Won’t go as far as saying “ruin their life” but I’ve seen so many people not shoot their shots because they reject themselves before others might. Just test your luck people, the worst that can happen is you get rejected/fail.
Had a friend in high school who took and aced the advanced classes. He ended up with a fully and all expenses paid scholarship at one of the top universities in my state.
Shortly before graduating high school, he ended up hanging out with guys who were bad news. He started drinking and partying (which I was happy that he was finally letting loose), but eventually ended up getting into harder drugs and started ditching his college classes and not doing well with his grades. He was even arrested for breaking into phone booths and stealing the coins (kind of tells you that this was quite a while ago).
By the time his sophomore year arrived, his scholarship was pulled and he was kicked out. From then on, he worked odd jobs here and there, but never seemed (or wanted, I guess) to be able to pull himself out of his rut.
I ran into him a couple years ago, and he was high on something and nearly incoherent. It really breaks my heart.
Watched my ex fall down the path to alcoholism. He was good at hiding how much he drank from me and everyone else but I was finding empty pints of vodka and he’d get drunk after I went to bed and would message messed up things to people. He drinks at least a pint of cheap vodka a day along with multiple chasers (cheap drinks with high alcohol contents). I broke up with him because I couldn’t take it anymore and almost all our mutual friends cut him off.
Hes been fired from every job he has ever had (including one I helped him get after we broke up after he was late on his first day). Now he’s only 31, his liver is fatty, and everyone is sick of dealing with him.
Alchohol is not something to play with!!!
A coworker of mine had bipolar and went off her meds for no real reason. She left home and started hanging out in the streets. She met an older guy, claimed to be pregnant, and started spiraling again. A few weeks ago, she went missing, posting on Facebook that she was better off living in the streets homeless. No one knows where she is. The man who allegedly got her pregnant showed up at work once looking for her, but that’s as far as that goes. Sad situation.
The dude was always a little broken after his father got violently murdered when he was young, but man was he a gifted actor. He was the lead in the big school play every year from grade 8 to grade 12 and he even did some work on camera for a local soap.
After school he went to India for a year to “find himself” and came back lazy as hell. I’m not 100% sure what he did after he came back but it’s clear now that he didn’t really have a plan for his life. He is now a sort of low end weed dealer who mostly sells to friends. I smoke weed so I have nothing against it, but he doesn’t even have the gumption to excel at doing it.