Drinking makes me sick, now.

38/M. Fairly active, slightly overweight. Generally-good diet. No notable physical health conditions.

I drink socially, anywhere from 1-4 drinks a week. Occasionally (once every month or two?) I’ll have a couple more in a day (maybe 3+), and I can’t remember the last time I got drunk out of my mind or anything.

I hydrate a lot. Like, a LOT; if I’m at home or a friend’s or with family, I have a 36oz Yeti that I’ll carry around religiously and guzzle. People notice how often I get up to refill this thing when we’re playing games or whatever.

By “now,” I’ll generalize and say that this has been going on for the better part of a year.

I’ve never held my drinks super well, which I’m fine with – generally means I can get a decent buzz off of less, and that’s what I want: just a nice buzz. It’s still nice, but even on days when I have just one drink, I wind up feeling sick. Kinda generic, but these symptoms include:

Headache “Stuffy” feelings similar to bad allergies (not actually-stuffy, kinda like…sinuses feeling sore?) Stomach grumbling, generally gassiness/bloating (so, y’know, drinking alcohol…)

The worst thing, though, is after I go to sleep. I pretty much never go to sleep drunk, and I always wait several hours and drink a lot of water beforehand if I’d been drinking that day. However, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and my stomach will feel just THE WORST. This has even worsened in the past month – twice, now, I’ve gone to sleep after 1-2 drinks (and waited and had a lot of water, etc etc) feeling just fine, and I’ll wake up feeling like I need to vomit; it started off pretty mild, no worse than “I must’ve eaten something, or too much,” but it seems like it’s become worse in the past year and the only common thing I can pinpoint is alcohol. Both times in the past month, I woke up and DID vomit. At least once in the past year, I’ve had these feelings the next morning – again, not after super-heavy drinking – and been similarly sick.

I’m seeing my doctor next month and plan to bring this up, but I just wanted to post about it not necessarily for actual medical advice, but…well, for some ideas to help tide me over. I’d love to read more about what might be going on, but I don’t really know what to focus my searches on. Is it just me getting old?