Six months to a year ago, I realized that I was not a young man anymore.
Gone are my halcyon days of merrily boozing and living a normal life. My doctor told me that, due to my advanced age–50-ish–I ought to knock off the boozing. I gave up the hard drugs decades ago.
So I knocked off the regular drinking a couple of months ago.
But Jesus. Once upon a time, I could knock back tequila sunrises and black russians like they were water. Brandy was a rare treat, and black label Southern Comfort was a friend I could turn to at any time of the day or night.
Now (fuck me), two glasses of red wine makes my head spin. Makes me sleepy. Makes me apt to say bullshit or crash out entirely without saying a word.
And I’m goddamn depressed. Gettin’ old ain’t for cowards.
Not that I was ever an alcoholic, but now when I drink, my freakin’ heart rebels. Decides that it doesn’t like me, anymore. Skips beats. Threatens to quit the job entirely if I don’t straighten up.
So I’m trying to straighten up. The old heart has me by the balls (motherfucker!).
So… anybody have any advice for how to get old properly? Did you just wing it? Should I?
After 4 trips to ER for ripping stomach pains, I was given a long list of foods and beverages I should avoid. Alcohol is on that list. I have spent the last couple years acquiring a lot of locally produced spirits along with a few bottles of the high end whiskeys. All I can do now is sit and look at them.
Y’all went about it backwards. You should have spent more time on the straight and narrow when you were younger so that your body could stand more abuse as you got older. It worked for me!
You could share. Sharing is a virtue and I’m all about helping others be more virtuous!
Back when I first became a diabetic, I ran across the line, “The secret to a long, healthy life is to acquire a chronic illness and then take meticulous care of it.” Long. Healthy. Boring.
The people in my family live long, long lives. I’ve come up with the theory that we simply can’t abuse ourselves to death - but we can ruin our health. So we can either take care of ourselves and live a long, reasonably healthy life, or smoke, drink, overeat, overdose or whatever and spend the last 30 years or so in a wheelchair, using oxygen, and needing someone to help us use the toilet.
I feel the OP. When I was in my 20’s, the whole point of drinking was to see how much I could drink before passing out. I was stupid in my 20’s.
These days, I simply don’t enjoy the sensation of being roaring drunk, and the hangovers are worse. But one or three cocktails in an evening (not every evening) can put me in a nice contented mood.
Doctors love to tell people to quit drinking. Total abstinence shouldn’t be necessary unless you have some very specific and serious issues. Moderation is key. Listen to your body; it’ll tell you what you can and can’t do safely.
Ain’t that the truth. My buddies and I used to race to see who could drink the most mai tais before supper.
Once, our table sent a guy to to bar for whiskey. Did he come back with a tray full of shots? No. He came back with five glasses, each with four or five shots inside. Naturally, we chugged.
True. He didn’t tell me to stop drinking, though. He said to stop boozing. Which is easy enough because I can’t really booze it up anymore (re: the two glasses of red wine making my head spin). He said that one glass a night might even be good for me.
Seconding this. To add, you need to start taking care of your health early enough to make a difference. You cannot live a life of partying and debauchery and then try to be an angel after 50. You need to make healthy lifestyle choices early, or by the time you start having problems it’s often too late to change course. Both my parents died younger than they should have from various maladies related to being heavy, and by the time these things emerged, they wouldn’t (or couldn’t) make the needed changes to avoid them. There is enough information out there and accessible that it should not be a surprise the things you need to do to take care of yourself.
As for the drinking, my wife was recently told not to drink alcohol any more due to a health condition (not related to alcohol). She is not a drinker, but would occasionally have one. It’s an odd thing to have to give up at this age - sounds easy on paper, but there are many occasions where alcohol is the norm.
Used to drink to excess, smoke heavily, and chase any women who looked like they might be willing to slow down so I could catch 'em. I quit smoking in 1983, seriously scaled back drinking around 1998; and women? Well, they could come to a dead stop and start chasing me and it wouldn’t do either of us any good. And now it seems that rich food may be going the way of all good things. I expect I’ll be shitting in a diaper and drooling into my jello in another ten years.
