Hangovers finally getting worse in my 30s. Lasting days. Have I officially become old

JackieChang

Looking for hangover stories from fellow old people.

I went on a bit of a bender last weekend due to the decent weather.

Drank lots of cans on Friday. Got langered.

Woke up hungover. Just as I sobered up in the afternoon, laid into more cans and takeaway pints. Got langered. Shur why not, weather hasn't been this good in ages.

I'm still feeling the aftershocks of that one. Hangover is gone but there are remnants of general anxiety.

What I've learned is: the days of getting drunk two days in a row are over.

If I am drinking: no more super strong polish stuff. Stick to more watery beers.

Fellow people in their 30s+, do you get lingering anxiety after a fairly hefty session?

How many days do your hangovers last?

I am never drinking again until at least June 19th. And I'll be drinking just 2 meaures of Baileys in my slippers and a couple of rich tea biscuits.

I'm in my 40s and can't do hangovers anymore. People around me would be the same and avoid going over there limits.

accensi0n

The key is to drink every day.

JPup

accensi0n wrote: »

The key is to drink every day.

Drinking a little every day is actually grand health wise. Just that a lot of people aren’t able to stop at a little.

Hamachi

JackieChang wrote: »

Fellow people in their 30s+, do you get lingering anxiety after a fairly hefty session?

How many days do your hangovers last?

Physically I’m still fine after a barrel of booze. Pretty tired, but not too much different than my 20s.

Psychologically is a different story. The ‘fear’, anxiety, and paranoia lasts for days now. That’s usually accompanied by a healthy dose of self-loathing!

The only thing that works for me is to get out for a run the following evening / night to sweat it out of my system. That usually gets things moving in the right direction again. I love my nights out but I’m questioning if it’s worth the multi-day downer afterwards.

Flinty997

I was never a big drinker. But there came a point for me where the hangover wasn't worth it. Took too long to recover fully.

Church on Tuesday

You consider people in their 30s old?

Hangovers are certainly a thing in my 30s and were something to laugh at in my 20s.

jimmycrackcorm

It's not your age that is affecting your hangovers, but you're likely just drinking more than you realize and used to do before.

eggy81

I find the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Edit: but then I am absolutely buckled right now. Probably be saying things like never again tomorrow.

bewareofthedog

For me the bad hangovers are like you're living in some nightmarish parallel world, not worth it. The worst one I ever had was after a multiday bender that lasted for at least a week, I wasn't physically ill it was the psychological side of it, had to ring in sick to work for a few days and when I did get back I was on constant edge. Couldn't sleep, felt like crying all the time. I did something silly when I was drunk but also something you'd just laugh off when you were younger. My mental health can not be great at times and being hungover makes everything 100x worse.

Be off it a month off it this weekend, aiming for the long haul.

Oranage2

No more mad ones for me, rarely drink heavy anymore, a session could leave me bed ridden and down two days pay

Onion Bahji

In my thirties. Drink as much as ever - which is plenty. Not bothered by hangovers. Anxiety is better than when I was in my twenties.

minikin

Mad suggestion to you all:
Stop drinking alcohol.
You know you’re not obliged to drink, yeah?
It’s not a national duty.
You’re destroying your body, you’re damaging your brain.
If something makes you feel like **** then stop doing it.

Buddy Bubs

We'd be daytime drinkers these days. Start early like for a gaa or rugby match at 2 pm, drink through until 11pm or midnight, hit the bed and you'd be grand the next day. If you stay up until 4 to 5 a.m. you're asking for trouble really.
Can still be tired bit wouldn't have the roaring hangovers from younger days hitting nightclubs and drinking stupid stuff.

Sky King

bewareofthedog wrote: »

I did something silly when I was drunk but also something you'd just laugh off when you were younger..

Well years ago the worse you'd get is a slaggin off. Now every prick has their phone on standby ready to put your shenanigans on face-tik.

God be with the days eh? No camera phones or social media

I have never got this so called "fear" or general anxiety/seeing stuff after alcohol


What do you guys be drinking

Mike Murdock

PalLimerick

JackieChang wrote: »

Looking for hangover stories from fellow old people.

I went on a bit of a bender last weekend due to the decent weather.

Drank lots of cans on Friday. Got langered.

Woke up hungover. Just as I sobered up in the afternoon, laid into more cans and takeaway pints. Got langered. Shur why not, weather hasn't been this good in ages.

I'm still feeling the aftershocks of that one. Hangover is gone but there are remnants of general anxiety.

What I've learned is: the days of getting drunk two days in a row are over.

If I am drinking: no more super strong polish stuff. Stick to more watery beers.

Fellow people in their 30s+, do you get lingering anxiety after a fairly hefty session?

How many days do your hangovers last?

I am never drinking again until at least June 19th. And I'll be drinking just 2 meaures of Baileys in my slippers and a couple of rich tea biscuits.

It's more to do with the amount you drink than age, and People in their 30's aren't old.

Pauliedragon

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I have never got this so called "fear" or general anxiety/seeing stuff after alcohol


What do you guys be drinking

Anxiety from alcohol is caused by withdrawal symptoms. It must be some sesh to get withdrawal. One of the big mistakes people make is having a feed before bed. Try and resist the temptation of food before u pass out.

Xcellor

Pauliedragon wrote: »

Anxiety from alcohol is caused by withdrawal symptoms. It must be some sesh to get withdrawal. One of the big mistakes people make is having a feed before bed. Try and resist the temptation of food before u pass out.

Don't drink much at all now but I always found "soakage" to work well.

Problem is that whatever you have from a chipper is laced with salt so in the morning would be gasping for water!

Pauliedragon

Xcellor wrote: »

Don't drink much at all now but I always found "soakage" to work well.

Problem is that whatever you have from a chipper is laced with salt so in the morning would be gasping for water!

The issue with eating before sleeping after a heap of booze is the body can't process food and alcohol at the same time so it does the food first then the alcohol so if there was no food in the way the booze would be processed quicker and the hangover would be someway done before u wake up.

Mike Murdock

Two to Three Pints of water with a panadol (or two) before you go to bed takes the edge off.

Always worked for me after a heavy night on the booze.

Do you find that in your everyday life you are suppressing and blocking out fears, anxiety, depressing intrusive thoughts, emotions in general? If so, what might be happening is that when you land yourself in a hangover, you no longer have the mental resilience to continue to suppress and avoid all of the above and you get sucked into the dark bleak hole you are usually staving off in everyday life. That's been my experience of hangovers since I was 17 and I'm in my early 30s now.

It's strange; when growing up I never saw hangovers as depicted in popular culture eg. cartoons, tv shows, featuring what we nowadays describe as "the fear". My younger self imagined hangovers as being a more "wholesome" (for want of a better word) kind of suffering - just a sense of feeling physically sick and having a headache due to having too much fun. I didn't envisage it involving a dark, disturbed sense of wrongness with reality, an awareness of mortality and evilness about reality, a paralysed will, dissociation and numbness. I believe people nowadays experience hangovers worse than people in the past as the percentage of the population who live with what they would describe as "bad mental health" seems to have balooned since the late 2000s.

I never heard anybody, in my own life or in popular culture, describe the experience or set of symptoms we now describe as "the fear" during the mid 2000s or earlier (for example, on any of RTE2's night time shows, in the days before widespread internet use) - yet nowadays many people who have been badly hungover can relate to the description of it. I believe changes which have occurred since the late 2000s have rewired our whole experience of life and made the population in general more susceptible to bad mental ill, but that is a different discussion.

Since April of last year, I have only drank semi-heavily one night last summer, and had one or two beers a handful of times since then (as opposed to maybe two heavy nights out per month prior to then) and I feel much better for it. Having a long stretch of time free of alcohol gives you time to process your thoughts and resolve issues without having to keep starting from scratch every time you go on a mad one.

LLewellen Farquarson

JackieChang wrote: »

Looking for hangover stories from fellow old people.

I am never drinking again until at least June 19th. And I'll be drinking just 2 meaures of Baileys in my slippers and a couple of rich tea biscuits.

For starters, I'd stop drinking your booze out of your footwear.
Use glasses like the rest of us.

frozenfrozen

LLewellen Farquarson wrote: »

For starters, I'd stop drinking your booze out of your footwear.
Use glasses like the rest of us.

But then how would I see?

Sebastian Dangerfield

In my 20s, a quiet night was 4-6 pints, a big night was 8-12, or a mixture of pints and shorts. I would occasionally get a bad hangover, but usually it would be more of a fog that meant I was good for nothing in particular other than topping up or eating junk food. I did get bad anxiety / shame / guilt, but out and out sickness was rare unless I pushed it. Usually that just meant going for the cure, and another one or two full days at it.

I'm 38 now, and there's no rhyme nor reason to it. On the odd occasion I can have a big night out and feel reasonably ok. For the most part though, it ends up like last Friday / Saturday. I had 4 330ml cans, was in bed by 11, and was destroyed the next day. Bad stomach, banging headache, guilt for everything I've ever done in my life and some things I didn't do, for about 36 hours.

Every time I say it's not worth it though, I wait 2 days and the pint is calling me again.

ednwireland

i just dont want to waste my weekends with a 2 day hangover anymore so i dont mind a couple of pints (obviously not for a while in a pub) but much more and i just know the following days a write off. unless im drinking cask ale in a decent pub in the uk seems i can drink loads of that without a hangover. anything distributed by diageo in ireland just gives a massive headache the next day.

fergiesfolly

Well for me, nights out are a lot fewer and farther between than in my 20s, or even 30s.
Marriage, kids and grown up responsibilities really kill the desire to skull pints in a back room of a pub at 4 in the morning.
Anyway, unless you're a complete sad case, you're not going to want to be pissed in a nightclub or pub into your 30s or god forbid 40s.


When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Sebastian Dangerfield

Deleted User wrote: »

I have never got this so called "fear" or general anxiety/seeing stuff after alcohol


What do you guys be drinking

Lucky you. I had a panic attack one morning because I remembered getting into my car drunk the night before, crashing it into a wall, leaving it there and walking home to bed. Made it out to the road to see my car unharmed, parked where I left it, knowing full well I would never get into a car drunk. I had to go out 2 hours later and check because the same thing happened again.

That's the first one that comes to mind - it's not the worst.

TheValeyard

Don't worry OP,
It gets progressively worse.

Londonirish72

I'm in my late 40s and I have certainly found that even moderate amount of alcohol can have a pronounced impact on my sleep and how I feel the next day.

I do like alcohol and the relaxing feeling that you get with it but as I get older I have become increasingly wary of it's effects. I must admit though that I seem to be in a minority in my social circle for thinking like this.

I don't drink a huge amount any more and, moreover, I am very concious of the amount that I am drinking. I usually stick to beer because it is easier to monitor how much I am drinking vs say wine when someone else is topping up your glass.

So, I have a beer fridge at home that is filled will all manner of craft beers which I love but I have them segregated up by alcohol content. I have a zero to 0.5% shelf, a 2%-4% shelf, a 4%-6% shelf and a final one for special beers (you will find that a lot of craft beers are extremely strong). I know this sounds sad but it does allow me to moderate my alcohol content throughout an evening. I find that I can have max 2-3 cans around the 5% mark before I need to retreat to weaker beers and after 11ish it is non-alcohol beers only.

By doing this I find that I still enjoy social gatherings (I'm in the UK so the rules here have been relaxed for some time) but I don't end up wasting the next day because I am too tired or ill to achieve anything.

Tell me how

Have you started to think about the impact of getting drunk in terms of how bad the hangover will be and can you really afford to lose a day, or two, or more for the sake of 4-6 hours merriment.
Because when that moment comes, then you can truly say you are no longer a young wan.

And of course there will always be some who will say that they never think like that, they're up for a session any weekend and still at it on a lot of them even though they're 45+ or 50+ or whatever.
Those people are old too, they just haven't grown up yet.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

The onset of maturity - tiime to put away the childish substance abuse and engage in some more sophisticated drug abuse. You're a grown-up now - head to a forest and knock back some proper mind-altering psychedelics.

Sebastian Dangerfield

Londonirish72 wrote: »

So, I have a beer fridge at home that is filled will all manner of craft beers which I love but I have them segregated up by alcohol content. I have a zero to 0.5% shelf, a 2%-4% shelf, a 4%-6% shelf and a final one for special beers (you will find that a lot of craft beers are extremely strong). I know this sounds sad but it does allow me to moderate my alcohol content throughout an evening. I find that I can have max 2-3 cans around the 5% mark before I need to retreat to weaker beers and after 11ish it is non-alcohol beers only.

I tried something similar the last All Ireland final day, plan was to stick with the 3% ones because I had plans the next day, and only go stronger if I was celebrating. Unfortunately I woke up with the yips of excitement for match day. The weak ones were gone by throw-in, the stronger ones by full time, and I ended up asleep in the garden, wrapped in a Mayo flag, with a half drank glass of peach schnapps and ritz (the dregs of the shed) stale beside me.

jobless

mid thirties the hangovers got way worse for me but i still did them... in my 40's now and its just not worth it anymore...especially with young kids..
hungover and crabby and barking at them for no reason...

still ill have the very odd blow out

Heh just realised I haven't had a drink in my 30s. Did enough right up til just beforehand to cover me for life though :P

One massive variable with hangovers is smoking. If you quit smoking you might not notice a massive difference but if you then have even a fag or 2 while on a session you'll notice an incredible difference the following morning. They're pure ****in evil.

Right up til I stopped drinking though my hangover were mostly on a downward trend but I did drink more days than I skipped.

Royale with Cheese

My hangovers got considerably worse once I turned 30, I didn't actually know this was a thing so wasn't expecting it. I've a friend I used to go out with a lot who is 4 years younger who used to give me shít about getting old and not being able to handle it anymore. He's 31 now and can handle the big nights out way less than I could at that age, and I warned him it would happen too.

To be honest I'm much happier now with my relationship with alcohol. My idea of a good night out has changed from going into town from 10pm til 4am on a Friday to just going up the local with the wife for dinner and a few pints after work. Already booked in for my first outdoor dinner and pints on Monday :-)

Hyperbollix

Not to worry op. In a few short years you'll be 40+ with a couple of squealers in tow and you won't have either the time or the inclination to go on benders. That situation will then naturally evolve into a period of epiphany where you will wonder why the hell you put so much energy and money into poisoning yourself with alcohol in your younger years. You will then focus your precious fleeting moments of "me-time" into late night meditation sessions and yoga.

ednwireland

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

I tried something similar the last All Ireland final day, plan was to stick with the 3% ones because I had plans the next day, and only go stronger if I was celebrating. Unfortunately I woke up with the yips of excitement for match day. The weak ones were gone by throw-in, the stronger ones by full time, and I ended up asleep in the garden, wrapped in a Mayo flag, with a half drank glass of peach schnapps and ritz (the dregs of the shed) stale beside me.

mayo flag sure youre not celebrating anytime soon :pac:

Homelander

I don't find hangovers got any worse my mid-30's, at least not so far. What really gets me is tiredness more than anything, rarely get more than about 4 hours sleep after a heavy session and just feel drained all the next day.

Thankfully never get headaches. Once after a wedding I woke up with a pounding headache that lasted a few hours, it was the only time that's ever happened. I remember thinking if that was considered normal I'd literally have to give up alcohol.

And of course the dreaded two day session. Still do the odd one but they are hard going, feel like an emotional wreck on the third day.

Thelonious Monk

They never got worse for me physically, they were always terrible, but as you get older you give yourself more sh*t for effing up your routine and I always find myself being awfully critical of myself when I'm hungover, it wasn't as bad when I was younger as the night out and kissing some wan would make up for the pain of the next day.
If I'm badly hungover now I can't go for a jog, I don't eat healthy, work can be an absolute mare, I question wtf I'm doing with my life and so on.
Keeping myself in check is key, I seem to be able to have about 6 beers/pints without being drastically set back the next day.
Oh and as a terrible sleeper, booze can mess up my sleep pattern for days.

Butson

Physically I'm rarely sick from drink but mentally, oh jaysus.

The day after a session, I am all over the place. I'm looking around at the world thinking this place looks very strange and what the hell am I doing here! Horrible.

bewareofthedog

I'd always try and say to myself or anyone else in the horrors, "you didn't shoot anyone did ya?" - because that's what the intensity of multiway day bender fear feels like, as if you hid some heinous act like covering up a murder.

piplip87

Can't do it anymore either. Had the lads over for the first time since last march last Saturday night. Plan was a few cans, ended up drinking 12 of them and took into her pink gin. Well it was Wednesday when I came round, still limping from a slip where I managed the splits. From now on only a few beers, Thank feck for WFHbor I would have missed 3 days

Strumms

Deleted User wrote: »

I have never got this so called "fear" or general anxiety/seeing stuff after alcohol


What do you guys be drinking

Me too, I’ve had some dreadful hangovers, been ‘unwell’ but never a ‘fear’ or anything close.

crybaby

fergiesfolly wrote: »

Well for me, nights out are a lot fewer and farther between than in my 20s, or even 30s.
Marriage, kids and grown up responsibilities really kill the desire to skull pints in a back room of a pub at 4 in the morning.
Anyway, unless you're a complete sad case, you're not going to want to be pissed in a nightclub or pub into your 30s or god forbid 40s.


When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I don't understand, you became a man at 20, 30 or 40?

You sound like a good laugh by the way.

completedit

There's no way you didn't get hangovers. More than likely you just had experienced them less and it didn't feel like you were losing out on time as much which I think is the real killer with them. My worst hangovers were when I started drinking. Plus, going hard for two days in a row and then feeling ropey is hardly a sign of getting old.

StupidLikeAFox

Drink smarter, not harder