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Notes -
I used to party pretty hard and one reason was because I didn't get hungover at all. Then I started getting small hang-overs in my mid 20s that progressively got worse and graduated to the 3-day kind in my 30s.
It becomes kind of hard justifying drinking hard one evening when you have to spend multiple days being miserable afterwards, especially when moderate drinking doesn't have this problem and is fun as well. Now I try to stick to not drinking more than 5-7 pints (or equivalent) an evening when drinking and it works out well for me.
I feel like there is sometimes some conflation of chasing the buzz of alcohol/partying and chasing youth.
Those times in college probably aren't as misremembered as you think and drinking probably helped make them fun. Partying with your friends when you're young is just hard to beat though, regardless of whether you're drunk or sober.
Chasing the dragon isn't a mistake because "the dragon never existed", it did, it's a mistake because you're not going to catch it again.
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