You're fortunate. I'm lucky that drinking has never been my *thing* (i did it plenty, esp. being a bartender for so long, but it has never been my DOC) because I already have the very very very beginning stages of liver stress (my liver was creating bile, but enzyme levels were all normal, which means it was the absolute beginning of damage when they took the test back in Feb.) but they attributed that mainly to taking so many percocets, hydrocodone pills, etc. in the early part of my opiate addiction that were loaded with acetaminophen that I didn't do a CWE on, in addition to adding a few beers on top of those usually as well. If I didn't loathe liquor so much and if I were a more functional drunk, my body would be in a lot worse shape. I def don't have the kind of genes where I would be able to drink like a fish for 50+ years and be fine. My step dad, on the other hand (notice I said step, no blood relation), is almost 70 and a hardcore alcoholic (still) and smoked (but quit 4 years ago) for nearly 50 years and. while having had the very earliest stages of COPD which have improved beyond needing much treatment at all since quitting smoking, he is in amazing health. If he manages to escape ever getting cancer, the Dr.s said heart failure in his 90's-100's (or some kind of freak accident) would likely be what finally took him down. my mom was actually hoping he'd be told something like: "If you don't quit drinking, you'll die!" from his drs, but after hearing quite the opposite, he intends on changing nothing about his drinking behaviors. Some people have all the luck...
Ya know, I often wonder...I'm a bad drunk, like I get sloppy...Nothing crazy, like I'm not someone you need to call the cops on, and I don't do things that will make me end up on a viral video or anything, it's just written all over my face (cross-eyed), I slur my words...basically, it isn't cute. Having been a bartender for years and built up a tolerance, in addition to the fact that my choice of alcoholic beverage is almost always beer..I don't get there quickly (or thankfully very often these days), but when I do...look out! On the other hand, my best friend is the complete opposite. She can drink and drink and drink and get to a point where she doesn't remember the next day what she did, but hanging out with her, you'd never guess she was more than just a bit buzzed. She claims to never get hangovers, while I get hangovers that put me out of commission for entire days, sometimes multiple days (not every time I drink, but definitely every time I reach that sloppy drunk stage). Having this reaction to alcohol is one of the reasons I took to opiates...I could take them and feel good and maintain composure (and stick to a drink or two and be satisfied) and feel fine the next day (until the addiction began, then I would've traded a hangover for the wd i was feeling any day). What I'm wondering is....this best friend of mine, do you think she would be more likely, once she gets into her 50's and beyond, to not have sustained liver damage compared to myself if I, say, hadn't cut back my drinking several years ago and was still drinking (and continued to drink) like I did in my younger years? The reason I'm wondering is because people I've known who are older alcoholics who have not sustained liver damage from their many years of drinking, like my step dad, are not the kind of drunks who tend to get sloppy and tend to get hangovers. They tend to be the kind of drunks you can't really tell are drunk...the ones who can drink places like work without anyone noticing, or can out drink most of their friends without even needing an ibuprofen the next morning while everyone else is vomiting their faces off. Is there a relation between the two? I know certain ethniticies handle alcohol differently than others...native americans, for example, have a shorter cultural history with alcohol than, say, people (like myself) with anglo-saxon history, so our bodies would handle alcohol completely differently...but are there other factors at play that I'm NOT aware of? This stuff is interesting to me.
