Life at 40

If you have wrinkles at 40 you need to wear more sunscreen and drink more water.

This but it just keeps on going.
8? 15 = adult
15? 25 = adult
25? 35 = adult
I have income, a job, a car, a place to live. I dont feel like an adult yet.

What if I wanna sit on the couch and eat pizza?

anti-aging research.

I mean, there's plenty of anti aging research going on. It's just that aging isn't any one thing. At the genetic level, telomeres are getting shorter and mutations are accelerating. In cells, certain metabolic waste products accumulate, and the cells experience increased oxidative stress.

At the tissue level, you see blood vessels stiffening up, accumulating calcium deposits in the vessel walls themselves, and arterial plague within the vessels. Conversely, bones lose strength and lose calcium, and muscles and joints and tendons and ligaments deteriorate in strength and range of motion. Skin loses elasticity. Plaques and other abnormalities form in the brain and throughout the nervous system. The endocrine system undergoes changes as the hormonal balance of people changes in late adulthood (most notably menopause in women).

Each of these effects of aging is being investigated, researched, and potentially treated. Dermatologists can make old skin look younger, or at least slow down the rate of apparent aging. There are pills that give 60 year old men the boners of a 20 year old. Some hormone therapies reverse some of the age-related decline in particular hormone levels. Each treatment treats its own thing, reversing or stalling one tiny aspect of aging.

And they're continuing to work on it. There's plenty of research being done, with lots and lots of funding behind it.

Let's just say that even if you where immortal, there is still the issue of your "soul" aging. In other words, you know you are old, and you won't enjoy playing Pokemon Platinum in the same way.

Society will also increasingy isolate you in various ways.

Not gonna happen, humans don't prioritize like that.

They'll make slop and scams in desperate attempts to justify taking their share of the produce from the mechanized fields.

Just wait until 40. It's like going down a step with your eyes closed without knowing the step is coming. Very jarring and painful.

As someone who has a relationship with smoking, I feel like I have to say a few words:

Apart from abusing my body in ways similar to what you described, I also smoked for almost 15 years. I started out of stupidity in my twenties. I was not even in high-school, I totally averted that danger... only to step in it years later voluntarily and for stupid reasons (I coughed when trying to smoke pot so I thought I should practice, then found out the high was pretty nice and reasoned it was cheaper to smoke this than pot). Anyway, I gave up 2 years ago, but I tried many times before that. I tried cold turkey, I tried gradually, I tried lighter cigarettes, but nothing worked. The idea of never ever smoking another cigarette for as long as I lived was paralyzing. I also hated how it controlled me, and it felt like avoiding any contact with any cigarette ever was also a form of it controlling me from the other direction. So I worked something out that works for me, and maybe it will for you:

My goal was to solve the control problem more than anything. So I said I don't want a love or hate relationship with cigarettes: I want indifference. It means I don't buy cigarettes anymore, for one. This is probably the most important part, just don't smoke at home or during normal activities. The physical dependence is present in the first 3 days, after that it's just psychological, or so they say, so I took advantage of when I was down with a cold and couldn't smoke, and I kept it up after. I still had some cigarettes left and I smoked them with some friends when I was out for beers, about 2 weeks later. Whenever I felt stressed at work or whatever, I tried to just take my hand and put it on my mouth with like 2 fingers as if I was holding a cigarette and just suck thin air like it was a cigarette then blow the fictional smoke, I'd do it multiple times if needed — this gesture was calming, even if it didn't last as long as it did with the real thing, it was like halfway there. Even though this sounds like quitting, the goal was still indifference, but I was way too much in the "I need to smoke" control zone so I focused on pulling out. Throughout I didn't think of myself as anything related to smoking: I wasn't a smoker because it felt defeatist, I wasn't a non-smoker because it felt unearned, I wasn't an occasional smoker because it felt lazy — I was just trying to take the control out of my relationship with smoking and turn it into something more like "friends with benefits". I had a quit-smoking-timer app on my phone which in previous attempts I kept resetting with each cigarette I wasn't able to resist, but this time I said I'm not going to punish myself anymore: this is a new mindset and it allows for casual smoking just like you casually try some weed at a party if someone is offering and it doesn't make you addicted to weed or a weed smoker or anything like that — you're just having fun — so the app measures the time since I adopted this new mindset and new (non)relationship with smoking.

The first month was probably the only time I kept needing to repeat all of the above to myself. After that it became second nature. It was both easier and harder to do than I initially thought, but I'm confident in myself now because it's more of a fundamental identity change than a change in habits or actions: it's internal, how I see myself vis a vis smoking.

Maybe a mindset like this can help you conquer your addiction, if you're interested. I say "if you're interested" because you probably know already: you have to want it first. It can't be forced on you, it really has to come from you. If it helps, for me it came when I got mad that, after forcing myself to smoke lighter and lighter cigarettes, I learned that they're just as harmful in the long run, so I got even more mad at big tobacco for lying to me like that (apart from all the other horrible shit they've done) and that betrayal was the fuel I used as motivation. It's always the petty stuff that gets us the most, lol. Also, I really don't want to check out that soon. Non-existence is terrifying, and life is finally getting better for me. But I'm also older and need to watch my health, so I'm more open now to actively changing stuff for said health.

Urgent and "in an hour or so" - wait wat? You must be a fellow American. At least we got Freedom tho, right?

Anyway I hope it doesn't turn out to be too serious.

Yeah, the kids under ten that are in my life know how old their parents are, and can make reasonable assessments of the age of other adults from that. They would never think someone who is 40 looks more like someone who is in their 60s or 70s.