Good thread. I've experienced the progression of hangovers as I've gotten older. As a young man in college I drank like every other kid in my dorm, a lot! After graduating and moving on to the world of work I cut back but I still used alcohol to take a vacation from the stresses of life. Sometime in my 30's the daily drinking started, usually 3 - 4 beers at night before I went to bed. Gradually I needed to increase that amount and that's when I discovered vodka. I found that I could cut back to 2 or 3 beers before bed as long as I had a couple shots of vodka. I stayed at this level for a long time with occassional binges on a weekend. Sometime in my 40's I started drinking a beer or 2 in the morning to ease into my day. I found that a greasy fried food breakfast sandwhich from McDonalds or Burger King also helped. When I was 47 my drinking increased, maybe it was a mid - life depression kind of thing. I ended up in the hospital for a 4 day detox after a 5 day bender. I admitted to my wife that I was an alcoholic, she was surprised, I guess I hide it pretty well. After a couple of relapses, I quit for good on New Years day 2004.
Then last spring, after ~ 5 1/2 years of sobriety I fell off the wagon. I discovered that alcohol is a progressive disease and your body picks up were you left off, so my tolerance was quite high. But man, now that I'm past 50 the hangovers are much worse. I was off and on over the summer and I would experience the shakes when I stopped. I hate those, and of course one way to stop the shakes is to have a beer. What a vicious cycle.
As another poster already said, at my age I'm not sure how many more recoveries I have in me. Alcohol scares me.