Have you ever seen someone blow up their life for no apparent reason? What happened?

There's always a reason, it's just that you don't know it. A terribly unhappy marriage, late on set mental illness, A&D issues, money problems.

The one instance I have is one of my best friends from Hs> college killed himself in his late 30's. This guy had it all, he was big handsome, in HS and college he had all the girls he ever wanted, as an adult he had a nice job in the medical profession, a very pretty wife, and nice middle class home.

But what I didn't know was that he had been suffering from extreme OCD for a number of years, then terrible debilitating depression. He had completely withdrawn from all his friends so none of knew what was going on until he was gone.

Rare is the guy that just up and leaves (I didnt say bang, I said leave) his wife and kids for a waitress on a whim.

I don't see anything about "he threw his life away" in Vdjb's post.

I have seen more than one do this. In almost every case it was alcohol or other drugs.

Ted Kaczynski…

I've seen people blow up themselves a few times...it's almost always over a woman. People marry the wrong person or feel they deserve better and BAM they drop it all and get the trophy. Marriage is tough. Or they decide they are gay and move to Key West or something.

Women have also done this a few times...left their lives on a chance for big romance. It has failed every time.

Chill, people.

Does having an affair when you don't intend to leave your wife count? What about drinking and driving or other self-destructive behavior that over time the frequency and probability are practically guaranteed to blow up your life.

My beloved brother. Three years into an Engineering major with excellent grades and great internship decided he didn’t want to end up like the stiffs working in the company he was interning for. He quit school and started his own landscaping business which failed and left him owing money. He still had computer skills that got him jobs here and there but he was never happy doing that either. He complained about how stupid his supervisors were, wherever he worked, eventually shut himself off from family and friends (mad at the unfair world), and eventually drank himself to death, in debt and living in horrible living conditions.

He had everything going for him except had one basic flaw: too idealistic about how he expected his life to go.

It’s idealistic until you succeed. My classmate did the same and now he’s the co-founder of a 9 figure company.

It seems like something these stories have in common is that there's always a reason. It might not be readily apparent, but once you dig a little bit, you find undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, substance abuse issues, or some form of undisclosed abuse (physical, sexual, emotional) that led the person to do what they did. The phrase "hurt people hurt people" comes to mind.

A STEM PhD can really f-ck you up mentally and emotionally, especially if you have a sociopath advisor. Ask me how I know.

Why?

Soren Knudsen

/end thread

Well, one of the stories is long and really messed up and deserves its own thread. Part of why I created this thread was to compare other stories to it because of how badly this person messed up their life for no apparent reason. So far I think my story takes the cake.

I will share another story though. My cousin worked in public education for about 10 years and was pretty loved by his various students that he worked with over the year, did all sorts of things for the school district, and was somewhat of a pillar of the community type of person. He loved his job and found a lot of meaning in it, a lot of purpose.

Then he went to a friend's wedding and decided to drive across several states with a large bag of shrooms with him, got pulled over in Nevada and was hit with a felony, which disqualified him from ever working in public education again in his state. Obviously he took it hard, but instead of doing anything positive or constructive, he spiraled kind of out of control over the next several years becoming a bigger and bigger alcoholic and getting so loaded up on prescription drugs that he was visibly medicated and not in his right mind all the time. On top of this he lashed out at everyone around him and burned his bridges with basically every single person in his life other than his mom. He had numerous people close to him formally terminate their friendship with him, talk to him about it, etc, and he just kept on with this ways and continued to get worse and worse. I honestly don't even know what he's up to now because I haven't talked to him since 2018. He survives because his dad is a rich and gives him money to live on.

What's perhaps most crazy to me about my cousin's case is that the state he lives in allows you to have felonies expunged after 10 years if you've had good behavior etc, and it's now been more than 10 years since his felony. If he hadn't destroyed his life and himself post-felony, he could be back teaching again by now. He's only 43.

Malmo, I think your response was really strange and disrespectful. I shared my brother’s story because I thought it might help someone out. I have Robert’s cell, I might text him some context because I haven’t seen him since this happened. Sometimes this place sucks. If you had any idea what it is to deal with losing an 8-figure executive role then you would understand it’s actually not even important when you almost lose someone you care about. It was 6 months of torture.

I wasn't even a tiny bit disrespectful to your brother. I just found it not believable since it would be a story that everyone would have heard of. How long ago? Which company?