...Hopefully not even when I'm 60.
Hee hee... Until you arrive there, it's hard to appreciate just how your body changes around mid life. Typically, you're going along just fine, with recovery taking the regular amount of time, then, over maybe a year or less, everything changes. Even a long break seems to make little difference. It's like the aging process is suddenly wound up 10 notches. Drugs tend to really exacerbate this, and a big night out (even a late night with no drugs) can take far longer to recover from.
For most people - even healthy and fit people- around age 40, eyesight, hearing, and other senses start to dull. Muscle tone, strength and overall energy begin to wane, and time passes far too quickly - at least for the special moments. Old habits begin to become boring as do some people.
How you view the world, and consequence wise how you act in it, becomes more of a priority. You can fake it for a while (ignoring the after effects) but sooner or later lifestyle has to reckoned with. What is childs play at 20, becomes out of reach at 40 or 50.
For some people this might not happen until into their sixties or later, but for most people I've known who've used drugs continuously over most of their adult lives, the effects generally start to manifest earlier, between mid thirties to mid forties. The startling reality, even if first ignored, manifests both as a physical limitation, and as cognitive impairment, affecting learning ability, work pace and general wellbeing.
While the positive effects of speed may be considered ideal at this stage in life, the negative quickly start to dominate, often knocking out several days following the experience. In witnessing speed users who've given up the drug in their 40's after perhaps 10 or more years of intermittent or regular use, it seems in many cases that changes in body chemistry can take years to return to normal. IMO, in some cases - age related/ duration of use etc - 'regular function' simply doesn't return.
This is why other, seemingly less impacting substances can become popular. Coke for example, seems to be one drug many older people continue to indulge in. If taken irregularly in small amounts, the high is subtle and the hangover usually minimal. However, coke is bad for the heart, and many older people have paid the price from overindulging or failing to abstain when they know they have a condition that increases this risk. Indeed, it could be argued that anyone over 40 with high blood pressure, a family history of CHD or CVD shouldn't indulge. Same goes for MDMA and most other stimulants. A family relation once admitted to us that she would love to try MDMA, but being a former nursing sister she completely understands that at her age (mid 60's) with her medical history, the effects of body temp increase and BP would just be too dangerous.
In some ways the mid life period can be a saving grace; a 'fork in the road' time where one road is infinitely more appealing than the other. Needless to say,
most of those that live good and healthy lives from this point on either reduce their
recreational drug use considerably or abstain altogether.
A while ago a thread discussed issues concerning prohibition. Many agreed to the statement where older conservatives were described as often being former users who'd been ultimately swayed by early exposure to repeated propaganda concerning the evils of drugs. Sure this is true for some, but I'm sure many, in their more fragile years, tend to base this on how they see everything. It's either good for you or not - a shift in priority - health related risk behavior is replaced with striving to maintain. So, it's natural then that some may completely reverse their former stance on the value of drugs to society. It's also little wonder that in their older age, some of the most hardcore advocates for a healthy lifestyle are themselves former heavy, or long term drug users.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
