Life sure is precarious, isn’t it?
One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute you’ve fallen all the way down to the bottom and you feel like it’s over.
Hey, it happens…but for some people, that fall can be really bad.
What’s the fastest way you’ve seen someone ruin their life?
Let’s dive into these true stories from folks on AskReddit.
1. One bad decision.
“I had a friend in college who had a tendency to act before thinking, but was generally fun and well-meaning. After I had graduated, my friend apparently got coerced by a woman he was trying to sleep with to try heroin just once.
As I heard it, he refused initially, then caved because he felt pressured. My friend overdosed and died. Just like that, one bad decision ended his life.
RIP Mike.”
2. Depressing.
“A few kids from school went to this girls cabin over winter break, one of the girls was standing on the balcony.
And her boyfriend thought it would be funny to scare her. So she got started and jumped against the balcony railing and she fell off from the third floor and banged her spine against a huge rock from the ground and ended up being paralyzed from the neck down.
She was supposed to be a gymnast, and her boyfriend overdosed out of guilt.”
3. Holy shit.
“A kid I knew was fucking around with a handgun at a party and spun it around with his finger trying to look cool. He blew his head off right in front of everybody.
It’s a miracle that nobody else got shot and a lot of people who weren’t there think that it was intentional but it wasn’t. He was twenty years old.”
4. Drinking problem.
“In the Air Force.
This new guy joins and goes out to a bar then decides to drive home. Gets a DUI. Loses all his rank, has to pay a ton in fines but leadership fought for him and he was allowed to stay in the Air force.
2 months later as he’s paying tons of lawyer and legal fee’s, he does something really stupid… Drives home from the SAME bar drunk and gets arrested. Loses his license and gets kicked out of the military, so loses all his income while he’s thousands of dollars in debt.
That’s not even the worst part. A few months later, he celebrates being a civilian again by… You guessed it. Going to the same bar, then driving home drunk. Arrested and put in jail for a while. I can’t imagine he has many future career opportunities with a less than honorable discharge and an arrest record.”
5. Blew it.
“Knew a guy in when I was younger, he was a stud tight end in high school and college but had a drinking problem.
He had pro stats, size speed, etc… got a try out in the NFL. Flew to town went out got fucked up and never woke up in time for the try out. Showed up half a day late and they wouldn’t let him in.
Flew home and now he does mortgages working like the rest of us.”
6. A painful lesson.
“I went to a rich high school. After graduating 2 kids went to be camp counselors. One night they got drunk and drove back to the camp. They hit a tree, the passenger died.
The kid driving was from a family worth 8 figures, smart, good enough looking, popular. On his way to a top tier university.
20 years in prison.
The passenger’s family begged for no prison time but the judge said tough shit.”
7. Wow.
“Less than 24 hours. My ex neighbor’s ex girlfriend went on a racist road rage rant that got filmed. It went viral on Twitter. I remember reading the news article and thinking about her for some reason (she wasn’t named) It wasn’t until months later that I found out it was her
She was fired from her $300,000 a year job next day and immediately started getting death threats. She had to move in with her boyfriend.
She tried getting a job but people would look her up and be like wtf. She spent $10,000 on a reputation defender, changed her name, was shunned by many family and friends. Her boyfriend (who she wanted to marry) broke up with her because he couldn’t stand the months of depression. She ended up leaving the state.”
8. A personal story.
“I’m my own perfect example for this. Started abusing meth and hanging with all the wrong people. Within three months I wrecked my car, lost my home, my relationship went up in flames and I caught some misdemeanors and felonies when I had only ever had speeding tickets before then.
Now I’m on probation for the next several years or until I can pay off the thousands I owe the court, stuck living with my parents at 34, single, jobless, and struggling massively with anxiety and depression.
Yay bad choices. Yay consequences.”
9. Bad idea.
“”Hey bro watch me slap that girls ass”
Last words said by my former friend who slapped a 13 year old girl’s ass. Mind you, he didn’t notice the surveillance camera nor the cop who was walking out of the store.
He’s a registered sex offender now.”
10. Life of crime.
“Guy I knew in high school left about year 11 I think. He always seemed like a decent guy, no reason to believe otherwise.
Decided to hold up a service station with a fake pistol. Got shot from behind by a customer with a real one. Hit his shoulder blade, ricocheted up from there into his skull. They turned his life support off a few days later.
Australia, early 1990s.”
11. Wear a helmet!
“Cousin was spoiled as hell. My uncle was a millionaire lawyer and bought his relationship with his kids with money. He never had time for them. If they asked, he bought. Money was no object if he thought it made them love him.
Cousin turned 16 and got a driver’s license. He begged for a motorcycle even though he did not have a motorcycle license. My uncle bought him a brand new Kawasaki Ninja. My father pleaded with him about what a bad idea that was.
1 week later he crashed with a girl on the back of the bike and they both died upon impact. No helmet or safety gear on top of it….
Probabaly the fastest way someone ruined their life. My uncle and his son.”
12. This is bad.
“My ex cheated on me with a mentally unstable woman. He lied about working late one night to go hook up with her. She got mad at him and “punished” him by filing false rape charges.
He was pulled over and hauled to jail two blocks from her apartment complex. He was locked up in the sex offender unit of one of the worst county jails in the country over Christmas. The case never went to trial, the grand jury no-billed him for lack of evidence of a crime.
But he ended up losing me, losing his affair partner, losing his main job, losing his volunteer work, losing his side job, losing his savings account, ruining his credit, losing visitation with his daughters from a previous relationship, losing his car, losing most of his friends, losing several family relationships, and wound up living with his mom.
He also still has the arrest record because he can’t afford to have it expunged, so it shows up on every background check. It was like 4 hours between the time he called me to say he was working late and when the cops pulled him over and arrested him.
In 4 hours he completely destroyed his life.”
13. Dumbass.
“Kid in my class posted a picture of him dressed in a police costume with his knee on another kids neck.
Several captions with anti police slurs and slogans. It was addressed by the school board and he lost his scholarship and got booted off the varsity hockey team.”
14. On a dare…
“Read a story about an Australian teen who was drinking with friends and got dared to eat a slug.
The slug ended up passing Rat lungworm infection to him which made him extremely sick. He slipped into a coma which lasted 420 days, and after that he was completely paralyzed from the neck down & needed constant assistance and couldn’t even speak.
After 8 years, he passed away. His name was Sam Ballard.”
15. Brutal.
“My cousin’s kid went playing in the front yard he was 5 and he saw a frog on the road and he wanted to catch it and add it to his collection, I told him to look both ways, he did, and a car that was being chased by police came speeding down the road at 100 mph.
I tried to yank him out of the street before he got hit, but I was to slow, he got hit, killed, I got a shattered arm because the car hit my arm as I reached out to him, and now my cousin blames me, and I am emotionally damaged by seeing him on the road.
I keep getting flashbacks of the split second I could save him, and my cousin will never forgive me.”
16. This is sad.
“I am friends with a guy and through him knew his younger sister. Smart, pretty, cool. She was a doing well in college. Meets a guy and decided to get married after a few weeks without telling anyone. So she moves in with him and all of the sudden he has too much back pain to work, so she’s trying to take classes and support them both.
He lays around all day smoking pot which she buys for his pain, while she does school and waits tables all night. She also likes to party with him. It’s revealed they’ve both been doing a lot of acid.
She, of course drops out of college a few credits short of graduating. (by this point her parents and friends are begging her to come to her senses and take their help to get back and finish college, invite both of them to move in and do all the drugs they want as long as she finishes school)
Her and the husband decided the student loans plus both his and her car loans are too much, so they park the cars at the bank with notes in the windshield that they do not want them any more and disappeared.
They left a note for her parents that they were moving “out west or to Mexico” and haven’t been heard from in over 15 years.
My friend heard rumors that the guy was pimping his sister out at one point, but that was after they left that he heard, too late to do anything. About 5 years ago he told me he thinks she’s probably dead, but the parents are expecting her to come back any day now.
The parents used to be joyous people.”
Oh, boy…
Now we want to hear from you.
In the comments, tell us about the fastest way you’ve seen someone ruin their life.
Let’s get weird!
