I thought I would put this one to the floor….

I am 41, I drink between zero and 4 pints a week, but that will usually be spread over on one or two nights only. So basically I don’t drink except once a week when I will have a couple of pints with a mate, would be a fair summary.

In the last two years or so I have found that more than 2-3 unit of alcohol cause me to have a rubbish night’s sleep, get all bloated and basically have a hangover the next day. It doesn’t matter what I drink, or how quickly or, to an extent, on top of what else food-wise. Basically if I drink enough to feel it at all I know I am going to be quite ill the next day.

Is this common? Should I see my doctor? Or is it because I drink too little to build up any tolerance. It’s becoming a real issue.

Why drink at all then? Alcohol is hardly a necessity, so why put yourself through the hardship?
Replace the word alcohol with cigarette and read it back to yourself. 😀

It happens. Alcohol is rather toxic and your body has zero tolerance now. Either get smashed more regularly to build up your tolerance, or don’t.

Some of the above may be truly rubbish advice and should in no way be followed.

Why drink like the others have said then? Goto the pub and see your mate, but drink non-alchol, like Becks Blue, thats what I do 🙂

That’s what happens with binge drinking 🙂

I’m the same TBH – Saturday night I’ll have a few, sleep poorly and spend Sunday dozing in front of the TV, works for me 🙂

Maybe he drinks because he enjoys it? Likes the taste of beer? Enjoys the social aspect?

It’s not a crime.

In answer to your question- I don’t know if it’s normal but your experiences sound pretty similar to mine, I dont drink much but I’ll feel pretty much equally rough whether it’s 4 pints or 7 pints.

I don’t think anyone said it’s a crime, but don’t let that stop anyone over reacting and going to the extreme, eh?

In the last 2 years ( I’m 39 ) my tolerance for alcohol has dropped markedly. I used to be able to drink a bottle of wine in the evening and it would have very little effect the next day. Now I’ll have what you are experiencing – very poor night’s sleep, feeling crappy the next day. I think it’s not that uncommon amongst us middle aged folk. 🙁

45 and same here. I think it’s quite a good think as it encourages me to stop after 1 or 2 bottles of beer rather than 6.

Drink more water when you are out, and before you go to bed, lessens the dehhydration. Just drink more water generally.

44 here and i’m the same nowadays. long gone are the days of drinking what and when i wanted.

currently on holiday and had 3 beers in the restaurant last night and one whiskey. Rough as a badger’s arse this morning. Quite pathetic really.

Know a few people who can’t tolerate draft ale at the pub any more, but are OK with cans / bottles. Including one absolute ale tank of a bloke, just makes him feel sick apparently.

I think there’s a hypothesis and method there. Why not conduct the experiment and report back with the results?

You have a similar problem to me. I can have one glass of wine with an evening meal and have a hangover the next day. It seems that there can’t be enough alcohol in my system to cause the hangover. However very occasionally I find I can drink a fair amount if drinking throughout the day (at a wedding for example) and am relatively fine the next day. My ‘problem’ started one Christmas a couple of years ago when I had flu (perhaps it was just man flu) for a few days and didn’t drink during that period. I’ve not really been able to take alcohol since then.

Sure it’s not just dehydration as mentioned above?
Try drinking a bit more water throughout the day if you know you are going out for a pint in the evening and get a glass of tap water with your pint to sip.

Drink more water when you are out, and before you go to bed, lessens the dehhydration. Just drink more water generally

Makes no difference at all unfortunately.

Stopping drinking completely – I have tried this before, for 8 years in fact, and while having the obvious benefit of no hangovers and saving money I found it socially isolating and very stigmatising. People assume you are an alcoholic with a problem, which was not in fact the case. I would rather not go back there.

It would be worthwhile trying to drink a bottle of sports drink/rehydration drink both before and after having the few pints in order to make sure that you rule out dehydration as a cause of hangovers.

For the bloating – I’d try drinking a different type/style of beer.

You need to think of alcohol like you would exercise.

You need to condition your body. Drink more, not less to improve your performance.

Close friend of mine developed an intolerance to alcohol of any nature also, he drank reasonably regularly but started to get worse and worse hangovers at the age of about 22. From the age of about 25 on, even one drink would leave him vomiting with migraines for about 2 days afterwards. As yet no doctor has managed to identify why, private or NHS. H subsequently developed a problem with spicy food too (linked according to the docs, which I find odd considering they don’t know the cause) which then gives him massive acid problems so now he’s almost permanently on anti-acid meds.

My advice would be walk away while nothing else is a problem, it’s only a beer or two – why bother.

trailertrash – if your ‘mates’ think you have a problem because you don’t drink then you need new mates! However given that you are only drinking lightly once a week I hardly think many people you currently socialise with would jump to that conclusion if you stopped completely.

However as for your original question – when you say you have a rubbish night’s sleep are you in pain / discomfort at all? If you add in some serious heartburn/indigestion then your description pretty much fits my experience of helicobacter infection. If you are not getting symptoms when you don’t drink (I did just much worse after any alcohol) then I don’t think you will get much sympathy from your GP, and just get told to cut out alcohol then. If the symptoms are getting worse, and/or exist anyway and are just exacerbated by drink (mine were gradual – so much so that I actually forgot that you are not meant to feel like that most of the time!) then it might be worth discussing with a professional (untreated helicobacter can cause ulcers).

Comes with age 🙂

Or it may be some new wonder preservative they’re using these days…

can i join the shandy drinking middle aged wuss team as well? 😉

39 and pretty much the same, 5 pints on a friday night and saturday is ruined, well not ruined but i don’t sleep or feel great for the next 18 hours

but i like love ale though!

Ale is nice but it gives me a bad head and stiff joints.

I had similar symptoms as you, then since my break up with the kn*b head ex and i’ve been drinking more the after effects have steadily got less. It comes down to tollerence I think, but the suggestion of drinking more water throughout the day you are going out is the best so far, other than either stop or drink little and often.

What do you drink during the day?

I’m fine with red wine, guinness and cider but lager? Oh god the stuff kills me, which is a shame as I love to drink peroni. White wine gives me terrible pain in my jaw also.

It doesn’t matter what I drink

Are you sure about that?

Cider? Lager? Ale? Wine? Vodka? Single malt?

Quite a few folk asking what liquids I generally drink and I have to say that generally I don’t drink enough liquids during the day, or more specifically I probably do what a lot of people do and drink too much tea and coffee. Having said that, even when I make an effort to drink more water, I still get rubbish hangovers from little alcohol. It makes no difference what I drink but darker drinks and ales are the worst culprits.

I sometimes think the at least 50% of the hangover feeling is sleep deprivation. If I could sleep I would feel better. It’s not that I lie awake staring at the ceiling. I don’t know if anyone else gets this but I will just be dropping off to sleep and I will suddenly have a little panic about something and be awake again. The things are not serious, my life is fine, it’s basically stupid “have I tuned the gas off?” type stuff. I don’t normally get this, not especially a worrier. I have quite a high stress life, but so do lots of folk. Oh well, enough of my moaning. Thanks for the contributions.

Have you ever been able to drink alcohol? It seems that you have a severe reaction to what is actually a pretty small quantity of alcohol, regardless of how much water etc you drink. Perhaps you lack the gene for processing booze (as some Asians do for example). Or have you ever been ill and had liver trouble? I know someone who had hepatitis in their 20s and not been able to have more than a quarter of a glass of wine at a time since. Or you could simply have a very low tolerance, which in itself isn’t such a bad thing.

If I could sleep I would feel better.

Sleep’s a funny thing. My dad’s in hospital at the moment and, all other things aside, it’s royally knackered my sleep pattern.

At first, fair enough, it’s stress and worry and all that happy stuff. But most of that has passed now.

The problem I’ve got currently is that I’m not thinking about anything in particular, but my brain is still going LALALALALALAIMAWAKELALALALALALALA at Silly o’Clock and it’s utterly frustrating.

Have you ever been able to drink alcohol? It seems that you have a severe reaction to what is actually a pretty small quantity of alcohol, regardless of how much water etc you drink. Perhaps you lack the gene for processing booze (as some Asians do for example). Or have you ever been ill and had liver trouble? I know someone who had hepatitis in their 20s and not been able to have more than a quarter of a glass of wine at a time since. Or you could simply have a very low tolerance, which in itself isn’t such a bad thing.

Yeah totally, I was fine with it until I got to about 29/30 then I started to get worse and worse hangovers. Hence the 8 year layoff. I’ve never had liver trouble, no, but I had wondered if I should get a check up now. Agree re low tolerance. I think maybe I should just give it a miss and put up with being a bit on the outside of things. It wouldn’t be so bad being a bit left out if I had something to focus on in my spare time but to be honest I am so consumed by work that I don’t have any spare time. I have a lovely and amazingly tolerant girlfriend, whom I only see at most once a fortnight because I am so busy at work. Such a shame! Oh well, at least I have a secure job and a nice and very tolerant girlfriend eh?

The problem I’ve got currently is that I’m not thinking about anything in particular, but my brain is still going LALALALALALAIMAWAKELALALALALALALA at Silly o’Clock and it’s utterly frustrating.

I’d say that was anxiety…it can take many forms..

why not get a pint, then make your next drink a half and a pint of waterf

one thing that I used to do if I was out for a long evening is have intermittent tonic waters as you can’t drink them fast like pop but aren’t alcoholic

Do you have any food intolerances?

why not get a pint, then make your next drink a half and a pint of waterf

one thing that I used to do if I was out for a long evening is have intermittent tonic waters as you can’t drink them fast like pop but aren’t alcoholic

Yes this can lessen the issue in the right company but the overall volume will still be critical I find. Thanks though.

Do you have any food intolerances?

I can’t eat food with even moderate amounts of chilli in it, or cous-cous. Both make me bloated and my stomach painful.

Some of you may remember this read from a while back.

Well….something funny has happened.

Since November by health has been pretty ropey. Lots of colds, couple of bouts of norrovirus, basically very run down. It was getting really out of hand. So I started taking berroca a fortnight ago. I was feeling much better within a few days, which is great, but there has been another unexpected side effect. The amount of alcohol I can drink without getting a hangover at all has roughly doubled. I’m not suggesting this is a good thing per se, but the absence of hangovers is soooooo welcome, and the correlation with taking high strength vitamin supplement is, I would argue, quite conclusive.