Good morning.
I am 31 and I scrolled through the pics on facebook from ten years ago and looking at current pictures of people I have no or barely contact to these days and I gotta say I am glad I hopped off that boat a few years ago.
Most of the people I know and hang out with back then were in the “Turbojugend”, kind of a fanclub of Turbonegro and all they (and I) did was get wasted to punk music. Looking back it was fun and don’t regret my early 20s but I am so glad I am not that person anymore.
I still have contact to a few of them and most of them are now 35+ year olds and still drink, party the same way they(we) did ten years ago.
It seems like they are having a blast but I noticed nothing changed. They are the same people they were ten years ago. I noticed it this weekend when I decided to go out to party again and oh man it was enough. I left four hours into the party. Since I don’t think the whole experience was wack. Drunk people yelling in my ear “REMEMBER BACK THEN? THOSE WERE THE YEARS” etc. some dude licking my cheeks smelling like he puked 20 minutes ago (he did) and other people yelling they got erection (song from Turbonegro).
If I look at the pictures they post every weekend I see exhausted people and emptyness. It’s actually so sad… dunno I don’t want to shame them, they are enjoying their lives.
It’s just crazy what alcohol does and the thing is, in this group “Turbojugend” alcohol is so normal. It’s really crazy.
Indeed, alcohol abuse is so normalized it’s scary. I drink occasionally and rarely enjoy getting super drunk but it always annoys me when people base their whole personality off any sort of drug. Some people I otherwise really like would just constantly talk about drugs. It got very tiring and I eventually just stopped hanging out with them.
When I think about it it’s also so weird how it is totally normal to talk about it at work - that someone really needs a drink or needs to drink enough to forget about all the shit decided in a meeting. The same people are digusted by people smoking pot because ‘that’s a drug’.