In my case I think it's my job that's taking its toll on my health. It doesn't seem like it, but non-spotlit entertainment work is grueling, even brutal on the body at times. One can only work rock 'n roll for so long without it affecting one's life.
Many stagehands can't stay in a relationship for more than a few years because nobody likes to be the partner of a person who spends 18-20 hours a day, 6 days a week at work. That was one major reason for my most recent relationship to have ended. My ex complained that I neither took her out nor spent time with her. When you've been at work 120 of the last 144 hours the last thing on your mind is going on a date. She complained that we didn't make love enough. Well, I'd been hanging motors, pulling chains, and slinging 4 Ø feeder cable all week. When I got home at night my body was beat and I just wanted a shower and sleep, preferably in that order.
At times, sleep can be a seldom attainable commodity. Some events require insane amounts of hours of work. For example, a few years ago I did a 4-day run that consisted of
Fiona Apple one day (9 am - 1 am), Poison the next day (8 am - 2 am), both stages of Ozzfest (3 am - 2 am), and a second day of Ozzfest at a different venue (4 am - 2 am). That's by far not an uncommon schedule for a stagehand. On runs like that, we resort to high doses of caffeine and other such energy boosters (during the aforementioned run I ingested a total of 33 Monster energy drinks). Some guys, mainly road guys, snort high amounts of coke and speed. I don't do drugs, and sometimes can't stay awake on my way home; some of my best sleep has come while I'm going 75 mph on highway 680 at 3 in the morning.
In general, stagehands tend to treat their bodies like crap. Our eating habits are less-than organic-friendly. We eat donuts and drink coffee all day. Most guys are either chain smokers, or potheads, or both. The nutritional aspect of our lives can be summed up by a t-shirt that I saw a guy wearing one time. It said, "Stagehand Food Groups - Caffeine, Nicotine, Grease, Sugar."
For road guys it's even worse. I've met several road guys that have been on the road for so long they don't have homes; they just have their mail sent to a friend's or relative's address. They generally can't have steady relationships because they're away from home for long periods of time (one guy I knew got a gig on a Rolling Stones tour a few years ago. He walked through his front door one day, and didn't walk back through it for 3 years). The road guys that are married or are in long-term relationships are usually married to girls also on the road. I once worked back-to-back nights with a husband and wife who were each on different tours; she was a sound engineer for the Smashing Pumpkins, he was a sound engineer for Ozzy. They hadn't seen each other in 2 months.
Yes, I do feel my age, or, rather, I feel the age of someone 10 years older than me. I don't know if there have been any studies made on the matter, but I think that stagehands age many times faster than people in other fields.
