Remember those college days where you were able to drink at least 10 different drinks until 3 in the morning, fall asleep (pass out), and then wake up in the morning (or afternoon) feeling refreshed? And even those nights in your 20’s when you could have 6 or 7 beers and then wake up and go to work the next day?

Maybe some of you can still do these things relatively unscathed, but for me and many people I know, those kinds of pay-no-penalty nights are gone.

A lot of my friends have been bringing this up lately- the alcohol topic just seems to keep repeating. At first I thought it was just me who was waking up 5 hours after a night of drinking with a quickly beating heart and a strange sense of dread. But then I started hearing the same thing every time I went out with a friend: “I can’t drink as much as I used to.” Or “my tolerance has decreased,” or even “my tolerance has increased and I don’t get drunk anymore- I just get majorly hungover.” Or simply “I now know my limits more..and they’re lower than they used to be.

At first I was convinced that this was all psychosomatic. So many people convince themselves that they feel old because they’re getting older number-wise- but it doesn’t have to be this way. Hell, that’s one of the big reasons we started this blog. But I looked up this drinking in your thirties issue, and almost every article I read said that the lowered tolerance was a real thing.

Here’s a funny one: http://distractify.com/humor/2016/01/27/harris-says-no-more-keg-stands

And here’s one saying how it can get even worse in your 40s: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304439804579205913000870266

And there are a lot more if you look up “drinking tolerance in your thirties.”

So, okay, maybe less alcohol drinking will have to happen in our thirties. But that doesn’t mean cutting alcohol out entirely if you don’t want to. It just means prioritizing feeling good over a bender of a night. It means knowing yourself better and knowing your limits better. And knowing that having a glass or two of wine from time to time (if you like that) probably won’t hurt you. Just own the way your body works in your thirties- take care of yourself and enjoy a more sophisticated life. After all, you’re an adult now.

Crazy, right?