If you party too much in your 20s, 30s and 40s — if you really become such a slave to louche, pants-around-your-ankles living that partying is pretty much the be-all and end-all, if work and whatnot is regarded as a five-day-per-week slog that you have to submit to in order to afford the lifestyle of a party person…if this is your life in your 20s, 30s and 40s, then you will pay for this when you get older. You will look and feel worse and suffer from various ailments and probably die somewhat earlier (or a lot earlier) than required. Ex-boozers and ex-druggies start dying in their 50s and definitely in their 60s. Unless, of course, you have extraordinary, all-but-bulletproof genes, which I’ve been blessed with, thank God. (And which Peter O’Toole had.) But that’s just luck. One of my biggest regrets is not turning sober in my 40s. Everything would have been that much better if I could’ve done that. Alas, five years before I quit the hard stuff one of my favorite sayings was “life would be unbearable without alcohol.”