Are We the Last Hard Party Generation?

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lordyfortwenty@reddit

I drive ride share in a university town and this generation is definitely drinking . Ask them about black out Wednesdays.

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timberwolf0122@reddit

The fun you see and you hear about is wholesome, the rest is not

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1kpointsoflight@reddit

I think it skips generations. We are cautionary tales for our kids

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Seems to be the case. I was a working musician from age 17 - 35. I worked here and there when I wanted something and to keep a lil cash in my pocket but it was one long drawn at party. Booze, drugs, sex, cheap thrills. I finally packed it in when my on again off again GF moved back in with me and started talking about getting married.

I've told some stories to my daughter and her friends and they just dont believe a human can do that to themselves

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Crixxa@reddit

ITT: A lot of ppl who clearly never heard the good stories their grandparents' generation had to tell. The wild shit they got up to absolutely put our hijinks to shame just like ours does with most millennials and Z. Just the march of civilization I guess.

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Secret_Computer4891@reddit

No. We're just too old to stay awake long enough to be aware of the parties up and down the block.

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Sensitive-Rip-8005@reddit

Pretty much. I can honestly say I went over a year seeing the sun rise on Saturday and Sunday mornings on my way home from partying or still partying. At one place, I’d work a double and show up in the same clothes that I left in the night before. I lost a promotion because of that but damn, I had fun.

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alecsputnik@reddit

I'm a millennial and I partied hard. So, no, you are not the last generation to party hard.

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Dalearev@reddit

Ditto Xellenial here and all my millennial friends partied the same as we did.

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alecsputnik@reddit

My brother and I used to split a 30 pack of Busch nightly lol

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Dalearev@reddit

40 oz to freedom lol - we drank mickeys, mad dog, old E, even Zima when I was in HS Lolol

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Xryanlegobob@reddit

Yes, and they’ll all miss out on the fun.

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MaximumJones@reddit

LOL no. My GenZ kids partied HARD. I got calls from angry parents because my daughter used the tazer I bought her to taze every boy who tried to talk to her at a party once.

Everyone was high and thought it was hilarious. They did all the same stupid shit we did and just like us, they did not think their parents knew about it.

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kittin@reddit

I love your daughter. that's a bucket list for me.

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Talking_Asshole@reddit

OOp! You just got tazed for saying that! lol

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kittin@reddit

NICE!!

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Big-Sheepherder-6134@reddit

We are the last everything generation.

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Individual-Net5383@reddit

We are likely the last generation to make it to retirement

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BlacksmithThink9494@reddit

Im not going to, I can tell you that now. Im the last few years of x and we are not ok.

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Individual-Net5383@reddit

We really aren’t

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Big-Sheepherder-6134@reddit

I am already semi-retired. If my nieces and nephews listen to me they will be able to retire very early too.

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jeexbit@reddit

I hope we make it to retirement...

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Disembodied_Head@reddit

What we really are is the last generation to be able to go out, party, make fools of ourselves and not have it recorded and placed on the Internet for all to see. Many of the younger generations won't go out and do anything for fear of this happening to them.

There are dance clubs filled with people and great music but no one will hit the dance floor lest everyone at school or their jobs see a video of them stumbling their way through some moves as they learn. While the consequences of drugs and risky behavior have remained high the risk of being seen doing these things is the risk no one wants to take.

We weren't the last cool generation, we just didn't have to contend with the surveillance state.

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fastcatdog@reddit

Remember the 80’s ? If you do you did it wrong 🤪😝😬😁🤣

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thewatchwinder@reddit

im expecting we are. some of the millenials will, simply because they were raised by the gen jones side of gen-x (polo shirts and khaki types lol).

in general, i dont think the younger ones will. playing hard is generally done in accordance with also working hard. Since ive not seen Gen z or the younger millenials actually do that. they seem to generally feel like its just...bad luck, or oooh, cant get a job in my major so ill just keep trying (like ..who ever could really? id love to know who told everyone we could afford houses and cars right out of college like it was magically affordable back then. sure it was cheaper but wages were also way, way, way lower). we got crap jobs on top if school and interneships to eat. they dont have the stones for it

back through the 80's even with a college degree you needed experience in your field. apprenticeships (unpaid work), interns (unpaid work), and side gigs at super entry level positions while in college gave the experience to get those. im not seeing that level of..."gotta support myself no matter what" from them.

so, no. i dont think they will. i think we may be the last, but at least you can know your grandchildren will probably be living with you when theyre 30. i guess thats a plus in some way. i guess i was wrong, according to society, when i said "everyone gets a trophy" will ruin the work ethic and drive of the younger generations. they really must be all winners, i just cant see it.

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ancientastronaut2@reddit

My kids party hard, just differently. They're more into MDMA, molly, mushrooms and acid, vs alcohol and coke, and go to more occasional weekend festivals than big house parties. (We all do weed, so not really worth mentioning). They're millennials, though, so can't speak for the ones younger than that.

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IndependentlyGreen@reddit

Too easy to get caught...

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PomegranateReal3620@reddit

We were the last generation that didn't have to worry about someone with a camera posting our stupid behavior on social media. Gen Z are especially anxious about that.

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AnswerMaximum@reddit

This is a really good point. But I don’t hear about young adults rolling home from the clubs in time to change in order to get to work in time with the club stamp still on their hand only to take a power nap over lunch in the backseat of their car in the parking garage. 🤣🤣🤣 Those were the days….

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Itchy_Undertow-1@reddit

I think the Millenials partied hard and dangerously, like us but with more synthetic stuff.

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a_library_socialist@reddit

The Millennials loved cocaine and booze when they were young.

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Logical-Pound-1065@reddit

And pills. So many people I grew up with were into pills.

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colostitute@reddit

Pills for sure.

Opiates (percs, oxys)
Benzos (Xanax, bars)
Adderall/Ritalin
Vicodine (vics)
Dextromethorphan (Red Devils)
Ephedra supplements like Metabolife, Hydroxycut, and Xenadrine.

Gen Z going to be peptides. From what I can tell, they aren’t so much about the “let’s get fucked up” but simply trying to look good.

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Master_Ad7267@reddit

No cocaine but there was alot of ecstasy in high school and weed. We still partied hard but just maybe the geriatric millennials.

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RemarkableKey3622@reddit

uh, yeah, when we were young. def not now right? right? what in the world is that over there?

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LittleMoonBoot@reddit

Older millennials still had some kind of privacy and ability to let their hair down without worrying about being filmed by their friends and put on social media. I'd say the shift came after that.

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

Maybe but maybe not? I used a lot of weed on the DL because it was ostensibly illegal, although in California it was a civil violation, and it for sure made it hard for me to concentrate. In any case I didn't discuss it with my parents, even though they grew up in the sixties and were tangentially exposed to it at a minimum. My daughter has a med card and uses gummies regularly to manage her anxiety and also takes Adderall to manage her ADHD and tells me about it and I have even gotten her some gummies a couple of times when she needed them. So maybe it's just different now and not a linear spectrum.

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Felon73@reddit

I know some pretty hard partying millennials that I would be happy to party with. I would say that they are the last. We perfected it and they carried on. They absolutely use the road maps we drew for them.

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SinceAmillion@reddit

The Gen Z’ers spoke weed

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jwezorek@reddit

I think millennials are still relatively similar to us in this respect. It's the gen z's that are supposed to be different.

They were the first generation that was fully helicopter-parented: basically high school for them still had the dynamic where their entire world was still mediated by their parents, which for us is like early childhood; from what I understand this even extended into college for most of them. Then COVID hit right when they were in late high school or college so they never got the kind of socialization in which older friends teach you about going to bars etc. But anyway they don't really drink, a lot of them don't drive, they don't understand how bars work ... to me the whole thing seems like a kind of generational age regression; when they turn 30 it will be like they are finally in high school / college.

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

Kids won't learn any social or life skills as long as their parents don't let them. My daughter is in college and my wife joined a Facebook group for parents of the students. It's amazing how much the parents want to manage everything for their kids away from home at college, arranging rides etc. The kids are basically being domesticated like pets, fully dependent on their parents even when they are not there.

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lemoraromel@reddit

I was in a bathroom at a restaurant and a woman and a small child walked in. The mother used the bathroom while the child who was maybe 7, stood outside the stall door. Every 30 seconds the mother would tell her to stay there, don’t move. She was pressed up against the door, she wasn’t going anywhere. To me the child appeared to not have any disability so it was a bit over the top to me. If that was me, my mom would have left me at the table and went to bathroom herself.

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lewisfairchild@reddit

Paris, TX

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The_Wild_Bunch@reddit

We are! My 23 year old Gen-Z son goes to the old people bars when he and his friends go out. When they aren't going out, they are doing exactly what they always do, play video games but add beer to the mix.

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scarletOwilde@reddit

Yes, it seems so. I want to be shocked by the decadence of the young, instead I’m bored.

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spaceman696@reddit

Absolutely not lol.

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HoraceBenbow@reddit

I also partied hard when I was a teenager / early twenties. I have a 19 year old son who doesn't drink or do drugs. He's on his computer playing video games with his friends. When they all need to disconnect they plan meetups at various places - movies, sledding, going to the local water park - and that's it. He doesn't like marijuana or alcohol much at all. There's been much written about how GenZ isn't drinking alcohol like previous generations and from what I see, it's mostly true.

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amachan43@reddit

Same with my teen boys. Mostly online fun and meeting up now and then for sports, dining out, d&d, etc. No drugs or alcohol, just doing their own thing. Can’t really complain!

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HoraceBenbow@reddit

D&D is pretty big with them too. As a guy who owned every second edition book as a middle schooler, I am so happy that they're letting their imaginations run wild on a table-top game.

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smokywater50@reddit

We probably are, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it came back around at some point. Though maybe they just learned their lesson and understand how bad alcohol is in particular and how certain addictions ruin people’s lives. There are many examples of this in most families. I couldn’t even tell you how many people I’ve known and went to school with have died due to overdose, and many lives ruined from alcohol abuse.

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YourJailDad@reddit

50 years old and I’m still throwing down (for now hahahaha)

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professornevermind@reddit

Word.

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BlacksmithThink9494@reddit

I definitely think its on a smaller scale. Clubs used to be full. Theyre really not anymore unless it's an 80s night. 🤣

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brokenmcnugget@reddit

only on the weekends now and my limit is a six pack or midnight, which ever comes first.

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geodebug@reddit

Nah, the way things are going many more young people will turn towards drugs and alcohol as they learn that the American dream is slipping further from their grasp.

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notevenapro@reddit

In many states they have legal weed now.

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sungodly@reddit

*has slipped entirely

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LithiuMart@reddit

I spent the 90s in a haze of weekend after weekend drinking and taking strange things.

My weekend routine would be: the pub opening on Friday night, so that was the start, and some whizz to get the night going, then home at closing time and watch TV all night because of the inability to sleep.

The pub would re-open at mid-day on Saturday so we'd all meet up there, drink until 7PM then a blast of whizz (or whatever was on offer) to keep us going, then carry on until midnight or later.

Sunday would arrive, so it was back to the pub at mid-day and drink until 4 o'clock then head home.

A week of work until Friday arrived, then do it all again.

This song by The Levellers sums up my 90s weekends perfectly: Just The One.

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NotEveryoneIsSpecial@reddit

I wanna know what whizz iz…

…I know you can show me

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LithiuMart@reddit

It's speed, or officially known as amphetamine sulphate.

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goosepills@reddit

Whippets?

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DeauxDeaux@reddit

This entire sub is devolving into some psuedo-boomer bullshit circlejerk with the "nobody does it like we used to do" posts. You comparing your mid twenties party life to your son's late teen lack of partying?

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notevenapro@reddit

The lack of punishment and enforcement, both legally and socially between the 80s and today is stark. I dont think its boomerish to mention it or even celebrate it, or at a minimum reminisce about it. Even boomets had that unique timeline that no onr got to experience. Summer of love and disco.

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curiositymeow@reddit

They're not wrong though.

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DeauxDeaux@reddit

So the kids that are old enough to purchase alcohol aren't purchasing as much alcohol as the kids who were of legal drinking age to purchase alcohol?

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DeauxDeaux@reddit

His kids are 16 and 20. They aren't GenZ. They are Gen Alpha. If we're going to compare generational party data, this is irrelevant.

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DayneGaraio@reddit

This is stupid af, i have two genz kids that are 14…. Half the generation isn’t 21

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DayneGaraio@reddit

I wish i could upvote this more than once.

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whatsasimba@reddit

I didnt smoke weed as a teenager, either. It made me throw up. Plus my parents had told me all their "its a miracle Im alive" stories. Id have an occasional beer with my mom. I wasnt popular, so I didnt go to parties. In my 40s, I figured out that edibles worked fine. I take them and go to sleep.

OP is like Uncle Rico asking who wants to see him throw a football over a mountain, regaling the youth with stories of how he could have won the state championship.

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BlahBlahILoveToast@reddit

I work for a company that tests video games, and almost everybody else there is in their 20s (I'm 50). When I mention some cool band is playing at my dive bar in the general chat all I get back is "there's a new Zelda game coming out today, so I'm spending my three day weekend at home playing Switch" or whatever. None of them would ever leave the house or have a physical interaction with a human if they weren't forced to.

On the other hand: two weekends ago I went out with a group of 24 year olds who are NOT from my work. We shut down the bars, went to two after-parties in the suburbs, and ended up back downtown. In the back of somebody's SUV a girl turned to me and said "I make my own butter, do you want some?" and handed me a glob of unwrapped butter out of her purse. Illicit drug deals may or may not have gone down. At 6 AM I was taking swigs straight out of a bottle of Titos.

So it depends on the kids, I would say.

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MissBoofsAlot@reddit

Your last thoughts I hope are true. Alcohol is (in my opinion) horrible for your body. Most of my family are alcoholics. I have seen the decline from alcohol and rebirth post recovery from alcohol. My sister is bad right now. She called me in a panic last week thinking she was going to be evicted because they were having an inspection at her apartment and her apartment is filled with empty bottles piled 2' high. I made 3 trips loading my van up with bags of empty bottles. I have spent the last 2 weeks filling my recycling bins up with her empty bottles and I still have 4 contractors bags full to dispose of. Her apartment is still covered in bottles this was just enough that they could walk around to do their fire sprinkler inspection. My sister used to live with me for about a decade and I had to kick her out because of her drinking. My kids want nothing to do with her and all have said they will not drink alcohol. My wife and I have a few drinks a year, if we go to a BBQ and are offered a beer we might take it. My oldest (19) says most the people in her highschool didn't drink or smoke cigarettes. They vaped weed more than anything else.

My cousin drank himself to death, my grandma drank and smoked herself to death. Another cousin has multiple DUI. Another cousin who the whole family wrote off for how bad his drinking and drugs were. I was the only family member who believed in him. He quit drinking and using hard drugs. He still smokes pot but that is it. He just got his 10 year chip from AA and 15 from NA. He is doing so well for himself. Has a new wife and life in so proud of him. My uncle was on the run in the 90s for drugs.

I would much rather see people smoke weed than drink alcohol. Not sure if anyone follows skateboarding but look at Bam. He was a douchebag but great skater. Then he started drinking and just became a major fuck up douchebag and stopped skating. Now he has quit drinking and started skating again and he is getting good again. Alcohol a dehydrating from the inside.

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BlahBlahILoveToast@reddit

I agree, booze isn't good for us at all and the kids are moving away from it for a reason. Good for them.

I hate how I feel on weed or I'd probably be doing that instead myself.

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Beneficial_Pea_520@reddit

In our days when a party got raided everyone scattered or they just took your booze. Today it's more serious and getting arrested can ruin a young person's hopeful career. We also had no social media or camera phones, so all the stupid stuff I did, er, I mean they did, was never documented.

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notevenapro@reddit

I was old enough to buy kegs and bring them to parties, 1985. I cannot imagine the heap of trouble I would get in today for buy 2 kegs of beer for 50 underage teens.

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SlyFrog@reddit

As much as we talk about non-conformism, I think a lot of the partying and drinking was conformist. Everyone wanted to look cool and fit into their group.

I think the younger generations look at things more critically. If they think something is frankly somewhat stupid, they just don't do it.

I've noticed there's a lot less sarcasm, insulting people, etc. with my kids and their friends. They don't seem to need to be assholes to each other to look cool and fit in.

I think many of them have had a similar reaction to drinking and partying - like why would I go wreck myself to stand around in a group getting smashed up so I can feel like shit and maybe get into fights or sexually assaulted?

Nothing about that particularly bothers me, but I'm amazed at the amount of people my age who somehow seem upset that the kids aren't doing it right somehow (not talking about the OP, who just seems to be asking a general question).

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dancing_swordfish@reddit

im 21. very antisocial. i get along well with my irl friend though, just not being in public. i still party, but i dont like loud noises or alcohol.

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zippyboy@reddit

i get along well with my irl friend though

as a Gen-Xer, I laughed at "irl friend". aka "friend" to most people.

As opposed to AI-friend?

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dancing_swordfish@reddit

As different from online to avoid confusion

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AlmiranteCrujido@reddit

The younger end of our generation pretty much invented how normal people use the internet, so don't let older GenXers gaslight you that this is only how young people see the world.

Pretty sure it would have been someone a few years older than me who invented "a/s/l?" on chatrooms as skeevy as that seems now.

Pretty sure people 50 and under are 'most people' these days (65% of the US population, bigger worldwide) and even the folks my age who got online late would have been online by the time they got out of college or got their 2nd or 3rd job as an adult if they didn't got to college.

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Strong_Web_3404@reddit

Well, I grew up with my parents telling me how much fun they had one the hand, and forbidding me to do it on the other. So I rebelled and did it.

I tell my kids, do it but be careful. They rebelled by not doing it all. My guess is in 25 years or so we'll hear them talk about how their kids (if they have them) are rebelling by partying. There's a cycle to it.

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JayRay_44@reddit

Younger GenX here. I partied so hard that I now sit around in a circle in church basements drinking bad coffee and talking about the dumb shit I did while partying hard. (IYKYK…)

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notevenapro@reddit

Keep coming back. I went to cocaine anonymous, then I discovered MDMA and joined the Army.

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PinkyLeopard2922@reddit

Bless your heart. We don't have many basements around here (Florida) but we do have the places for support. I have a friend that moved here from Rhode Island and went into one of such places attempting to buy donuts. She insists that donut shops in Rhode Island look like that. Idk, I just find that hilarious.

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JayRay_44@reddit

Well, donuts are often found in the same church basements that coffee and alcoholics are also found… so… 😂

I would expect Florida would have a vibrant recovery community. It’s always interesting to hear from people in different states as to how things are where they are.

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PinkyLeopard2922@reddit

There aren't really basements here (karst topography can be a real bitch) and this meeting place that my friend stopped at for donuts appears to be an older small cinderblock home that was converted into a meeting place. Most churches have a "community hall" or something that is annexed on church property so if they host, I expect it would be in these facilites. This particular building is along a busy road and there are varying numbers of cars in the parking lot and some plastic chairs outside for smoking I guess. I was once driving nearby and there was a guy being super aggressive, whipping around people, and I watched him tear into this parking lot. Poor guy must have been having a time of it.

That said, Florida is notorious for sketchy inpatient rehab/recovery facilities. There are certainly plenty of legit ones around as well of course.

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72vintage@reddit

Some of them still do. As long as there are young people, there will be young people getting drunk and trying to get laid. But I do think they do it less. There's a lot that are too lazy to get off their phone long enough to party, and a lot that just sit at home and smoke weed and play video games...

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IranticBehaviour@reddit

No, not remotely. I've got both millennial and gen z kids, and from what I've seen and heard, they went/go as hard as we ever did. We're not as special as some of us seem to think.

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Ceorl_Lounge@reddit

Start talking to the kids about BLORGs and the strength of the vapes they're hitting. Cross Faded ain't just for 90's rappers.

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siliconsmiley@reddit

Back in my day, we played video games at home, drank 7 Molson Ice beers, went out at 10PM, came home after the bars closed, and was at work by 10AM the next day.

I thank Allah, Buddha, and Jebus every day that there were no smart phones.

County jail is a luxury hotel compared to Baltimore Central Booking.

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chadnorman@reddit

10am? Back in the day?!? Pfffft… I was out until 2am a couple weeks ago and still made it into the office by 8am 💪🏻

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siliconsmiley@reddit

Intentional power move.

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Feisty-Cloud5880@reddit

My 3 children don't party and NEVER like I did. I loved skiing in the late 90 early 2000. Messed up motherhood kids turned out great.30, 35, 36

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rogerm3xico@reddit

I used to drop acid and go to school. I've woken up in strangers yards more times than I can remember. I've talked my way out of going to jail while high on enough coke to kill a bull elephant. I was once escorted to the Okeechobee county line and told to never come back. My daughter will literally drive to another gas station if her card doesn't work at the pump just to avoid dealing with a clerk. If she ever got pulled over, she would die of a panic attack. These kids ain't built the same.

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Opposite-Peak5020@reddit

are...are you Frank Gallagher?

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CorgiKnits@reddit

Based on the party my next door neighbor’s daughter had last night? And Halloween? And once every few months? No. And they’re all high school/just graduating.

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No-County7603@reddit

No, I don't think so. My kids are 30 and 31. They got down too.

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Lizakaya@reddit

Yeah those were the days. Glad they’re over but what a ride

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plnnyOfallOFit@reddit

our twins asked if i ever got lit & i lied. I was like, "heck no, all that stuff gives ya the shits & foul breath".

I'm not a permissive parent, BECAUSE i was wrecked by the "party" (poison) scene.

I don't care if ya DV, i was there & know how f*cked up itis

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tc_cad@reddit

I partied hard. Had a Mohawk one summer and that drew a lot of good and bad attention. Lost days and nights, fun and questionable sex, good and bad decisions, drugs, alcohol and waking up in different locations. My youth was fun, glad I made it out ok. My kids aren’t there yet, but given my nieces and nephews are all doing good, I assume my kids will be just fine too.

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sp0rkah0lic@reddit

No millennials also have a tendency to drink themselves stupid. It's Gen Z where the party vibes have diminished.

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AbsolutesDealer@reddit

You can’t trust a line these days. Never know what you’re inhaling. Used to just be laxatives.

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jdubya525@reddit

Even the thought of coke back in the day made me have to take the biggest shit ever 😆😆😆

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Conscious_Bend_7308@reddit

True. I bought plenty of street drugs from 1982-1992. I would never buy them today.

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JDangle20@reddit

lol no

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srboot@reddit

I sure hope so. Man, it was fun, but I wish I had half the money back.

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phat_rat42@reddit

It probably doesn't help that phones which have cameras are common-place. I wouldn't want to party if I had to worry about people filming.

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EFCF@reddit

Apparently people don't dance at clubs anymore either because they're too afraid of looking like a fool and someone capturing it on their phone and posting it. Really sad

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RadioNervous6189@reddit

This is another thing I heard from 20 somethings

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RadioNervous6189@reddit

This is so sad but a young coworker of mine who's newly 18 said that he wasn't going to the prom. When I asked. He said none of his friends were going. And he didn't have a date, I think it's more like they don't want to show up and not have a date and people fill them just standing around. They definitely don't dance anymore because they don't want to be filmed. It's really sad out there

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Beneficial_Pea_520@reddit

That's crazy. My tux went back to the rental shop smelling like a locker room after my dances. When the tie came off, that's when the party started. Did anyone else have the conga line?

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Ultravod@reddit

I worked in the nightclub scene for 20 years. Millennials deserved their due when it comes to partying. From the early 00s through the mid 10s, the millennial generation was partying its ASS off. I saw them in small clubs, giant raves, house parties that went until the sun came up, goddamn psytrance festivals that lasted for an entire weekend...

By the time I left the rave scene in 2019, most millennials had aged out of it and there were precious few Gen Z partiers taking their place.

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Hefty_Win_8811@reddit

No. Things happen in cycles.

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PrinceofSneks@reddit

My mid-millennial wife partied harder than anyone in my elder circles. Not sure on the youngers. My primary data point in my life is my nephew, who is a fairly popular member of the golf team, and just shamefully confessed to his mother that he stole a beer a year ago.

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Embarrassed-Cause250@reddit

I think the millennials may party just as much as our Gen X, but not nearly as hard, unfettered, and freely as we did!

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chucks138@reddit

Yeah this was more my experience, millennials held their own for sure, and for me some were crazier - my circle would go out and get drunk/do things.... They would start at someone's house to pregame..... Then keep up at the bars

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AnswerGuy301@reddit

The Millennials, at the ones just a few years behind the youngest of us, held their own. I think the key factor behind when it fell off so much is whether one's formative years were before the age of smartphones and widespread social media use or not.

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californiaye@reddit

This needs to be higher. Millennials were highly influenced by yall and partied accordingly

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Economy_Ad6039@reddit

I remember seeing the sun come up near the end of an all nighter. The little voice in the back of head saying... shit... next day or 2 is going to be fun.

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OccamsYoyo@reddit

“Little voice inside my head saying ‘Don’t look back. You can never look back.’”

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anonskier@reddit

“Those days are gone forever I should just let them go”

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Thirty_Helens_Agree@reddit

I have friends and colleagues who have kids at my Alma mater - the University of Wisconsin. From what I hear, no. No, we are not.

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ancient-military@reddit

I feel like Wisconsin needs to stay out of this discusion, this obviously doesn’t count the area where most people drink an average of 7 beers a day and have 2 DUIs before their 8th birthday.

I’m joking, but U of W doesn’t count lol. MSU and Penn State are out too.

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Jagsfan2025@reddit

UF grad here. UF used to get after it as a whole, but it has slowed down a lot. When I went to a frat party with my son, I was shocked there were no beer cans. Only seltzers like high noon & very little liquor. I was shocked & a little disappointed they weren’t “getting after it”. Then I realized it’s probably better for them long term.

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AZPeakBagger@reddit

My brother is a recently retired sheriff's deputy and spent the bulk of the late 80's going to suburban house parties and outdoor keggers in the desert. So he knows every spot around for teens to gather and have a huge party. What he told me is that his last big bust of an 80's style teen keg party was about 15+ years ago. Now a typical bust is coming across 2-3 teens splitting a 6-pack of White Claw.

He doesn't cover the side of town with our large university, but has told me his coworkers that do still break up large parties on occasion. But the number of bars that cater to college kids in my town is about half of what we had in the 80's & early 90's.

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carlivar@reddit

15 plus years ago is when smartphones reached critical mass.

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kev1nshmev1n@reddit

Exhaust from leaded gasoline was a helluva drug.

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AboveGroundPoolQueen@reddit

I know! My college age and post college age nieces get together and make tea! They party with tea!

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AboveGroundPoolQueen@reddit

I will add, that they tell me that one of the biggest reasons they don’t drink because they know how prevalent sexual assault is and want to make sure they are not targets and to make sure they are able to defend themselves

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Future_Inspector6645@reddit

My boys are 20 and 18. The older parties and drinks. The younger won - I’m literally begging him to go out!

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IMTrick@reddit

As much as we like to believe we were better at everything, I suspect that your "wholesome" kids are either just more responsible than their dad, or not being completely honest.

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user86753092@reddit

I agree that the kids are not being fully honest.

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Purgii@reddit

It just cost 10x+ more.

A mate told me his kid will spend $500 for drinks at a club. We used to spend $20 and be hammered.

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balboasale187@reddit

Same minus the sex

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ctbadger92@reddit

I tried having as much sex as I could 🤣

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gotchafaint@reddit

They’re calmer now but my two 20-somethings definitely partied hard. Drugs and alcohol are still very much a thing. Just super grateful they didn’t get sucked in to addiction.

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Komaisnotsalty@reddit

I don't think we are the last. I think it is cyclic. I do think that the generation coming up right now will likely drink less and party less, but there's always going to be that group of kids who don't belong somewhere. The misfits. The tough kids.

Those kinds of more Fringe groups are the ones that usually do the majority of the partying. These days, kids are more educated in regards to health and nutrition so your typical jocks aren't the ones holding the keggers. They are the ones who are worrying about their college fund and trying to get a scholarship on sports into college because nobody can afford college anymore.

I know that when I graduated from high school in 1990, dropping out was a thing. Not everybody I went to school with graduated because they had to leave in order to help on Dad's farm or get a job to help support the family. That culture was still alive and well back then. It's not so much like that now.

These days the focus on education is far stronger and huge. When I told my family that I was not going to get married and pregnant and have kids and do the whole typical woman thing, that I wanted to go to school and graduate from college and get a career, I was an absolute pariah.

My family didn't know what to do with me because no woman in the history of our entire family ever has not only finished high school but also went to college after. Neither of my parents went past grade 10. None of my siblings went past grade 10. None of my grandparents went past grade six or seven, and I think my maternal grandfather never went past grade 5.

And that was pretty typical around pretty much everybody I knew. My best friend's parents both had college educated careers and it was very baffling to me that they not only did, but that they were encouraging their daughter and their son to do the same. (Side note: their daughter married young and became a mother to 5, so she never went to college. Their son became a model - didn't go to college)

My parents never encouraged education. It was the last thing on the bottom of a very tall totem pole.

I think that shift in education and more knowledge about nutrition and the long-term effects of not having nutrition and proper diet is something that affects kids growing up right now and as such, along with the death toll that alcohol and drugs brings, they're not interested in that as much as we were when we were younger.

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sebastianrileyt2@reddit

My thought is the lack of privacy has ended all of that. There are so many ways to record/stream what happens now. Even if they tried to ban phones, streaming, recording etc, there is no way to truly enforce it.

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Eastern-Version5983@reddit

I keep hearing that alcohol sales are down. I don’t see kids having keg parties in the places I used to and I don’t see much evidence of public alcohol consumption (empties, bottle caps, etc). However, I do see more pre roll roaches on the ground, empty doob-tubes and MJ packaging.

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dancingholly@reddit

It really feels that way! I get eye rolls from younger generations if dare suggest grabbing a drink lol

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wwaxwork@reddit

No this shit is cyclic. The current generation is in for a shock in decade or so.

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Illustrious_Leader93@reddit

Current generation does not party as much. They have less sex and use fewer drugs as well. In fact I've seen it decline over the past 25 years.

Source: teaching high school for 25 years.

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Workamania@reddit

Fentanyl changed the game.

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LumpyheadCarini2001@reddit

100%

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Appropriate-Bid8671@reddit

My adult son already has a DUI, so no.

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Desperate_Brilliant8@reddit

I don't see any evidence of the young not partying pretty fucking hard. Evidence? I live in a city with 2 Universities- 43,000 students every year (about 13% of the population).

They DEFINITELY drink and do drugs to excess. Mondays and Tuesdays are moderately quiet, but Wednesday nights are when the weekend starts. City centre is swamped with students in skimpy costumes (often beach or golf themed), no matter what the weather, every Wednesday night.

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SpringPfeiffer@reddit

Why golf themed?

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PieceStatus9648@reddit

No boomer lite, people still have sex and do drugs just like they did back in the good old days. Y’all were the last generation to spend their childhood huffing lead fumes from car exhaust and that’s pretty much it.

[-]

GenX-ModTeam@reddit

Prejudices & Hostility - No speech of any form targeting anyone, including but not limited to:

Race, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, socioeconomic status, disability, or other personal attributes.
No objectification, or sexual harassment.
No threats, or advocating for violence, torture, or death.
No generation bashing.
No "anything else" that is deemed to fall under this category.

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thejohnmc963@reddit

Doubtful.

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MathematicianSome289@reddit

Ha! No. Signed, a millennial.

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coveredinbeeps@reddit

Yeah, y'all are definitely party monsters too.

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Bucks2174@reddit

What I did in the past is nothing I am proud of and certainly don’t wear as a badge of honor. I was a stupid kid that thought “partying” made me something. What “partying” did in reality is kill a few friends and cause teenagers to become parents. It’s was all stupid in hindsight. Thankful my kids were smarter than I was.

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Fwumpy@reddit

I did lots of substances and played bass in a band! I was partied out by my mid 20s! My last sober year was at about age 12. Cigarette addiction stated at 13, and I was off to the races! Being a headbanger was exhausting!

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thwip62@reddit

This is a good thing. I was never a huge drinker, and I didn't do drugs, but the circles I ran in were crazy. A couple of my old friends are dead because of overindulgence, and others are paying the price for their excesses in the form of long-term health issues.

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bobj33@reddit

I don't think I ever partied hard as you described it. I met a friend last month and was talking to his 27 year old son who I have known since age 6. All he could talk about was how drunk he gets.

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raymondspogo@reddit

You have to hate something about your life to want to kill yourself.

And no, I'm not anti-drug. Just anti-killijg yourself for the fun of it.

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sungodly@reddit

A harsh way of phrasing it but not wrong. I had a LOT of fun in my youth, and a lot of the substance experimentation was out of curiosity. But it took me decades to realize there was something deeper underneath all that.

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Ok_Location7161@reddit

Last hard party cuase there were no cameras back then. Today anything kids do can and probably will ruin their lifes and future careers.

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lilybug113@reddit

This has to be the biggest reason. I definitely would have behaved better had there been a possibility of it being documented on camera. LOL.

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irishgator2@reddit

AMEN!!

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groundhogcow@reddit

My kids partied fairly hard.

I am not gonna count the kids out yet.

The spirit of fucking yourself up and living hard is alive and well.

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dallassoxfan@reddit

I worry more about my kids that don’t drink and party than I do about the ones that do.

Your teens and 20s are biologically wired for risk taking behavior. Suppressing that isn’t good for your development. Especially for males.

Kids that don’t take risks become adults that take fewer risks adults that take fewer risks have fewer opportunities.

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Chicagoj1563@reddit

I partied my ass off in the 80s and 90s. HIgh school and college. Paid for it later as habits formed from it. But, for years I always thought that keg party lifestyle is just a thing people always do. I guess young people aren't doing this anymore?

When in high school there was always someone's parents who were going out of town. That meant kegger party. And sometimes there were older people with houses/apartments that threw parties every weekend.

It seems strange if young people aren't doing this anymore. But I admit, it can be a dangerous lifestyle. Especially for people so young. It can also be loads of fun and memories.

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Expensive_End8369@reddit

Plenty of people in their 20s and 30s “partying” (therapist here).

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Ivotedforher@reddit

Physical or mental or both for those hard partying kids?

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dirtytxhippie@reddit

As a millennial this is cute

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mrkstr@reddit

You're a millennial with that user name?

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GhostFour@reddit

They'll never know what it's like to wake up and think "maybe I can't overdose". I think there will be a generation in the near future that goes hard again just to go against the new norm.

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shuanm@reddit

I had similar experiences as a youth. You would end up in prison for the rest of your life now.

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memeticmagician@reddit

Me and millennial friends grew up doing all of the drugs. I mean we were combining 3 or 4 drugs at a time, and experimenting with synthetic analogs on the grey market before they were made illegal. Drugs like 4fa, 2cb, etc. were some of my favorites. We were also doing some classic combinations like combining lsd and opiates for the neon non, speed and molly, etc.

Now that I'm 41 I have narrowed down my intoxication to doing molly 3 times a year and nothing more.

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flsingleguy@reddit

I believe there is something missing from the discussion. As human beings, we tend to act like a pendulum over time. Just like the saying what is old is new.

In the short term, generations may swing to less of a party lifestyle or participate in that type of lifestyle. However, the pendulum always swings back in the other direction.

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Dreammagic2025@reddit

I remember thinking about couple decades ago that rebellion (tats/wild hair/etc) was mainstream all the sudden and the only way to rebel against that would be to conform and then? Hello, trad wives.

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PunchDrunken@reddit

Millennial. Partied my fucking ass off.

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elspotto@reddit

As someone who spent well over 20 years in the restaurant industry, your perception filters are lying to you. We were not.

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EmbarrassedAge7612@reddit

There were a lot of times where I remember rolling into work straight from the party and sobering up throughout my day. A quick nap and I was ready to go again. I look back and am amazed that some of us survived the dumb things that went on back then.

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Economy_Ad6039@reddit

Same. Sometimes I party pretty hard tge night before, sometimes doing all nighters, and then even barely being able to open my eyes. Sleeping at the car at work on my break(s) and then struggling to keep my eyes open (the light!) when i was working sucked! Lol

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EmbarrassedAge7612@reddit

We alway had that one guy that struggled. Generally getting sick in the bathroom while we were picking up his slack. Our boss never gave us a hard time about it if we got our work done.

Kids today need a day or two to recover from something like that. Granted, at 50 a hangover definitely hits differently.

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SignificanceFast9207@reddit

Go out at 11pm. Drink 3 Kettle One vodkas and dance your ass off. Back home by 5am. Head to work by 9am. Crush the day.

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RadioNervous6189@reddit

This was the way

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transhumanist2000@reddit

No...

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Embarrassed_Quail910@reddit

Well its just anecdotal but I have a niece and nephew who both went to rehab in their early twenties, spent a few nights in jail and had some crazy stories. Now they are the very oldest Gen z but they did some crazy stuff. However they do come by it naturally. We all come from a long line of addicts and alcoholics lol. Im 18 years clean and sober myself.

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Almost_thereFL51@reddit

Good job on 18 years! I went to a few rehabs too and have 1 yr and 2 months clean and sober now. Spent my life partying…didn’t stop until I was 53!! Thought I’d be dead was a live fast die young person but here I am…my body feels like its effin 75 by 8pm at night…it’s nuts I hate that. Osteoarthritis took over my neck back and hands! But boy life was a fun ride while it lasted….now I’m just trying to survive and staying clean and sober one day at a time.

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thingmom@reddit

As a HS teacher your kids might be lying to you? In my experience, the younger people today lie right to your face about anything and everything like it’s their job and they’re getting paid to do it. Not that I didn’t lie when I was their age but it’s a whole different level than what we would’ve done.

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Breklin76@reddit

I’m happy for the younger gen’s livers. I did more than my fair share of partying for them. 😂

Now, 50, I quit drinking about 18 months ago. Just lost the taste for it overall.

My oldest doesn’t drink or smoke weed. Kinda grateful for that.

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Cptnmisfortune@reddit

I'm a younger Gen X but certainly knew how to party hard. Had a few nights where I raved all night in Toronto on X and then took the Go train straight to work. Had plenty of debauchery to be honest. I dtill party pretty hard. Still come home from partying an hour before I have to start work, my friends call me a machine.

My husband is a millennial and doesn't party at all. We used to party a bit In his younger years but he hasn't partied in years.

My 28 year old daughter doesn't drink at all but my 22 year old twins definitely party hard, but they do it at home with friendsmost times and not out partying.

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DCDude67@reddit

It is so weird to me that I was able to raise two kids that are so strait-laced and responsible. I remember asking a few different times to my buddies in college what happened the night before. That and my late 20's were a blur to me, but so much fun!

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OccamsYoyo@reddit

No. We’re not.

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whistlepig4life@reddit

I think it depends on the kid. Same as it did with our generation. It’s not a generation fits one size thing.

My eldest partied regularly with her friends in their teens and early twenties. My middle is an introvert. My youngest is an extrovert but partying for him and his friends is either a night of DnD or Xbox or perhaps if they are frisky sitting around a backyard fire off the pond.

They have all had kids in their age group who partied hard regularly.

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talepa77@reddit

I 48 was pretty tame compared to some and was a young mom so my partying was inconsistent but still got it done.

My 35 sis is a millennial and they partied hard. She’s single and childless now and still goes hard relatively often.

My kids are Gen Z. Daughter 26 drinks and sometimes gets drunk but is very moderate. Son 21 doesn’t drink at all and has no interest (tried a few times and hates it). Daughter microdoses psilocybin but no other drugs (tried a few through teens and early 20s). Son has never done drugs. He’s just raw dogging life and I respect it so hard.

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Crawberg420@reddit

“Raw dogging life” is one of the funniest and most accurate descriptions of life in this society while sober. Hat’s off to your boy.

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Late_Hope_567@reddit

Doubt it, we just didn’t die.

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crave1214@reddit

I'm a millennial. I can confirm that we went hard as fuck. I settled down at 30.

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smkultraa@reddit

My kid sure gave his dad and myself a run for our money. He was wild. And with the rise of cell phones, we got to see some of the photographic evidence. He’s 26 and a little less wild now.

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Beginning_Key2167@reddit

My partners kids are 19 and 22. They think it is pretty ridiculous to drink to the point of a hangover. Also to drink on a regular basis like we did.

The 19 year old hardly drinks at all. Maybe a few times a year she has a beer or some wine. 22 year old a little more but not much.

We aren't religious, there parents never forbid them from anything. They could have had a beer or a drink at home no one would have cared.

For me turning 21 was a highlight. They don't care about it. My partner had to practically beg her son to have a drink with her on his 21st birthday.

Same with me, 1987 to the early 90's was a blur of alcohol and a bunch of girlfriends. Many weekend days spent really hungover. Wasted time really.

Never did hard drugs. Weed on occasion. Harder to get where I lived back then.

They have dinner parties. Like 40 year old married couples. It is funny to come home to a bunch of young people on a Friday night, cooking a tasty and rather elaborate dinner. No alcohol to be found.

I for one think it is great. I look back now and think what a crazy waste of time.

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trUth_b0mbs@reddit

lol my kids enjoy parties but they're always saying how tired they are the next day....and pretty much useless the whole day. I remembered going straight to work after clubbing all night and still smelling like alcohol 😆

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Ouakha@reddit

Would go to work after a few hrs crashed out, still buzzing ('molly' as its known in the US. We just called it E or pills).

Those things broke my use of alcohol to get out of my head and I'm grateful for that! So much more social and I liked dancing.

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Good_Advice_T@reddit

A couple of stamps still visible, more than once a transfer to my cheek and I’m pretty sure I invented the “messy bun”

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trUth_b0mbs@reddit

Remember by the time 2pm rolled around you were a zombie and could barely keep your eyes open at your desk? Good times 😂

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Good_Advice_T@reddit

I was SO LUCKY I had a desk job! I absolutely crawled under there and napped for my lunch hour. More than once 🤣. I could eat/snack all day so I wasn’t hungry. Well, that and YES I destroyed a McDonald’s #2 for breakfast (used to be 2 cheeseburgers, fries, drink) McDonald’s grease had hangover healing properties. Helped that my only office mate was my bestie since we were 12 and she was also a mess and possibly still drunk. The 2nd cheeseburger was hers.

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ILoveFootRubs@reddit

Yep! Me and my hubby were young parents so we missed the partying in our 20s, but dove in as soon as the kids were adults. And we still know to party in our 40s. For our kids, playing call of duty all night, or going to the barbie movie dressed in pink, is a party. Our wildest one will get a bit drunk at family get together and hes adorable. Thats as far as it goes.

Like you said, its kinda a relief we dont have to worry about them being crazy, but its just strange how different their tastes our than ours!

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imrickjamesbioch@reddit

Side note, I was a latchkey kids since 4-5yo and went unsupervised the majority of my life. Im not proud of some of my decision and I think later gen with their helicopter parents, kids tend to make less mistakes or stupid decision vs ME. 🤣

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TATtllesnake@reddit

I appreciate your side note. This basically describes my childhood perfectly but I often feel alone on this perspective. Because I was self taught in most everything, I do things just a hair differently than everyone else’s seems to agree is “normal”.

I will say that in some ways I am more prepared for life in general because of the lessons I had to teach myself, I just think the road to get here would have been much easier so I spend my life wondering if I’m as happy as I could be. I wish I could just be happy with where I ended up and not wonder if the magic rule book everyone else seems to have telling them how to life is really all that wonderful after all.

Truly, I can’t even imagine a better life. I’m limited by my satiated ambition and plagued by my unsatisfied curiosity.

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zhabesha@reddit

100% I spent my 21 bday in county jail. It was a Friday so spent the whole weekend until the judge reviewed my case on monday and threw me out. Food was nasty. Only drank the oj. First thing i saw was a strip bar. Walked jn there and sat by the buffet table and chowed for an hour. It was barely better than prison food. Drank my ass off some lap dances and off i went back go college dorm. I barely drank till I got to college and then I learned to machine through pitchers of beer. Rum and vodka were a staple by the end. Weed was just a regular habit like cigs. The fun was coke and x. Love that shif. Today it’s all garbage

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Spacecowboy78@reddit

Your story sounds very very very very familiar....

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Gandalftron@reddit

Kids these days consume more cannabis and less alcohol. Probably for the better.

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db_peligro@reddit

here in so cal its definitely not for the better. there are subreddits here where you can read messages from teens trying to quit THC vapes whose brains are fried from consuming megadoses of this shit.

THC is ultra cheap and available everywhere.

We also have a huge nitrous oxide problem that nobody is talking about. Young men are frying their brains NOS which is effectively legal here and available everywhere..

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PinkyLeopard2922@reddit

I have a friend that has smoked every day since we were in high school. She has the beginnings of COPD and I think her brain is kind of fried. It is difficult to have a conversation with her. She's also managed to rack up 2 DUIs in the last 10 years...yay wine country! Fortunately she has a very loving and supportive husband but I worry about her and try to check in on her frequently since I now live on the opposite coast.

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dabirds1994@reddit

The hard-partying days are over. Kids are very risk-adverse nowadays. My daughter is 7th grade and I don’t think she has even tried any alcohol. At that age, I had already been pass-out drunk and had tried weed, lol.

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GenXrules69@reddit

I resemble your post.

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PinkyLeopard2922@reddit

Same, but I am a woman and managed to avoid any jail.

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mrbaggy@reddit

It was a lot of fun back then. Now so many of my friends are dead. Not from the partying, but probably from the trauma the partying numbed. I feel extremely lucky to have survived and come out the other side healthy, successful and loved.

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SnowflakeSWorker@reddit

I’ll say that my 31 year old and his friends partied very hard. Many ended up in rehab, and several had died. Some are in prison for their role in the deaths that did happen. My 20 and 21 don’t party hardly at all, and I think it’s due to seeing what their brother has done to himself.

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ladymikey@reddit

Millennials partied hard as well

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imrickjamesbioch@reddit

A lot more distractions these days vs in the 80’s-90’s where you actually had to interact with hoomans in person.

Also the drug of choice was alcohol and now kids are smoking weed or doing edibles so 🤷🏻‍♂️

So in the sense are we the last generation who went ballz to the wallz where some random Tuesday could have been the greatest night of your life. Probably

Course I’ve hear millennials drank less in their 20’s but now drink more in their 30’s and 40’s than Xers so maybe the later generations are just late bloomers.

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Randomly_Reasonable@reddit

Hell yeah we are, The Beastie Boys fought for that shit!

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BigFootCrossingGaurd@reddit

Similar here, I was 18 in 1987. Partied extremely hard through most of the 90s. Lots of sex and alcohol, and occasionally some weed. No hard drugs for me. Ended up in a holding cell twice 🤷‍♂️. I too am grateful and thankful that nobody was recording us back then. It was pure unadulterated insanity, and it was awesome. I stopped smoking in 2004, stopped drinking in 2020, in bed these days by 10 PM. Glad I survived, with epic stories to tell.

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tommymat@reddit

Further proof we are the best generation. Everything has changed for the worse. More prescription drugs, more judgment on social media, analytics and artificial standards that some how everyone is buying.

We don’t need pictures of everything every five minutes. I feel like people are trying to manufacture moments opposed to experiencing things as they happen. You used to be able to be offline, disappear, get lost and fail until you figured it out. Now not so much now.

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zorkempire@reddit

Every generation thinks they’re the best.

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tommymat@reddit

Debatable - I feel like phones/tablets/connectivity/social media have created a real divide in the younger generations. Self confidence, ability to learn through failure, accepting flaws, etc. Everything has so much more scrutiny because it is documented in HD, for good or bad. There is a lot debate around data center construction nowadays but all that icloud data needs to go somewhere...

It's great that information is so readily available, but it is also taking away attention spans, the work that goes into learning something, etc. I think screen time, like financial literacy, should be something taught in school for kids today.

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moquate@reddit

That’s fair, but hard to see phones and social media as a paradigm shift for the worst.

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keirmeister@reddit

I partied so hard, Mr. Slave lost the challenge.

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Worth-Magazine348@reddit

I would say more that we are the last reckless generation. That showed up in a lot of different ways, hard partying being just one of them. But history is cyclical, so the next generations may give us a run for our money.

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Fantastic-Ad-2856@reddit

That's what I think...our prim and proper kids will raise ferals

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heathers1@reddit

They also grew up knowing that their every move could go viral online

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JETEXAS@reddit

These days the hardness of the partying really depends on the environment. In rural Iowa they're doing bonfire parties in the pasture that turn into week-long meth binges. Here in the suburbs my kids are doing pizza and movie night and binging video games afterward.

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Bzman1962@reddit

Perhaps. This is not a problem. They also seem happier.

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worstpartyever@reddit

I read somewhere that young adults who go to clubs don’t dance these days.

The reason?

With phone cameras in every pocket, they are is afraid they’ll be videotaped and posted for being awkward or a bad dancer.

Again, we were the last generation to grow up without mobile phones, so our terrible hangovers and stupid pranks went unrecorded.

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BuccoFever412@reddit

This makes sense. My kids are the same way, afraid someone will post something unflattering of them online. So glad I grew up when I did.

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StrangeAssonance@reddit

Never was into partying but I liked dancing. Still like dancing but my knees aren’t forgiving like they used to be.

I don’t like smoking and bars and clubs being full of smoke has always been a nope for me.

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SixAndNine75@reddit

I partied so hard that it's hard to describe. The rave scene The Indy scene Hip hop and Triphop

Skating everywhere BMX and ten speed racer flying around (before the above)..

Nothing much like what I did seems very replicated - more focused pursuits but I believe people, young people,still have fun. It seems easier or more clean. We, most of the people I hung with were insanely feral outliers that did some of the craziest shit you could do. In a time with almost zero oversight, I learnt so much from all of it.

Many 'normal' people have no fucking idea what I am talking about, but the best of Gen x did and created some crazy shit

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data_meditation@reddit

I was too busy working and going to school, but I did have my fun. At times, I would go to work with a massive hangover, vowing to never drink again. A few days later, my roommates would say, "...wanna beer?" Me, "...ok." I don't miss the circumstances I was in at the time, but I do miss those times...

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MargieBigFoot@reddit

I often think in horror of what repercussions my party days would have wrought if everyone had a video camera in their back pocket, with the power to share with the world at the click of a button. Maybe one of the few good things all this technology has brought is some accountability for one’s actions (although many viral videos say otherwise).

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Ms_not_Mrs0771@reddit

This! Even my Boomer mom said she was so happy there wasn’t social media when she was young and dumb.

Lawd knows I provided ample opportunity for risqué videoing & pics!!! Yikes!!

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Lower_Classroom835@reddit

My husband and I had kids early so we are making up for the party time now. 50 are the best!

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CompleteService8593@reddit

18-28? More like 18-58! No quitters here!

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7eregrine@reddit

🍻

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JJQuantum@reddit (OP)

We still go out, listen to live music and have a beer or 2 but nothing like it was.

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Rand_74@reddit

Same. I’m 52. I still partake in drinks a few nights a week ( definitely nothing like my 20’s) go to bars, and smoke some weed. My o friends of my age group do the same.

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GenXist@reddit

Alternate hypothesis...

A lot of us were raised by Boomer parents who were doing their best to extract an additional decade of adolescence out of life. Our observation of their behavior may have given us a warped sense of how long the "party years" are supposed to last.

As a compounding factor, our level of unsupervised, unstructured, discretionary time with largely unmonitored access to their substances of choice (in my case, beer, liquor, weed, and pills that seemed to come in two flavors - uppers and downers) resulted in an early initialization - probably way too young - of our party years.

I'm not sure we partied harder, I think we just had a longer duration of exposure to opportunity and a low barrier for entry (most everyone I knew had been getting lit up for five-ish years by the time we were legally accountable adults). On the backend, there reaches a generally universal point where most everyone ages out. The consequences catch up. Hangovers hurt more than they did in college, and most of us had had to get up and go to work in the morning since we were in our mid-teens (having kids of our own was the final speed bump, we almost universally wanted something better for our kids than our parents provided us).

Along the way, the world changed fast. Wine coolers came and went; common sense DUI laws were passed; and during a single Presidential Administration (Bush 41 - not being political here, just marking time, use Dokken's Under Lock and Key through Alice in Chains Dirt as bookends if you prefer) we saw all the cool kids smoking at the beginning and none of the cool kids smoking when it was over.

It was fun, I guess, at the time. I wouldn't go back for all the Jameson in the warehouse. As for my kids... I agree 100% with what Matt and Trey from Southpark taught them. There's a time and place for everything, it's called college.

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Holden_place@reddit

My older son definitely has partied hard. My younger son saw how that has impacted his school and sports and has held off (so far). He went to a party last night and came home miffed that he couldn’t cut loose.

Partying hard still exists but the unbalanced economy makes that a hell of lot tougher for a lot of folks

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schultz100@reddit

I think it depends on the location and the kids. It is more common to find kids and schools where partying is less than when we were kids but I just went to UWisc graduation and all the bars had lines out the doors. Many of my friends who have kids going to larger state schools say the same.

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labbeduddel@reddit

I work with Milllenials and Gen-Z (I'm 1980). The millenials do like going for drinks, and they'll get hammered, but not feral-like like the GenX. The Z's, at least in my office (and in London), they just like to go to posh bars, show that they're drinking a glass of wine (that's out of their budget), take pics in the loo, and then bounce at 10pm. Some other Gen-Z won't go out, their going out is going for late night gym sessions, or early morning coffee raves. We are DINKS, so I don't have to get up early for anyone, and I will still go feral, but suffer the painful consequences of age.

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mottledmussel@reddit

I've noticed the same thing with the posh bars and alcohol preference. Seems like younger clientele have significantly higher standards for booze and drinking venues.

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labbeduddel@reddit

most of them have no clue, nor the money for it. They go to old rich dudes bars and spend £35 on a glass of wine (probably the cheapest, and the shittiest). It's this whole performative shit that they love. The bars obviously love it. young girls go, older dudes with money buy them drinks, chaching

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TheVioletEmpire@reddit

This is not the case for our children and their cohorts. They are partying.

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External-Dude779@reddit

It's crazy how our parents would leave us alone for like a week during the school year and expect us to act like adults. Not once did we act like adults. Partied every time

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Seyforth@reddit

We are. We tore the roof off that sucker

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sgtedrock@reddit

This. The wild thing about that phrase/lyric… when we were in high school that song referred to this still-distant future time when we would be young adults with all the freedom and mojo to go fucking crazy. And now it’s this wistful look back at when we were young adults with all the freedom and mojo to go fucking crazy. 😭

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CornTreeRoad@reddit

‘cause it was 1999.

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ImpossiblePut6387@reddit

I lived in a tiny market town, and the nearest clubs and venues were a city over. I either had to have a car, or get a bus there which wasn't an option due to no night busses. As such, I didn't go anywhere and my parents were always asking why I didn't go out.

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northerntouch@reddit

Yup - seeing the same thing. There is no party spark in the youth. No one want to be cringe, it’s actually sad

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MartinMcFly55@reddit

Any life altering moment will probably be caught on camera —I can't imagine what would have happened to my buddy in high school, who woke up from a dead pass out on the couch to dropping trou in the living room and pissing on the console tv, in front of 6 or 7 people— if it would have been posted to social media.

It didn't alter his life, we, his friends shamed him relentlessly, and that was enough.

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thelaineybelle@reddit

Agreed. Went to an outdoor concert in 2024. The GenX - Millenial folks were rocking out, dancing, drinking, singing loudly, generally having an age appropriate blast. The Gen Z young adults were on their phones and not partying. Le sigh...

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Silver_Bullfrog_566@reddit

I tell my wife I can’t believe I am still alive after all the crazy crap I did in my youth, now I am boring and don’t even drink.

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OTOKOKUMA@reddit

I just turned 57yo, and I have no business being alive. I'm also in the boring (yet peaceful) club. I've told my wife about 25% of my youthful shenanigans (we only met 10 years ago), and she doesn't know how I survived either.

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Ok-Limit-9726@reddit

Always telling my kids driving around , oh i almost died here, nearly got cooked there, once almost drowned here, snake almost got me there, i saw a shark up there once

Straya 🇦🇺

They always look at me like, how are you alive?

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DogsAreOurFriends@reddit

Mike Jagger would like a word.

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fallcreekprepper@reddit

same

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pang-zorgon@reddit

This is a global trend and is significantly impacting the alcohol producers. Source - small, family owned distiller in Australa.

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SageObserver@reddit

Gen X has the unfortunate task of showing younger generations how to be cool and loosen up.

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melisssaaaah@reddit

I don't think so. Mr daughter graduated college last year and her sorority mixers were pretty wild, and I wonder what the "not school-approved" fraternities and sororities got up to because hers didn't fraternize with them.

My daughter and her friends also love EDM raves and go to multi day festivals every summer and they know how to party. Makes me teary-eyed 😂 (they're also safe and watch each other's backs whenever they're out and keep tabs on each other with Life360)

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Ok-Limit-9726@reddit

Highest alcohol intake in history is Mellinials, Followed by boomers, then GenX

GenZ drinks 87% less then Mellinials (all us stats)

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HippCelt@reddit

Have you seen the price of a pint in London these days?....None of my friends Children Drink....Shit even we don't go. Weekly catch ups at the local became Tea and biscuits in our kitchens.

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Ok-Limit-9726@reddit

I have 2 GenZ adults,

They are shocked at the amount of piss i sink, my weekend drinking is there yearly!

But yes, it’s expensive as fuck now, lot of these kids using “alternatives”

I called that an experimental weekend!

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Ruffcyx61@reddit

All I can say is Thank God social media and cameras everywhere where not a thing.

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hippiechick725@reddit

Yeah I’d be in some serious trouble 😬😂

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ChatamKay@reddit

My son is 18 and he has never drank in his life. I’m like you can go to parties. Just no driving. He says he doesn’t want to.

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GrimbosliceOG@reddit

No. Go to a college town. They still party hard and do stupid shit. At least here in WI.

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m_t13@reddit

Well… when your state has the most drinking establishments per capita, and the highest rates of binge drinking among adults in the US?

Yeah, kids will follow that trend.

Wisconsin is an outlier, it’s where alcoholics go to feel better about the amount they drink.

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SouthOrlandoFather@reddit

Haha. Wisconsin is always going to be number 1 for drinking. The kids at University of Florida I don’t think come close to partying excessively

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badpuffthaikitty@reddit

My best friend has 2 sons. 1 son has the odd drink, his other son drinks regularly. He also works at a pot dispensary.

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Fr4nzJosef@reddit

I'm either late X or Xennial depending where you draw the line. I think Millenials take that title, maybe partied a little less hard than we did but not by much. I was kind of the oddball, didn't party hard very often but when I did I really threw down hard. Quit doing that in my mid 20s as I no longer wanted to deal with working through a hang over. I don't keep up with that sort of thing these days but I do live in a college town and the downtown bar scene on weekends gets very wild so at least some of the kids still throw down.

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blackpony04@reddit

My 21 year old stepson and his friends absolutely party like it's 1999. We live on the Canadian border where the drinking age is 19, so he's already had years of legal partying before 21, but also had a fake ID that worked every time in local US bars. When he and his buds tell their stories of debauchery, I'm taken back to my own fun in the early 90s.

One major factor for these kids today is the massive benefit of UBER. They can get a ride to and from anywhere at any time of day or night (they would get dropped at the border and walk over the bridge to Canada). I am really proud of these kids understanding the risks with driving drunk and I truly believe them when they say they've never driven drunk (my house is often the flop house with passed out gomers occupying our couches). I never have either, but I learned early from my two idiot older brothers who have a dozen DUIs between them, one losing his license for a decade.

So yeah, the kids are still partying.

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Muffassa@reddit

My ex partied pretty hard growing up. Always going keggers, lots of weed and other stuff. We were raising her kids and the oldest kept getting into trouble, but was never punished.

Her rational was, "I was doing much worse when I was his age, so the things he's doing aren't that bad." Which infuriated me. He broke the rules, was selling weed out of my house, but there are no consequences because you were doing worse at his age, that is just fucking stupid.

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Angelas-Merkin@reddit

I gotta speak up for us millennials. We’re the heaviest drinking generation in modern history. We also did all the drugs.

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LetsGoYankeez@reddit

Millennials — especially elder millennials (xennials) were definitely the last generation that really threw down

Everything Got tamer after smart phones were everywhere and documented everything

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Angelas-Merkin@reddit

Yeah, at 41 I regularly look back and think, “how am I still here?”

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Historical_Project86@reddit

You can never be 100% sure what your kids are up to. Some parents can, some can't, and it's got nothing to do with parenting "skillz". However, I do know that my daughter's done plenty that I would never do. I think losing control is seen through different eyes these days.

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ONROSREPUS@reddit

I mean there is fact that drinking in young people has gone down. I don't think we were the last hard partiers there are just less of them.

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egret_society@reddit

Nah some of my younger Gen Z relatives party like crazy. Keeping the traditions alive, at least until they kill you

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RiffRandellsBF@reddit

"To the high school kids of GenX parents: At your age, one or both of your parents were face down drunk in a field. That's why your ass is tracked on Life360."

Read that the other day and laughed because it's true. 😂

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CodenameZoya@reddit

It was really only the cool boomers and Gen X… Generations before and after it didn’t really party unless you go way back everything cyclical

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RescueRacing@reddit

I heard plenty of stories from my mom and dad about how they partied, etc. before I was born…dad was Greatest Gen, mom was Silent Gen, both on the cusp. To this day I use his line “One more for the ditch” often, but humorously…no drunk driving allowed in the era of Uber and being married to a woman smarter than me who doesn’t overdo it.

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positivepinetree@reddit

I partied harder than anyone I know. Now have 19 years sober through AA.

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Illustrious-Fun-549@reddit

I believe we were. Although the heroin epidemic of the millennials had more deaths than us. So I'd say we were the last to party hard and survive...

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Good_Advice_T@reddit

We lived to talk about it if we choose to be some sort of cautionary tale. I don’t have children that I gave birth to that I’m aware of so I definitely live by the fight club rules.

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Csonkus@reddit

Millennials absolutely got down just as hard, there is a drop off after them though.

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benfunks@reddit

only the oldest among them. Younger millennials don’t party.

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Kalorama_Master@reddit

We were stupid and contagious

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PuffDiesel1138@reddit

However we did know how to entertain us

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JJQuantum@reddit (OP)

Facts

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Dyna2004@reddit

It certainly felt that way.

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rem1473@reddit

everything is recorded and documented, and can be brought up later on socials. Thats going to impact behavior!

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LetsGoYankeez@reddit

This is the right answer

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DogsAreOurFriends@reddit

Andrew WK has entered the chat.

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Good_Advice_T@reddit

Omg. 😆 should I be embarrassed I even understand this?

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DogsAreOurFriends@reddit

He is the last great Gen X entertainer.

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Stereo_Jungle_Child@reddit

Are there hundreds of hours of video and thousands of photographs and other evidence of you doing all this crazy stuff permanently circulating on a global computer network that everyone has access to so it follows you around the rest of your life?

No?

Well, there would be if you were young and did all that stuff now.

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Xavelle@reddit

I married at 19, and even in high school I was a goody two shoes. I went to parties but never drank or did drugs. Drugs terrified me.

And then two of my sons went deep into drug use. Almost lost my youngest son to an overdose while he was out trail riding. Thankfully a nurse was there and did cpr till the ambulance arrived.

I have zero desire for any generation to identify as party hard. We can party safe without the drug.

My sons survived their party years and are now married and both bought their first house this past year.

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Entire-Order3464@reddit

The Gen Z folk certainly drink way less than their predecessors that's pretty well documented. I'm sure some kids still party of course. I'm not sure if casual drug use has gone down. I know like hard drug use (opioids) is up in recent years.

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labbeduddel@reddit

gen Z do a lot more drugs for sure. Tusi and Mephedrone

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eyeballburger@reddit

Kids can’t afford it, can’t afford the healthcare, cops are rampant and life ruining.

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CaffeinatedGeriatric@reddit

If you haven't slept in a ditch, have you even lived?

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GupChezzna@reddit

Gen-X guy here. We were feral. Raised each other. Never went to parents with problems or concerns- we HID those things from them. Experienced the thrill of “not getting caught”, whether it was getting alcohol for your friends at 17, partying until you puked every weekend, hoarding dirty magazines at age 12-13, enjoying risky and dangerous play outside on bikes, in trees, on roofs. We worked hella hard, earned cash because that was bred into us by our pre-WW2 parents. We partied hard, always knew where the party was, got stone drunk, then somehow walked (not drove) home. We are so badass.

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fridayimatwork@reddit

I think that high school drug use peaked during early genx/jones

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bookon@reddit

There is a very cool picture of me at a Dead show in Saratoga NY. I have no memory of going to this show, which would have been a5 hour drive from my house at that time.

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BazingaQQ@reddit

Was just reading that Gen Z are apparently drinking considerably less than Millennials/Gen X - partially due to a desire for sobriety and partially because of economics. Also, they have to deal with smartphones and live streaming!

I think that last one is a key factor: we partied and risked getting into embarrassing or compromising situations because we could - no one was going to be recording it or live-streaming it or even of it winding up on a random news story whereby we could be googled years later and have our employment lives at risk.

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punkwalrus@reddit

I remember when VHS recorders were getting small, they had those mini-tapes before everything went digital. So the handheld camcorder was the size of a child's football. Someone brought one to a party, and you would tell the mood was a lot calmer knowing that they were being recorded.

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SouthOrlandoFather@reddit

I think we were the last high schoolers to drink as much as we did. I was drinking 1 or 2 beers at lunch. I was driving at times I shouldn’t have been driving. We didn’t have the internet for entertainment so we were lucky.

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No-Neighborhood8403@reddit

Yeah times are different. Using weed has become favored over drinking. And it’s a completely different vibe; weed is a hang out drug more so than a party drug. I think gatherings are a lot more relaxed now. Not common anymore to have wild drinking parties with keg stands and wild drunk antics and people staying overnight passed out in the living room floor

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KrofftSurvivor@reddit

Nah.

Millennials definitely partied hard, and I know several younger Millennials who haven't outgrown that, lol.

Gen Z seems to do a lot less of it, but the smaller percentage of those who do seem to make the news often enough to tell us that it's not going away anytime soon

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PsychologicalSwing69@reddit

As an owner of bars and restaurants it’s getting scary how little younger people drink. I’m thinking it’s a cycle. Our generation drinks a lot so our kids reject it. Their kids will think their parents are lame and alcohol will be the new rage.

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DueConversation5269@reddit

we are B.C. (before camera)

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oopswhat1974@reddit

I worked at a popular "casual" bar/restaurant chain when I was in my early - mid 20s. A lot of my coworkers worked their way through school. I like to say I partied my way through work. Work til 11-12, head out on the town till close, then the after parties / "cable and chill" as we'd probably have called it then.

I remember one time I went to the store to pick up some wine coolers (!) to bring to a friend's party. I got handed a flyer in the parking lot - FOR my friend's party.

And for most of that, we didn't have cellphones. It was all word of mouth.

We fought. For our right. To P A R T A A A A A A Y

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CallingDrDingle@reddit

My son and step daughter three a huge party at our house while we were out of town. Over 500 people there at one point. They apparently made over 2k charging people to come in.

Nothing was broken or anything. I would have never had any clue it happened if he hadn't told me and shown me the pics. The house was spotless......I couldn't even be mad. Impressive work.

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