I Can't Drink Now Like I Used to a Few Years Ago (26M), is that Normal?

counselwolf@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 163 points –

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?

98

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.

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.

3 more...
3 more...

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.

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:

https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/04/14/fatty-liver-disease-not-caused-by-alcohol-is-common-and-often-missed

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.)

Yeah, about five years ago I had an ultrasound screening for another issue and my doctor made a remark on a fat buildup on my liver. I wasn't very overweight, I was just drinking some alcohol, lots of soda and not moving much. Have changed that a lot since then, but I'd never have done anything about it without that random discovery.

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.

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.

Not even 30 yet myself and I get tired round 9pm. Couldn't even stay up to 1-4am if I wanted too now.

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.

Think of it as a pleasant buff you didn’t ask for. Now you can nurse a drink slowly 😀

I remember, long ago, going to breakfast with a group of people that partied HARD the night before and laughing that "we're paying for last night" as we ate and laughed only to go do it again that night.

Now I drink two whiskeys and need 3 business days, four Xanax's and a metric ton of Pedialyte to even raise my head from the pillow in bed. I'm in my late 30s. It's usually better - for me at least - not to drink at all. Mileage definitely varies.

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

Some great tips there, very much appreciated. I'm fairly ignorant re keto so will do some reading up on it, if you have any resources to hand I'd be interested to read them

I think https://charliefoundation.org/ is a good intro

I recently did another round of keto. It was very easy to search up starter diet plans, and recommendations (and plenty of folks will sell you their goods and services ) and just start doing it.

There will be an adjustment time at the start , look up keto flu. It's mostly just being grumpy.

Keto-ade can be great for taking the edge off keto flu. It's basically a home-made concentrated sports drink - artificial sweetener, potassium & magnesium salts and a lot of water. All the fluid & electrolytes help your kidneys filter out the metabolized fat that would otherwise linger in your bloodstream.

In addition: you don't have to spend any money to do keto, in this post below there's a diet cheat sheet, just print that out and follow it's pretty easy. All the data's on the web, YouTube as well. Happy to answer any questions you got, this was my pandemic passion project, so I did a ton of research while diving into solve a high blood pressure issue myself. And it did work I don't have high blood pressure anymore

diet doctor is an excellent resource. Everyone of their articles and pages has citations and references. Just hover over the number. You don't have to sign up for anything, in fact I never did. But it's a great resource regardless of their slightly slick marketing veneer

The book fat lot of good is a great resource. Especially this pdf food guide

If you have medical issues and want to be help adjusting to keto while treating them : morbid obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure... Virta health is a great medical, paid coaching platform. They'll help you titrate down medications as you ramp up on keto

The only thing I actually recommend you buy, is the keto mojo, but that's because I'm a data-driven person and I like to see figures to keep me honest. Keto mojo

Excellent fun reading, but not required at all, is why we get sick you can find it on the high seas pretty easily as well. You don't have to buy it. It's just motivation around the mechanics.

And if you're like me, and listen to medical lectures while driving, working out, walking.. I highly recommend low carb down under a medical lecture YouTube channel with real doctors from mostly Australia. But they dive into the various mechanisms

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.

It look me til mid, late 30s. Had drank so heavily for so long, was getting sicker and sicker. Realized was heading straight into Leaving Las Vegas territory, had to quit.

So yes this is normal, and it will get worse, but if you stay fit you'll still be able to drink and stay up late, as long as you drink a lot of water.

Some minor/hard-to-notice health-related things can dramatically reduce alcohol tolerance and/or give "hangovers" shortly after starting a session.

For me, inflammation is a big cause. I have (barely noticeable) cat allergies, and (obvious but hard to avoid) food intolerances & gut issues. If I don't stay on top of avoiding triggers, my alcohol tolerance goes from multiple G&Ts giving a nice buzz, to 1-2 sips of G&T giving dizziness and headaches. Electrolyte imbalance can also cause it. I've found I have to add magnesium and potassium salt to my diet, or else I generally feel tired more, and my alcohol tolerance plummets. Once you start controlling these factors, you'll start getting clear feedback from your body when you have too much or too little salt, in the form of water and food tasting different and general feelings of tension or tiredness.

My advice: try antihistamines, easily-digestible meals, and/or sports drinks for a few days before you drink. If those help your tolerance, you probably have some health stuff going on - figure it out and you'll probably find a way to generally feel better.

It is not only rare but a red flag if you can drink like a 21 year old in your 30s and 40s. If you can drink like that in your 50s you probably have ascites.

It catches up with all of us eventually. One day you find you just have to start cutting back.

People fuck themselves up with the drink. No one should be drinking 4-5 in a day.

..beers? 4-5 beers over the course of a night is fine. Especially if you're a larger person. I'm a pretty big dude and unless I'm shotgunning them I can drink 2-3 beers and barely be tipsy.

I don't even drink often, either.

Now if it's every night or something there might be an issue.

No, that's not even a scary amount. 4-5 drinks is just the first 2-3 hours of a Sunday BBQ.

That's literally like a heroin user bragging abt how much heroin they do but this isn't seen as harmful for some reason

It's literally not. Yes, any amount of alcohol has health effects, but equating a half-dozen beers with heroin is total lunacy. It's absolutely nowhere near as harmful as literally heroin.

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin whenever social damage is included

Youre getting downvote but I'm not sure you are wrong... Alcoholics are far more likely to hurt or abuse another person than a heroin user, where usually the worst a heroin user will do is steal for money to afford heroin. Heroin users mostly abuse themselves. Alcoholics abuse themselves and those close to them.

Source: now sober alcoholic who also dabbled in opiates for a year. 8 years sober this March.

Yep, exactly. They've done actual studies on it. I wouldn't state a point so surely unless I was actually sure of it.

I think a lot of people just don't want to confront the truths about the harm of alcohol. Easier to downvote and ignore lol. I'm glad I quit drinking, it almost killed me I was in an awful place and alcohol only made it worse. Thankfully weed is super legal where I live now so I can unwind with that, a far less harmful substance.

I don't even drink anymore. The amounts that are being talked about here aren't concerning. If you're equating alcohol with opioids, then you have no idea what you're talking about at all.

He's not equating them to each other he's simply comparing the harm they cause to society.......

Alcohol is more damaging than heroin when social damage is included. My opinion is based on the newest research and scientific consensus on this topic.

As well as the medical effects, there’s also the realisation (age varies when this happens) that going out in order to get drunk is not a good time.

What is "one beer"? 330ml? 500? A pint?

Tolerance would be my first guess. When you drink regularly, the liver (and/or whatever) upregulates enzymes that break down ethanol and the assorted byproducts. If you consume less for a while, there's no reason to keep producing them in such amounts.

Also, don't underestimate the effects of stomach contents etc. - alcohol hits much harder (and sometimes subjectively differently) on an empty stomach.

Mid-50s chiming in. In grad school I'd have 4-5 pints at the grad pub and then go downtown to go drinking lol. Those days are long gone.

I have a 2 drink limit now and will switch to water or soda. Otherwise I can't function the next day. Hangovers are exponentially worse than they used to be.

Go see doctor. Changes in how your body reacts to alcohol can be serious. There was a dude who posted on reddit a few years ago that beer started giving him a big rash. It was lupus or something. You could have fatty liver or something that means you're starting to do damage. At 26 it probably isn't permanent yet, but either way, doctor. Get blood draw. Have liver levels check.

Do not waste the doctors time. If you start getting a rash get checked out but an increased sensitivity by itself (which is the only symptom mentioned) is not a cause for concern.

Wait til you hit your mid-30s and a single hoppy IPA keeps you up at night with heartburn, and an imperial means a headache in the morning.

It could be that you're drinking 6-10 natty lights and now you're an adult so you don't buy piss water any more.

I remember the days in college where I’d drink the night and then have kegs and eggs in the morning. Or drinking and then taking a bus to Philly that night and drinking for St Pattys day. It’s been a decade since and now way in hell could I do that again.

There’s some ways to counteract it. Make sure you drink a ton of water. I usually always have vodka sodas now so I’m more hydrated. Also carry liquid ivs around which helps.

Having read your post, I'm thinking of giving up alcohol. I've just consumed my tenth drink and yet, surprisingly, feel no effects.

normal... but you can practice drinking and get better at it. a couple years ago after I'd stopped drinking I tried to pick it up again and noticed that I couldnt handle my liquor at all. but through practice and perseverance I was eventually able to enjoy various rums and whiskeys without passing out after 5 or 6 ounces. eventually got tired of it again so now I just enjoy a beer every few weeks.

Tolerance isn't a positive effect. I'm so confused at all the drinkers who act as though tolerance is a good effect there's literally no other type of drug user who'd consider it to be a tolerance.

I'll speak from experience: I used to like having a tolerance because it allowed me to "hang" with people that were heavier drinkers than I was. All this ended up doing for me was pave the way for alcoholism to set in.

Why would you be concerned about your body's decreased ability to tolerate high levels of self poisoning? I have some vague idea why, but I'd like to hear someone formulate it into words.

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