I've been wearing gas permeable contacts since my mid twenties. Love 'em!
I've been very short sighted since I was 5 or 6, specs like milk bottle bottoms. Ugh. I think I have uneven ears or something because I've never, ever had a pair of specs that don't hurt either one ear or the other, despite frequent trips to opticians for tweaking and adjusting. I decided to try contacts after getting caught in heavy rain with my three year old daughter and being unable to see to cross the road safely due to the rain on my glasses. That was scary.
I expected to have problems adjusting to the contacts but, no! Within a week I was wearing them from when I get up to when I go to bed and have done so ever since. As middle age struck and I developed long sight in addition to short sight, I progressed to varifocal contacts so there's no need to additional reading or computer screen glasses. I would hate to be without them.
The only slight side effect is that my eyes tend to get dry in warm rooms but I always have one of those little bottles of refreshing eye drops handy and at home, when the heating's on, I have those little humidifier things full of water on the radiators.