Life is full of choices we make every day. Most of them are small, like deciding what you want to eat for dinner or what flavor of toothpaste to buy. But others, the big ones, have the power to completely redirect the course of your life.
Recently, people in this popular Reddit thread were sharing stories about exactly that. But instead of discussing their own experiences, they reminisced about the wrongdoings of others, which left their lives completely in shambles.
Scroll down to find the most chilling ones that might make you reconsider your own big choices.
Bored Panda also got in touch with No_Potential6463, the person who started this discussion in the first place.
You can find our conversation with them below!
#1
Mom had an affair and abandoned our family for said affair partner when I was a baby. Thought the grass was greener. Turns out the guy she left for was a raging alcoholic who just never could clean up. Pawned her jewelry for booze after he lost his job, hired escorts, the works. Put my mom through hell. Ended up dying of liver failure and my mom is alone now. I think the guilt and shame has caught up to her. I’m not angry anymore. She made a mistake, but it has been one of the biggest lessons in my life. My dad has never spoken one bad word of her in my 35 years of life. He’s incredible and I’m thankful everyday he raised my brother and I.
256points
#2
Back when I was delivering pizzas in a fairly nice area, some kid put six rounds of .380 auto in my chest to steal my camero. Later found out this kid had a full ride at UF, straight A student, from a very wealthy family. Just started rolling with a bad crowd I guess. Got caught when he brought the car home, and the next morning it went out on the news. His own dad turned him in. Aside from some wicked scars, I made a full recovery.
228points
#3
Friend graduated with me from pharmacy school, we were all set to start making 130k+ a year for the rest of our lives.
He sold 2.9 million dollars of oxycodone to an undercover DEA agent like 3 months into his first job. What a total idiot.
19 year prison sentence, lost his license, obviously, so now he'll be a 45 year old unemployable felon when he gets out instead of a respected healthcare professional with a good wage.
185points
We reached out to redditor No_Potential6463, to find out what inspired them to take such a question to Reddit. "I want to avoid making mistakes in my life. I think there’s a lot to learn from the stories people have told, which serve as a reminder of the dangerous choices that must constantly be avoided."
#4
This is from someone who wrote into an advice column but it has stuck with me lo these many years.
The guy wrote about how he had begged his wife to swing with the couple next door.
She was **deadset against it but he pestered her about it for a couple of years** and she finally, **reluctantly**, agreed.
When the time came, the guy was very disappointed to find the neighbor’s wife was not as “tight” as he had anticipated. Meanwhile his neighbor was giving his wife what looked to be an out of body experience.
It made him EXTREMELY angry and resentful of his wife for enjoying it so much. I think he said something like “I can’t even look at her without wanting to punch her in the face.” The columnist told him off and advised him to file for divorce.
The guy wrote an update stating a few months after the “swinging” occurred, the neighbors divorced and his wife left him for the guy next door. They married soon after.
He felt blindsided and betrayed.
182points
#5
There's a video of a guy who goes to slash the tires on a bus. Bus tires hold a hell of a lot more energy than car tires so instead of a hiss when he stabs the tire, his arm gets blown off and his body is thrown to the ground.
157points
#6
That guy who ate a slug on a dare, got paralyzed and then died some years after.
144points
When asked if they noticed any patterns or behaviors that tend to result in people ruining their lives, they said, "The most common answer was drugs, especially heroin and meth. Addiction is very serious and can destroy everything someone has worked for."
According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, over 70,000 people die from drug overdoses in the US annually. And this number is unfortunately growing, with deaths increasing at an annual rate of 4.0%.
#7
Pound a bottle of Jack. Hop in car with girlfriend. Drive 100 mph. Hit tree. K**l girlfriend. Breathe through tube for rest of life. Quadriplegic. He was 16 at the time.
139points
#8
This isn't like, a single instance where a person f****d up their whole life in one go, but I was there for the domino that brought down the whole house.
Was working at a Gas station. Lady wanted smokes but didn't have her ID. I refused to make the sale, she was upset, got angry, stole a banana. Well, police frequented the store because it was the only one that was open 24hrs in the town. Cop watches her take the banana after her fit and promptly stops her in the parking lot before she can leave. At first, he was just going to have her return the banana as a sorta petty way to get back at her for being a huge b***h about the whole situation with the smokes.
Five minutes later, he's still got her stopped and two more squad cars roll up with their lights on.
Turns out, Lady had 8 warrants in 3 states for various drug and theft charges.
She got taken in, ostensibly extradited to the other states for charges, and raked over the courts over a pack of swisher sweets and a f*****g banana.
133points
#9
Dude with a Six-figure IT job stole a $600 laptop *knowing we lojacked ALL laptops.*
He waited a month and then booted it up on his home network. The laptop promptly sent us his IP address and network name...which was his last name.
Boss called him out on it, he broke down and confessed and was fired.
This is not the dumbest part of the story.
He was the *second* person in IT to steal a laptop and get caught and fired. And yes, he knew all about the first guy.
WHAT....the f**k. It has been years and I still can't wrap my head around it.
For your amusement: when we did the final interview with his replacement we did it as a group and each asked him a question and answered any questions he might have. When my turn came I asked him "Do you ever get the urge to just...steal stuff?" and the whole team lost it. Boss was not amused but it all worked out. Guy had a great sense of humor.
130points
Redditor believes that at first, these stories may seem bizarre and entertaining, but they definitely can help raise awareness, especially for young people who are just entering the world of relationships, drugs, and independence.
Jackson House addiction and recovery centers second this and recommend discussing your knowledge and experience with people around you.
Unfortunately, common stigmas still surround this topic, so spreading awareness in your community or on social media can help combat this and encourage more recovered people to step forward and share their own stories with those who need it the most.
#10
*World of Warcraft*. He had a full scholarship to a very good university that his family could not have afforded otherwise. He started playing WoW 60 hours a week and got expelled halfway though his second year.
Report
129points
#11
A patient of mine when I was a student nurse. 19 years old, male, dove head first into unfamiliar body of water. Instant C3-C4 quadraplegic. I was assigned to him for an entire rotation on the rehab floor. His girlfriend came every evening for a few days, then skipped a day, then skipped a couple, then didn't come again the rest of the time I was assigned to him. He was heartbroken, but she was younger than him and she looked very upset and scared whenever she was there. We had to clean him up after bowel movements (sometimes needed an enema to even have one). One day we were cleaning him, holding him over on his side so we could do it, and he broke down sobbing. It was so terrible. Over the years I've wondered what happened to him. Wish I had made a note of his name so I could have followed up.
128points
#12
Two I didn’t see first hand but I am aware of.
1 - Lad I grew up with, nice lad from a rough family, he was the black sheep. He was intelligent, polite, didn’t fight, didn’t get in trouble, was well liked and so on. Some time around his 19th birthday he was on a night out with friends, got drunk and another lad bumped into him accidentally spilling his drink, his friend he was with got in the other guys face even though he apologised so the guy pushed him away. The nice kid I grew up with punched the guy, he fell, hit his head and died. He got sent to prison for manslaughter. Completely ruined his life, in and out of prison multiple times since, fell into drugs and so on. He was the one who could have escaped his family reputation and gone on to do something with his life but f****d it.
2 - is an ex-girlfriend of mine and this happened before I met her. Studying to be a doctor, smart, beautiful, great sense of humour, proper social butterfly type who people just wanted to be around. There was a birthday party for her friend and she drove there to drop off a present, say hi and had to go home as she had classes the next day. When she was there she obviously declined alcohol but had a glass of lemonade someone offered her and got in her car to go home. Drove the wrong way down a motorway and crashed her car into someone else, causing serious injury to both herself and the other person. Turns out that she’d been drugged at the party. I don’t know the exact ins and out off the top of my head but she basically admitted to guilt and spent 3 months in prison, her plans for life were ruined and she had to start over. Never drove again, never drank again (even though she didn’t drink at the party, she flat out refused to even have a lemonade any more and would take her own bottle of Coca Cola or something in her bag so she could screw the lid on. Got SEVERE anxiety and depression etc.
When she told me I felt so bad for her because some a*****e drugged her and she ended up both injured, with a criminal record, a driving ban and her life ruined.
121points
#13
Narcissist/ egotistical brother-in-law disrespected my mother-in-law and wife (fiancée back then), claimed he was better than everyone else and that his friends were his only true supporters/ family. Moved out of their apartment to "launch his band" and "get out of the s****y and ghetto city" he grew up in.
He's homeless now in the same city.
116points
#14
when my 27 year marriage was ending, my soon to be ex husband, who did not know how to handle money at all, asked me to make a list of how to keep his bills paid. I did. Divorce involves #1) me taking half the marital assets and b) he has to pay his own bills now. When he discovered this he was very bitter and decided he was just "not gonna do anything that b***h says" as per the list of how to pay his bills. He was sued and had his pay garnished, lost his job, his car, his home and his entire support network all within a year because he didnt want to handle his finances the way I told him to, after he ASKED ME HOW TO DO IT! That one decision ruined his life.
114points
#15
A friend of mine freshman year in college, took all the money his dad had given him for college and bought a ring and proposed to his girlfriend, who was a senior in high school. she said she wanted to wait until she graduated, which he took as a no, and in a fit of anger, threw the ring into the nearby lake. His plan was his dad would be so happy he was getting married, that he would reimburse all the money he had given him. Instead, the ring was gone, he had to drop out of college because he couldn't pay, and last I saw, he was working at a convenience store in town.
Even though she said wait, she still tried to get back together with him afterwards, and he said no, you weren't interested when I proposed to you, you won't be interested again.
110points
#16
My roommate in the army got drunk and damaged a door in the barracks. He got an article 15 which is basically a fine. He refused it and got sent to jail for a month or two. In jail, he took a swing at an officer. He got sent to federal prison.
I lost track of him at that point.
If he'd simply signed the article 15, he'd have lost $150 but been fine afterwards.
Never saw someone f**k their life up that quickly before or since.
109points
#17
Guy I went to middle school with met a 13 year old on Fortnite and traveled from Pennsylvania to Georgia to try and hook up with him. Kid understandably got spooked and told the cops, who nailed him in a sting down there when he'd already traveled down. Turns out he had a COLLECTION of CP on his computers. Is currently doing 15 years in federal prison. He had a good job in a private school and was a basketball coach, and well respected before then. The scary thing was that he was also a tutor at a special needs school on top of that, and if he'd wanted to take advantage of that he could have. As an aside, he was a complete douchebag to me since I wasn't one of the popular clique, so any tiny shred of sympathy I'd have for him was never there to begin with. Enjoy prison, chomo.
94points
#18
Impulsive decision to street race their friends on a country road. Hit a tree and and managed to k**l everyone in the car. From bad decision to death was less than a minute. I didn't so much see it happen, as I got to comfort the best friend of one the kids in the aftermath.
93points
#19
Guy wiped out on the road in front of me in his motorbike. His chin got caught on the metal rung used as a step at the back of a truck in front of him.
I'd never seen someone literally lose their head until that moment, and I'll be ok if I never see it again.
89points
#20
Dude I worked with decided to tell a racist joke to a very high up admin, who was also a black woman, and her lawyer.
Fired, bye career
89points