There are a lot of stereotypes that people fall into during their youth. The “good girl,” the “bad boy,” the “party animal,” “jock,” “theater nerd,” etc – we could go on all day.
But is what you’re like in high school or college indicative of where you’ll end up as an adult?
If you’re curious, these 17 people are dishing on how their “party animal” friends turned out later in life.
17. It’s definitely a problem.
That stigma of ‘it’s not alcoholism if it’s college’ has lent itself to so many people actually living as alcoholics but doing well for themselves in their big boy jobs, having properties, etc for them to never want to address that they do in fact have a problem
16. That sticks in your craw.
He drank with the right executives at a conference and got offered a job. He now makes three times what I do.
15. Oof.
A high school acquaintance invited me to his birthday downtown several years ago. It was just us. He knew all the door guys and got us past every line (all new to me as I never was a bar guy or downtown guy).
At the end of the night he explained all of his friends were dead from partying.
He died this year alone in his trailer with a high alcohol blood content after he fell and hit his head on his coffee table.
14. What Twitter can do.
Our senior year I think she drunk-tweeted something and a company loved what she tweeted that they offered her a job. We graduated 11 years ago and she still works for them!
(Although this kind of goes against the thread because she doesn’t drink anywhere near as much anymore since she got married and started a family).
13. A total mess.
I lived in a house with a bunch of guys. One of them was in electrical engineering. He got a job at Applebee’s for some extra cash and started having parties with work people after work (so 3-5am). That made it hard to make class so he dropped a semester. We all graduated and he said he would refocus on school soon, but he was having too much fun partying.
I went back to college 20 years later for a football game. He is still working as a waiter at Applebee’s. He is the creepy guy who acts like he is best friends a with a bunch of 20 year old kids. He’s a mess.
12. Putting those skills to use.
Worked at a bar in college, and friends worked at other bars. So I knew a lot of people who drank a lot.
Most went on to be in sales or some other job where interpersonal communication skills are more valued than raw academic skills. Some do very well.
11. Not actually creepy.
I think these types are always pictured to be creepy but the fact that they mostly hang out with young 20 year olds is probably more force of circumstances (i.e. few other people in their 30s/40s going out partying all the time) than anything else.
Once your social circle becomes fractured by people becoming young parents, it becomes harder & harder to arrange for a night out with a group of friends and this creates a vicious cycle where even less people go out because “no else is going out” (and there are only so many rejections that people want to face before they just stop trying).
What a lot of people in their 30s still crave is exactly what the 20 years olds are doing, but they don’t party either because its too much work to arrange a night out or they simply have too many family commitments (money, time, babysitter, lack of day off the next day to nurse a hangover, etc) to go out themselves.
Of course, you definitely do get some older guys (& women!) at the pubs/clubs who specifically go out with the intention to prey upon naive young adults in their late teens/early 20s, but I don’t think that this cover all of them. I believe that some mature adults in fact just want to party and would simply rather do it with people younger than themselves than no-one at all (if it comes down to that).
10. A sobering revelation.
Ran into an old friend who was like that.
We were in our late 30s when that happened and chatted; turned out he partied hard until late 30s and during that time, flitted around job to job to simply fund his partying.
One day he looked around and noticed that he was the old guy at the bars hanging with early 20-somethings….realized that all of the folks our age were ahead in their careers, with family/kids etc.
Said that was a pretty sobering revelation and enrolled himself back into school and was in his 2nd year of engineering as he wanted to be an aerospace engineer.
9. That sounds like goals.
He became a math professor and when not teaching he travels and has backpacked all over the world.
8. If you know…
He robbed a train with the Russian mob, and now appears on TV specials and podcasts.
7. I wonder how his personal life is.
dude has an amazing career, wildly intelligent, has a great house in a warm area etc etc. Absolute drunk tho, i think out of the last 6 times ive spoken to him he’s been sober maybe once
6. Seems like a common tale.
He partied with the right guys and now makes very good money in sales where he parties with clients but the company pays for it.
If you’re good with people, Sales is a lucrative career. Partying with the right people goes a long way.
5. A house of cards.
Many alcoholics/addicts maintain an equilibrium with their habit for years if not decades where their drug of choice just slots in as part of the routine for generally having a decent day, like tobacco and coffee for other folks.
Of course, it can be a house of cards that collapses catastrophically if something goes out of balance, but one of pernicious aspects of these addictions is being able to rebuff ideas that you’re suffering addiction when everything seems to be going just fine like it has for years. In fact, especially since a lot of these folks are using the drug or alcohol to cope with stress or trauma, going sober can feel like a terrible idea because it makes your response to everyone else worse.
To go sober successfully, you have to have serious support, including people who can be patient while you acclimate to dealing with others without your social crutch.
4. It could go either way.
One’s a doctor, one lives in a towable caravan.
3. You never can tell.
Librarian, I shit you not. And he’s married and a fantastic father to his daughter.
My wedding reception is coming up. He warned me that he plans to party so hard that we’ll need to pull his body out of the bay.
2. Not-a-happy ending.
He never stopped. He continued drinking at a crazy pace, and lost his job, his driving license, and his wife. He had to move near to a liquor store to keep drinking.
He was found dead on the floor of his apartment from a hemorrhage in his stomach caused by years of alcohol abuse. He bled to death from within. He left behind two sons.
1. I guess people can change.
A friend of mine in college pulled a Van wilder, and spent 7 total years in college (just getting his undergrad) because he liked the partying so much. He lived in the college ‘dedicated party house’ that had just two modes, actively throwing a wild party, or recovering from the latest party.
What was wild about him was that even though he lived a party lifestyle, he got excellent grades and took phenomenal care of himself (when he wasn’t getting black out wasted and having weird sexcapades), and was the person who got me into running/marathoning.
Eventually, he finally graduated with a degree in Mechanical engineering, moved to the east coast, got married and became a born again Christian. He seems happy and successful and just had his first kid recently, but its absolutely weird seeing him post pictures of him getting adult baptized and doing mission work when I once saw him rail cocaine off of a blow up sex doll.
I’m kind of not surprised – some of this is expected, other parts aren’t, but stereotypes aren’t all-inclusive.
Did you know a party animal? Were you one? Tell us down in the comments how they (or you!) turned out in the end!
