From what I've learned reading online, the vitreous is pretty isolated from the rest of body. it's stagnant. malnutrition, alcohol, all that stuff doesn't interact with it. if it did, then it would be more likely that our bodies would flush the crap out of our vitreous over time...but this doesn't occur.

The standard rule with retinal detachment is that if you're seeing flashes of light, it's an emergency and you should get in to eye specialist yesterday. Otherwise you just join the club of myopes with eye floaters...like me as well.

from my personal experience, i've noticed that a glasses prescription that's too weak induces a lot of eye strain, which causes me to struggle with my floaters more. Also, I do a lot better at not letting it get under my skin when I'm well rested.

I'd also recommend not swirling/darting your eyes around and staring at the sky. This $!$! can really mess with your mind, and doing that stuff only gives it more of an opportunity to do so (just like you described "curdled your blood"). Do your best to use your eyes like a normal person and you'll avoid a really bad mental trap. There's definitely a mental aspect of all of this in terms of it's psychological effect on you, and the more you can avoid making floaters the center of your thought the better.

I have a theory that I subconsciously center the worst floaters in my field of vision by looking at them (even when I'm not thinking about it). The less I actively look at my central floaters, the more time I get with them settled off to the sides. It took me a long time to realize that.

If it makes you feel any better, when I look up at the sky I would estimate that 95% of my vision is covered by floaters of some sort. Lots of them I recognize, while some are diffuse and shapeless. Some are so opaque I can't see fine detail through them. Every once in a while I'll get an unlucky eye movement that ends up causing the entire vision in my right eye looking like it's covered with vaseline.