead of reducing gradually. I know from experience it’s really hard to say no especially if your social life revolves around pubs / bars & clubs. But it’s certainly not impossible, you’ve got this.
Think of it as a pleasant buff you didn’t ask for. Now you can nurse a drink slowly 😀
