Aches and pains and incontinence aside, what's with the hair sprouting all over ? Ears, nose... what the fuck is this, some kind of second puberty ?
This is a timely thread since I was just talking about this exact topic with one of my coworkers today. I am 25 and I am another one who can't drink like I used to. When I was in college I could drink every night and go to class the next day without any problem. On the weekends I could stay up until 3 in the morning drinking, pass out, wake up at 6:00, go to work, put in a 9 hour day, and drink again that night like it was nothing. Just the thought of trying to do that now makes me feel sick. I never used to get hangovers at all, but my 23rd birthday seemed to be the point where this all changed. Part of the problem might be that I only drink about once a month now. Maybe if I started drinking again every night I would get used to it again, but I doubt it. I like Taco Bell, and it used to like me okay, but not anymore. I don't even bother with it now, it's just not worth it. I also can't believe that I ever liked South Park. I have nothing but respect for Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but with the exceptions of a few classic episodes, the humor just doesn't do anything for me anymore.
I'm of the upper older posting set as well. My knees are shit thanks to volleyball and basketball. I have tweaked my back reaching in my dresser drawer for a bra and it fucked me up for the better part of a week. I can't drink near as much and if I do I must have 8 solid hours of sleep otherwise I wake with more of a need-more-sleep hangover than one from the booze. I also find it harder and harder to deal with the terminally stupid people of the world. My already thin patience is stretched as far as it can go some days. I just had a lady call me 4 times in the last hour with the same stupid billing question. In the end she actually ended up calling herself stupid. Win
So what you're telling us is that never using your body is a great way to preserve its function. Hm. And if you're inactive, how would you know if your body is aging anyways? As for me, I've inherited my mother's bad knees (not good for a job that requires you to stand all day) and my dad's bowels. This is largely the reason why I've stopped eating at work. I mean, sure, it makes me groggy too, but that's only part of it.
At almost 28, I'm in the same boat as the others who have posted about terrible hangovers. Even moderate drinking these days gives me a hangover from hell for the entire next day, it's really pathetic. Of course, I've noticed that I get much worse hangovers than my friends because while most of them will start drinking water an hour or two before they go to bed, I will continue drinking beer right up to the moment that I pass the fuck out. Other than that, I'm right as rain.
Well, I am 30 and falling apart. My right knee is fucked from getting tossed off a pissed off horse, my whole back is fucked from mild scoliosis and being dragged a quarter mile on asphalt by a terrified thoroughbred racehorse at sixteen and my hands are getting arthritic from breaking people's faces with them and ,duh, breaking horses. I bitch about it, score meds for it, take glucosamine and MSM supplements daily to possibly lube the fucking joints up, and work them hard for making me hurt. Funny thing is, I feel better when I work out. I lift and run afterwards. I max myself out everytime. Minimum three times a week. My knee hasn't bugged me since I started running (after two weeks) and I try to do yoga nightly (operative word: TRY) which keeps my back limber. As for the drinking, I hold my liquor pretty much the same. I have never been a great drinker, I often got/get sick if I drink too much. However, my drug use has gotten trickier. I think it's because I feel differently about the effects from them compared to my twenties. Kids these days? It's an interesting evolution, watching them be completely unaware of the world, listening to their headphones, texting that slut online, and generally losing any real concept of being aware of others. If that makes no sense it's either because I am so stoned and/ so drunk.
27 almost 28, body is fine and I can still drink like a motherfucker, but god damn, if I eat fast food I feel like a sack of shit for a week now. I swear to god the 'hangover' from a McDonald's meal is worse than any booze. Not sure if that's because I kept drinking and stopped eating fast food, but I can't eat that shit anymore.
Same, except I'm turning 22 soon. I cannot eat anything sugary/fast food/ anything bad for you without almost immediately feeling terrible afterwords. I've lost all taste for those things, which is probably a good thing but rather weird seeing as not too long ago I could eat shit all day and feel fine.
Im 26. Ive had back problems since middle school. I was diagnosed with moderate kyphosis and in the summer before 9th grade was given the option to either do a year long back brace, my fucking freshman year of high school, or do physical therapy to help my back muscles correct the problem. Not wanting to be tortured at school I went with physical therapy. I know I probably would have been tormented endlessly and had become a lot more bitter and jaded during my high school years. But fuck half assed physical therapy combined with learning to straighten the fuck out when taking update xrays has led to to chronic and at times completely debilitating back pain. Sometimes I wish I could go back and have done it, growing as I was with a brace would have been a permanent solution (or so my doctor said). I started physical therapy again in my last year of college two years ago when my back started giving a lot of problems.A muscle will be strained and this will cause a chain reaction of back muscles to go out. I was shuffling around campus like an old person without a walker. This physical therapy I learned a lot more useful back exercises and core work that really do alleviate a lot of the pain. So as long as I keep up with that and have a supply of pain meds on hand to break any strained muscle cycle Im usually ok, relatively speaking that is. Here in China the fucking beds are just fucking boards and this has aggravated my back to no end. So 6 out of 7 days a week I wake up with an insanely stiff back. It takes the better part of the day to stretch it out. My brother has a normal western bed but throws little fits when he catches me sneaking naps on it. An interior design company his company contracted for the building theyre working on sent him some bed samples and he got a fucking pillow top cover to add to his plush spring mattress. He gave me a nice little warning to not sleep on it when he got it. I wanted to strangle him. I also can't drink like I used to. In college I could drink from Thursday to Sunday evening and still make it to class monday morning with a random night of drinking during the week. Now if I party hard two straight nights I have a two day hang over. I mostly drink hard during the weekend now. Since I graduated Ive only had a string of part time gigs. Not having a joby job I think has kept my stress levels way down. I have a feeling once I do start the 9 to 5 grind my aging with accelerate exponentially. I don't do shit and I still found my first gray hair on my head a few weeks ago...
I'm 30. I can still drink, but these days I require more sleep after drinking. If I stay up past 2:00am I'd better not make any plans for the next day, because I'll be catatonic. If I'm in bed before two, I'll feel pretty good the next day, just tired. I've never gotten bad hangovers unless I drank something that didn't agree with my brain, and they don't seem to be getting any worse. I can't go on benders like I used to, either. After about three days of drinking my body starts to shut down.
I can picture all the over-40 posters reading about the aches-and-pains woes of 20-somethings. I see you all shaking your fists at the screen and chugging Metamucil. And I just laugh and laugh.
I'm 30, and the things I notice are more related to a specific three months of my life than any kind of prolonged abuse or "old age." In 2008 I had numerous health issues, not the least of which were malaria and a bad drug reaction. Ever since then I find: - I cannot be on an empty stomach. If I haven't eaten, I get a weird taste in my mouth, my vision starts to go funny and I start to come apart. Prior to The Bad Three Months, I could go all day without having anything more than water and not be bothered by it. Now, if I DO go without eating, the only thing that gets rid of the bad taste and the nausea are sweet, cold things like Freezies. - I can't work 70 hour work weeks like I used to. All through high school, university and for two years after graduating I did roughly 70hrs/week, between school and work (or between a full time and a part time job). That would fucking kill me now. I'd burn out. Which sucks, because I used to be pretty badass when it comes to working. - I'm more emotional/prone to PMS. This truly sucks. I used to think it was something whiny bitchy girls made up to get attention and to get out of doing work. Whatever went wrong with me in 2008 permanently altered my body chemistry, and now - occasionally - it hits. I still think most women blow it way out of proportion, but I must admit it is real and it does suck. I miss being in 100% control of my emotions.
I can't binge drink to get wasted anymore. Ten years ago I could put away a 26er of whiskey before we went out. Nowadays if I were to make the attempt then it's a free trip to the Blackout Zone and a hangover that allows my spine to pick up A.M. radio signals, and I have way too much going nowadays to try something so dumb. I can still drink well and I still love to get bombed. JAMES Bombed. However the macho horseshit is a thing of the past. Miss you. Love you. Though I still only sleep 6-7 hours a night, in my prime drinking years back in 99-01 I slept 3, maybe 4 hours a night for six nights a week. I'd be out until 3 am, get up at 6:30 am for work for 8 hours. No hangover, downing a pot of coffee and half a pack of cigarettes a day while still feeling like I'm walking on fucking sunshine and then I'd go out drinking again. Tuesday was the "bye" night where you slept 13 straight hours. Ditto for Sunday. That does not happen anymore. Not ever. If I tried a bender like that my body would feel completely pulvarized. My "south" vacation I have every year I get plastered almost every night, but partying is STRICTLY a weekend thing for me. Alt-Focus I was in high school when grunge peaked, but "kids these days" I do have a complaint about: why are guys flat ironing their hair? This is a very UNmanly thing to do. You look like complete pussies, so just stop it already. I notice having your pants hang below your ass is still "in" like it was 15 years ago. Unfortunetly they're wearing SKINNY JEANS so the the gay factor increases twenty fold. In other words, teenagers today dress up like teenagers that used to get beat up when I was a teenager.
I'm now 28. I seem to sleep much less than when I was younger. My asthma has flared up since I turned 20 - in my teenage years, it wasn't as bad as it is now. Also, I have arthritis in my hands (specifically, both pinky fingers), which I was expecting at some point due to my dad, aunt and grandmother all having/had arthritis. Other than that, since I turned 25, I cannot drink casually like I used to. I almost never got hangovers then, but now almost everything gives me a hangover and I feel like shit the morning after just one beer, so if I drink now, I tend to drink to oblivion, because I know I'll feel like crap the next day anyway. I've never had much patience with stupid people, but, like shegirl said, it gets worse as you get older.
I'll be 36 this year. My body isn't falling apart yet, but I've always been a weakling, underweight until just before 30 when I put on twenty pounds of fat overnight. I need to get in shape before age deterioration sets in. I also have the benefit of looking like a fetus, so I'd like to (naturally) stave off aging as well, so as to not look 80 when I'm 50. I've never understood "kids these days", even when I was one of them.
I used to think the good stuff got started around 1 a.m. Now I want to be at least headed home at 1 a.m., preferably in bed by then, even if we've gone out. Hangovers are not fun at ALL, but they've gotten worse through the years. I wish I could say I go to bed earlier but...work prevents that. Instead, I'm pushing 18 to 20 hour days every damn day of the week, except Monday. I will maim stab kill someone for waking me up on a Monday. I like a broader spectrum of foods now that I'm older. I like myself and my body better now than I did when I was in my 20s. That's certainly something I didn't expect. My 20s seemed to be about proving myself one way or another - sexually, physically, whatever. Not so these days. I'm more cautious about shit. Climbing, for example. I won't send certain problems because they're high enough that if I miss, getting hurt is inevitable. I can't afford the time or energy it'd take to recover from injury, so I don't do it. Same for softball. I'll slide, but I'm not diving for a ball in the outfield. Kids these days? Nah. Except my daughter. I have no idea who the aliens left when they took my kid, but I'd have appreciated an instruction manual of some kind. Edit: I'll be 32 in May.
I definitely ache more these days, partly due to medical conditions, partly due to aging. My eyeglass prescription changes annually and my hearing is quite what it used to be. And as someone else mentioned, I don't remember when it started (memory problems, too) but somewhere along the line in the last few years, the girl who cuts my hair started trimming my eyebrows and ear hairs. My beard is more "salt" than it is "cayenne pepper." Staying up past 11pm is practically unheard of for me these days. I used to wonder about "kids these days" and their pants hanging half off their asses, baseball caps slightly ajar with unbroken-in brims with the stickers still on them, and never quite understood it. But then I thought about how my father never quite understood bell-bottoms in the 70s. The thought of me turning into my father was a great lesson in acceptance. Almost time for "Murder, She Wrote." And a nap.
I'm turning 28 in a few weeks. Do I feel like I'm falling apart? Not really. If anything, I'm getting better as I age. Physically, I'm the same size as I was in high school, but I'm much stronger now. The only thing I've noticed is that it takes longer for my body to warm up. Back in the day I'd jump into something without batting an eye. Now, I have to warm up to have a decent workout or to not feel like shit afterwards. But, that might also be a case of having more body awareness than I did at 16. My hangovers haven't really changed, but I'm less tolerable of them now. When I was 21 I'd think, "Ugh. I'm gonna be so hungover tomorrow," and have 2 more drinks. Now, I stop because it's just not worth it to me. I grind my teeth in my sleep, especially when I'm stressing. Sometimes I wake myself up with the grinding and in the morning the left side of my jaw is sore. I went to the dentist this week for a routine cleaning, and they talked about preventing TMJ and wearing a guard at night. Have you seen the guards? My mom wears one. They are hideous. I feel like when I break down and start wearing one I will become my mother...and never have sex again.