Read This If You’re Having A Quarter Life Crisis

Sam S
Sam S
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

I remember my first beer.

No really! I was 17 (late for some of you, I know). We were in my friends basement — it was bud light — and I slugged down 4 of them before I felt it.

There’s nothing like being drunk for the first time. You “feel” what everyone’s always been talking about. Is this a buzz? My face feels funny. Am I going to throw up? Jack Daniels and Coke is fucking delicious.

Sometimes you graduate from beer into hard liquor. Some people start off with hard liquor and stay that way. Friends are always involved in the scene — you realize that you really really love your friends. There’s nothing like the good vibes from alcohol when you first start out. (I’ve dropped far too many “I love you guys” to count).

Many of us started to ease off the anxiety. Years and years of being self conscious in your own skin and you finally found a way around it. A-ha! 5 beers makes me courageous enough to talk to girls. Finally.

Others start because everyone else is doing it. Nothing wrong with that — everyone needs group approval. Plus it’s fun to be in a crowd and participating in the same thing. Sports events are great for this too. A shared consciousness, and you’re all orientated towards a common goal.

Still others do it because it’s plain damn fun. Football games are meant for beer. Cornfields are meant for grain alcohol. Your friends house is literally the perfect environment for Jaeger bombs.

Many people graduate high school giddy with this “knowledge” that they’ve acquired. After all, you’re about to go to a college with thousands upon thousands of people. Those good vibes and the secret that you’ve learned and you’re going to be dumped into a campus with people you’ve never met. Suddenly you can drink and do all the things you wanted to do in High School — but never had the time (or freedom!) to do.

Fast forward a couple years. Many of us still drink just as aggressively as we used to. Some of us taper it off slowly but it’s still there. It’s a main activity for a big chunk of the population. But something interesting starts to happen: many of us hit our mid-20’s and start to have quarter-life-crisis's (Google it if you don’t believe me).

Suddenly you start hearing your friends saying the same things…

I feel like I’m not making enough friends. I need to network more!

I can never find a girlfriend/ boyfriend. I always meet these guys/girls and they flake out on me.

My job sucks dude. I hate working here but i’m not sure what to do

I hear it all the time and it seems to be getting more common as we all age. But the pattern I’ve noticed is that I only hear it from my friends who still drink all the time.

Alcohol is one of those things that slowly erodes your ability to handle yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Have you ever been in a bar sober? Truly sober? Many have. It sucks but it’s doable because everyone around you is already drunk.

What about a networking event? Does the thought of going to a networking event give you anxiety? What about going alone? How do you even conduct yourself at a networking event? That’s a lot harder.

What about going to a meetup group or an art class alone? When was the last time any of us did that? I’ve asked my friends — and most have never done it.

The truth is, the reason you haven’t done any of that is because you’ve never had to. (This doesn’t apply to a big chunk of you and I understand that. But this story is meant for people who complain about their social lives).

It’s easy to go to a bar and hang out with your friends drunk. It’s not easy to go to a networking event or an art class — alone. Every interaction you have under the influence chips away at your ability to interact without being under the influence.

This applies to love too. Many people find their significant others at a bar. If you’re a girl, then sometimes guys will only come up to you when you’re at a bar. If you’re a guy, maybe you only feel comfortable talking to a girl in a bar.

Sometimes, it gets so bad that you never meet new possible-significant-others outside of bars. Because of alcohol, we’ve all forgotten how. Everyone wants everyone else to talk to them — to make the first move- to say hello- to start a funny conversation. But you don’t because it’s nerve wracking. Except of course, huge swaths of the population do it every single day. It’s impossible to you because you’ve lost your ability to do it in the first place.

Now zoom out a bit. Lots of people wish that they were further along in life. I want to travel / I want to start a business/ I want to volunteer/ I want to XXX.

All these wants and yet no action is ever made. There’s always the person talking about taking over the world…but they’re in a bar Thursday-Sunday. The structure that you want to build out of your life depends on steady work but you’re not showing up 3 days a week and you’re hungover for another 2.

Across the street, someone is showing up and they’re taking your lunch. They’re working hard when you’re in bed, hungover.

It’s hard to build a business or prosper when you’re spending 28–40% of all your free time drinking or doing things related to it. (Seriously: 2 out of 7 days is 28% of your week; 3 out of 7 days is 40%. Damn!)

The moral of the story is: alcohol goes from helping you to being a crutch. Your natural skills atrophy and suddenly you find yourself in your mid-twenties wondering why is my life not the way I want it to be? It’s because:

It’s hard to work hard when it’s so easy to pick up a bottle.

However, despite my tone thus far this isn’t really a post on the evils of alcohol. There’s plenty of government websites and college educational courses that will tell you what exactly it does to your body and how it does that.

This is a post on the evils of lack of self development. YOU are responsible for your life after High School. Life and school condition you to believe that someone else will always be in charge…until you hit a point and realize only you are. Your quarter life crisis isn’t happening because you haven’t done enough — it’s happening because you’re finally realizing that no one will build your life for you and no one has been doing it for you since you were 18.

The simplest solution is to slow it down. I’m not saying stop drinking. I’m saying that you shouldn’t drink as much. Re-train yourself in how to do things that you were born as a human being knowing how to do. Approach people that make you nervous — even if they reject the fuck out of you and it stings your self esteem.

Go to networking events alone and be the awkward person in the room. Feel weird and like a loser. Get used to that feeling because those are all things that you once went through.

Your social skills and willpower are like muscles that haven’t been used in years. You haven’t exercised that part of your mind in a long long time, and you have to start it up again. No one wants to be 32 years old, going to the same bars, doing the same job that they started with, living in the same place they always have (even thinking of that makes me depressed!)

And the best part is that once you start exercising your mind again, you’ll realize that you’ve matured and become an adult. You don’t need the alcohol anymore to feel comfortable.

Suddenly it’s easy to have a hobby because you’re drinking 1 night of the week instead of 3 and you’re not always hungover. Maybe the pounds shed off and you look the way you’ve always wanted to look — because 50,000 beer calories aren’t being injected into your body one beer bong at a time every single weekend.

Maybe you find out that you’re cooler than you think. You’re not the jittery awkward 17 year old, you’re not as lonely anymore, and you have hobbies that take up your time — and you can be (relatively) sober for all of this. You are starting to become an interesting person that’s able to talk about things that actually matter to others.

Take time to take care of yourself.

Because no one wants to be 30 years old and look like this guy:

No more parties in LA. Please baby no more parties in LA.

I love opinions and I want to hear yours. Comment below with your thoughts and I promise I’ll respond! Thanks for reading :)

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