What happens if you keep drinking and taking recreational drugs into your 50s?

[FortunesFave]

I'm really curious about it....I'm in my late 40s and gave up all that when I was about 19 or 20. Part of the rave culture I certainly did experiment but got it together and went to Uni late...I've never been very into drinking so only have an occasional glass of champagne or a cider with a pub lunch now.

However it's become clear that a lot of our friends who we've had for years are still doing it and for the past 15 years since kids, DH and I have slowly stopped going to their 'dos' when they get off their faces....we used to go and just drink but they'd all be taking MDMA and coke...all perfectly functional during the week by the way...holding down good careers etc. and we found it uncomfortable.

Lately it's got a bit fake and we don't really fit in any more because we barely drink and they still get off their heads at parties. We have other ways of meeting up with them but then they're talking about this weekend or that weekend where they took whatever...and we don't have that to share...not that we want it but the friendships are running their course.

If, like me, you were born in the 70s you'll know that our parents didn't do this sort of thing into their adulthood....so what's going to happen to Generation X as we age? Will the ones who've never stopped just suddenly die of heart attacks young? It's worrying me a bit as some of my friends I really love...but they're still getting faceless and that can't be good when you're 50 plus!

I'm in my mid 50s and know of lots of people around my age that drink too much (one or two of them could be described as functioning alcoholics) but when it comes to drugs it seems to be smoking weed is the drug of choice.

Maybe it's where we live (semi-rural, relaxed area) but we're surrounded by weed smoking friends and neighbours in their 40s/50s. A lot of them would have gone through the acid, ecstasy, coke, mushroom stages when younger but wouldn't be interested now.

Do the coke-heads tend to be more "city" people I wonder?

Anecdotally, it's either dying early, usually from something out of the blue like a heart attack, or seemingly being a charmed Peter Pan looking very good on it and lasting very well. Possibly, it also depends on how stressful everything else alongside is.

I agree about the mainly white, comfortable privilege angle though.

Definitely more coke heads in the city! No dial a coke out in t sticks

@SwearytheFairy

Definitely more coke heads in the city! No dial a coke out in t sticks

Might have to drive half an hour to a town to pick up but we have plenty of dealers to text in rural suffolk. It’s much easier than ordering food. I don’t think that’s a good thing!

Their livers and kidneys will pack up and I expect many of them won’t live to see 70.

You’ve done the right thing. I always imagine people who take drugs as adults must be such bores. It’s so bad for your health, to say nothing of unethical, expensive and illegal.

Make some new friends- lots of people do as they get older through church, golf, WI, book club, allotments, choirs, you name it. I’d drop the old friends- I’d struggle to respect people still doing coke at the age of 50

@SwearytheFairy

Definitely more coke heads in the city! No dial a coke out in t sticks

Don't count on it.

I'm pretty rural and there was a real coke problem in our neighbouring village pre covid.

Coke isn’t bad if you can afford top quality product and aren’t addicted.

And how is coke for this who produce it and transport it @Ozanj

I think Ozanj was talking about its impact on users.

(Which to be fair is the topic of the thread, not the morals of the drugs industry.)

My teens have zero interest in drugs, or alcohol. None of their friends do either. As a year group they are quite uninterested. Quite puritanical and a bit too irritatingly evangelical about it. winkThey are totally into fitness, exercising and protein, and aren't interested. I would encourage my kids to try everything once

Like Bagamoyo1 said, it's no longer rebellious or cool once it's no longer forbidden or once it's promoted by authority figures. When your parents are promoting 'trying everything', or discussing their own use with glee, drug use can seem kinda pointless and dull. I grew up with stories about drug use and seeing it and it just got filed in my brain as 'old people fun'. Might as well discuss risque butter churning. I found other vices, not that that stopped certain uninteresting adults from going on about how boring I was for basically not being a way they could relive their own teenage-dom.

I've an interest in the therapeutic possibilities and I'm all for decriminalization if coupled with a socially focused model of care like Portugal is often written about (rather than what keeps happening in US), but the idea of drug use being a thing that makes someone interesting or not interesting I hope is something that fades if it can finally be remembered at a societal that there is nothing new about it. It'd be nice to see a shift in it being something, with a balance of risks, benefits, and responsibilities, that some adults did for various reasons.

Lol at the idea I was talking about one celebrity!

Coke is often mixed with all sorts of shit. The inside of your nose is very sensitive. It damages it and over time over time... It erodes.

How the hell she managed to do that to herself so young is another question. They must have been at it day in day out on set- it is av punishing schedule of filming. Why was no one looking out for the young cast- it would have taken time.

Dunno why you assumed I was talking about her though.

Coke isn’t bad if you can afford top quality product and aren’t addicted. 🤣 It goes through the same process making the paste mixed with cement, gas, petrol, the rich get the paste powder before it is remixed with lidocaine to spread it down.
I did lots of the disgusting stuff in my 20's still suffering from sinuses.
For anyone who enjoys a line the documentary with Gordon Ramsey is eye opening.

Someone I know has regularly smoked weed, taken acid and used coke for as long as Ive known him, around 35 years. He's pushing 60. He's now very forgetful, possibly early stages of dementia (cant remember which town he lives in) and has been hospitalised twice recently with heart problems. He's also been single during all this time.

What happens if you keep drinking and taking recreational drugs into your 50s?

Base case: people think you are a loser.
Worst case: it has a serious negative affect on your family/friends/job and you die a whole lot sooner or spend retirement in a ravaged unhealthy body.

I think drinking alcohol heavily on a regular basis wrecks your face, I hardly drink but when I do (weddings etc) my face always looks horrible the next day and that's after only two glasses of wine! I also think it's rather sad and pathetic that some adults can't enjoy themselves unless they're drinking or taking something to excess.

A third of under 25s do not drink alcohol. I am mid fifties and have seen friends die from the effects of alcohol and other drugs.

More and more friends and colleagues are stopping now - it's getting to be like smoking. Once upon a time everyone did it and you were the odd one out if you didn't. Now it's increasingly seen as naff/dated/bad for your health and bad for your pocket.

What stopped me wasn't the health risks, it was the ethics of it.

I live in London and am well aware of the issues with gangs and County lines and very young people being sucked into the gang culture. I don't want to be part of creating a demand for that just so I can feel uninhibited enough to get up and dance on a Saturday night. A bit of home grown weed is still nice, but not the hard stuff anymore.

‘If, like me, you were born in the 70s you'll know that our parents didn't do this sort of thing into their adulthood’

Didn’t the hippies in the 60’s kind of invent drugs? I was at secondary school in the late 70’s. Lots of my friends parents grew cannabis. It was quite the thing then....
‘

[quote hagtry]**@Charley50* You replied to my post saying It's not just white people doing it.* Why the need to tell me that? [/quote]

I wasn't being dismissive of the impact of county lines at all, I just said that in my experience (north London, ex-clubbing scene, stayed in my local area and know a lot of people still from those days) it isn't a 'white middle-class issue' in terms of who is putting coke up their nose.

I don't have UK stats on the ethnic background of drug-users, just speaking from personal experience. I had posted before about knowing people who died in their early fifties; all recreational to heavy coke-users. These people I personally know were white, black, male and female.

Are any of you on the other thread:

AIBU
To not be concerned about dd's occasional drug use.

It's amazing the spectrum of posts you get re drug use.

Just to add; I've asked weed smokers I know how they justify it with county lines and human trafficking into weed farms etc. They just say the weed they smoke is small-scale, organic whatever, and no-one is being exploited. I imagine that's what the coke-heads would say too. I will try and speak to them about it though.

I wasn't being dismissive of the impact of county lines at all, I just said that in my experience (north London, ex-clubbing scene, stayed in my local area and know a lot of people still from those days) it isn't a 'white middle-class issue' in terms of who is putting coke up their nose.

Again I was talking statistics not anecdotal.

@hagtry

I wasn't being dismissive of the impact of county lines at all, I just said that in my experience (north London, ex-clubbing scene, stayed in my local area and know a lot of people still from those days) it isn't a 'white middle-class issue' in terms of who is putting coke up their nose.

Again I was talking statistics not anecdotal.

OK. Well I agree that statistics are often more useful than anecdotes.

It’s more common than one might think. A recent fairly high profile death of a forty year old woman was suspected to be drug-related though her well connected in-laws put paid to any media coverage. I’ve never been much a partaker but I still know plenty who do, into their forties and beyond. I would say though that alcohol is far more of a problem.

I saw some shocking coverage about county lines - and I say that as someone who has worked on and off in the youth sector. I've often wondered if there was more of an awareness that a child was exploited for that joint, that line, if people would make more effort to replace drugs with something else. Exercise is a good drug.