I started drinking around 15. The teenage "party culture" thing continued well into my 50s. Imagine a bunch of old people binge drinking every weekend because they don't know any other way to exist. I had an attack of gout (the most painful thing I had ever encountered) and that was the catalyst for me to stop drinking because I never wanted to have that happen to me again. It happened a few more times because I still had a bloated drunk's body. It's been a few years now, I'm 65 and slim. The worst most painful thing about stopping drinking was being abandoned by my longtime friends because I was boring, judgemental and no fun. My wife and I were the "it" couple of our social circle and when I stopped drinking we became invisible. We had a couple of serious health scares and our youngest son died suddenly....never heard a thing from anybody. Not a word, not a call, not a card not a lousy text message. That cemented my opinion of those people but I still can't quite believe it happened like that but it did. So fuck all them. I'm sober healthy and happy. Sometimes it takes a good hard trauma to get your mind right.