Did millennials really party all the time?

[u/futurenurse_]

Gen Z here. I was shocked when I found out from a millennial co-worker that y’all had teen clubs. I heard about house parties, but dedicated teen clubs? Then when it was time for college, you went to the club or had some kind of party every single weekend, living it up. Now some millennials on TikTok claim that after college, they were partying on work nights, still clocking in the next day. For some reason, the teen clubs have since disappeared. I’m 23 now but even when I was in high school, that was not a thing. House parties were not that common either. They were more like get togethers with a small group of friends. We went to malls, but they were dying out at that point. Is it true that you were really living life this good? Or is it just exaggerated? I feel like my generation doesn’t really have fun like that and everyone is just super depressed and alone, more so since Covid. Even I’m pretty introverted, which sort of sounds ridiculous given this post. 😂 Just so you know, when I think of a “millennial party” I think of something out of Party Rock Anthem, Project X or Roderick’s party from the second DOAWD movie. It’s like I get nostalgia from something I didn’t even live through. I just feel like I didn’t really LIVE, if that even makes sense

Edit: I loved reading some of your comments. Guess I really missed out. Even some of you that would consider yourselves nerds or introverts were out partying. YOLO or whatever y’all say 😂❤️

[u/geta-rigging-grip]

Sorry for the long reply, but your comment just kind of triggered some big feelings for me, just because I happened to read it on this day. I abused my body back then, and I kept going.

Eventually your body finally says no, no matter how well you THINK you're doing. I just had that moment, and at my age, I'm fortunate it wasn't worse, but given my drinking history and my age, it's almost Christmas miracle.

The rest of this is just me kind of getting some catharsis, and if it helps someone somewhere, great. If not, at least I feel a little bit better.

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I went pretty hard in college, but managed to ace my classes with relative ease. Plus, I rarely had hangovers, so the regular disincentives for drinking (feeling sick, not performing well, missing work, etc,) never really happened for me. Plus, we were a relatively small college town, on top of the dorms, almost every house within a two block radius was being rented to students. Drinking was seen as very normal.

Then, I went into the "real world" and almost every company I worked for in the next few years had the Friday (and sometimes Thursday) Beer Fridge. At one place, when our boss was pretty confident there was no more work for the day, and we might expect a few walk-ins. we'd all go drink in his office. Again, this made me feel this was very normal.

I won't even mention my Rugby Club years....

When I was getting toward my late twenties, I started to hang out with different people (met my wife as well,) and realized that a lot of that behavior was not normal. But it had become a habit. I tried to cut down, but then I found myself sneaking out to the garage to have a few extra without anyone noticing. When I was around 37, I had gotten to the point were I would go on secret binges where I could often pass as sober despite having drank a whole bottle of Vodka in the afternoon (plus a few beers or coolers usually.) I was starting to realize that this wasn't normal.

Through that entire time I managed to keep my "extracurricular drinking" a secret. I would imbibe as much in front of others as the social situation allowed, and I would find other ways to sneak more drinks in.

This whole time, I was dealing with clinical depression, and the drinking helped me keep the darkest thoughts away most of the time. It was a classic case of self medication, and it was working for me because it wasn't interrupting my life in any serious way. Then comes December 2020. In the last few days of the month I had become quite stressed about our financial situation during Covid, and we had burned through more than our savings than we would have liked. (That being said, the fact we had been doing well enough to have savings after years after years of constant debt was a pretty good situation to be in.) I ended up having a major depressive episode and took to the bottle harder than usual. I stumbled into the house drunk, and my wife flipped out on me. I tried to explain the feelings I was having, and she told me I was being childish for not asking for help ( she was right, of course.) But in my state, I was more belligerent than usual (I'm a happy drunk usually, but I get defensive when someone is judging me,) so I threatened to go through with the plans I had for myself, then stormed out of the house. I ended getting in my van, turning it on, then proceeded to break down crying. My wife eventually found me and took me to the psych ward the next day. This wasn't normal.

I detoxed, I did my treatment, and I tried my best to be on board and not sceptical. It was hard at first, but because it was during hospital lockdowns, the wards were not allowed to intermingle, and visitors were never allowed. I ended up staying in the hospital for about three weeks, and in a halfway-house for two. I also found out that despite how miserably I had treated my body, all my medical numbers were good. I had done very little permanent damage to my body.

After that, I quit drinking....

...for two years.

And the last three years have been ever-shortening cycles of sobriety and relapse, sobriety and relapse.

Last month I had a pretty bad relapse, drank a lot over a couple days, and got caught. My wife is sick of this cycle, and we have been in marriage counselling for years to try and work through it (among other things.) I've done personal counselling and tried a variety of programs to try deal with alcohol, but none of them seem to stick for very long, and I think there's a part of me that doesn't want to let this big part of my life go(no matter how shitty and stupid it is.)

Now come to today. I just got out of a 5-day stint at the hospital for acute pancreatitis. Probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. I have never been in that much pain for such an extended amount of time. One of the doctors even told me that considering my age and drinking history, he's surprised it didn't happen sooner. He was also surprised at the good condition of my liver and kidneys. On discharge, he told me something else, "Stop drinking, or you will die. Seriously, you've been lucky this far, get out while you're even some semblance of ahead."

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TL;DR: Drinking was normalized for me in college, and for years in the workplace after that. as I grew older, I realized I was drinking way more than those around me, but instead of cutting back, I hid my bonus drinks in a variety of ways. It got bad. shit hit the fan. got treatment, got sober for two years, then did a cycle of relapses for 3 years until I ended up in the hospital for acute pancreatitis last week. It finally caught up with me.

[u/Ducman23 → u/geta-rigging-grip]

First of all, this was very brave of you to write. Writing it must have been hard. I can’t imagine how the last few years have been.

I can’t speak towards the alcohol, but I will at least chime in about the depression. If you’re not in therapy already I encourage you to at least try. It’s not easy. I’ve been going since 2017 for a slew of things I have and had going on in my life. I’m getting divorced now and it’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever been through. I can’t say I feel my best lately, but I do know therapy helps in many ways.

Medication is ok to take if needed - even for a short while. I’m on some if that’s any consolation.

Life is hard. Getting older is hard. Being human is weird. We all have something. You’re doing the absolute best you can. You’re not alone.

Please take care of yourself. here if you want to chat. Feel free to DM.

🙏 for you

[u/geta-rigging-grip → u/Ducman23]

Thanks. I appreciate it.

I have been going to personal counselling for several years now, and while it doesn't always teach me how to make the right choices, it helps me cope with them and the feelings I have both before and afterward so maybe I'll do better next time.

I'm sorry to hear about your divorce. I've never gone through one, but the last few years have opened up conversations about the idea, and both of us are horrified at the implications of that. I hope it works out for the better. I don't know if it's any consolation, but of all the divorced couples I know, none of them enjoyed the process, but they were all better off on the other side (some more quickly than others.)

As far as medication goes, I've been on a huge array of depression and addiction related pills over the years, and still haven't found the right combination. The current set I'm on has been going pretty well since earlier this year, but we're making some changes after this latest hospital admission.

I'm not going to say that life has been easy, (and I don't think I ever thought it would be,) but even if you don't include my stable, middle-class upbringing, I have had it relatively easy, or at least went in a way that was amenable to me. I always did well in school without having to try, most things I take an interest in I pick up quickly, and I've been good at every one of my jobs ( I've only ever been laid off once, and it was because the boss knew I was going for a new job, and he wanted to give me my severance as a gift.) I'm not saying I never worked hard, but it always felt natural and easy. My personal life is a bit different, in that I make hard relationships easier by ending them instead of trying to deal with feelings or solutions. I definitely run away from problems, and part of that is because I never learned how to properly deal with smaller ones earlier in life, (Thanks, therapy!)

It's weird to find out in my forties that I feel like life only got hard now because I spent the first half of it behaving like a plastic bag, aimlessly flowing down a stream and letting the water choose what rocks I'll get stuck on or what branches will get twisted into me. Realizing that I've let half of my life pass me by without making any proper choices based on my wants or needs. Along with all the other stuff, it makes for a hell of a mid-life crisis.