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How To Ruin Your Entire Life: 46 Real And Sobering Stories Shared By People Online
Life can be unpredictable. The risk of injury or loss of life is always present. And yet, despite this fact, you try to go on as if nothing bad can happen to you. When it does, the trajectory of your life can change in the blink of an eye.
Digital content creator Mike Kang (@showerthoughtswmike) asked his Instagram followers to share stories of how people’s lives were ruined “in just a matter of minutes.” Keep scrolling for their horrifying, real tales.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
My aunt drove while nearly blackout drunk, her infant in the car. Ended up flipping the car multiple times. Lost custody, might be paralyzed for life, and has to serve a prison sentence the moment she gets out of the hospital
angelmomoffour62 2 months ago
Her life was forever changed that day in so many ways. I'm afraid the worst is still going to be there for her.
RELATED:
#2
I was ran over while crossing the street by a physician assistant who was texting and driving while speeding and ran a red light. I used to run every day. Now it hurts to stand for longer than 5 minutes because of the irreparable damage she did to my legs that 7 years of physical therapy could not heal
#3
Had someone ruin my life in minutes. My dad (apoc and a great driver) was hit by a 16 y/o who was driving distracted (head-on) and he got no charges. He later made a GoFundMe because he "couldn't work with his dad anymore" (he broke his shoulder) and he got hundreds of dollars and I got nothing for it but a dead dad
Pittsburgh rare 2 months ago
GoFundMe should be controlled more tightly. Now every moron and their mother, regardless of what they've done, can set up one. Theoretically it doesn't allow requests for legal fees if a crime has been committed, but that's also easily bypassed
A large number of the stories of sudden accidents shared by the Instagram community revolve around driving.
The statistics surrounding road accidents are shocking. As per the CDC, 1.19 million people lose their lives on roadways around the world every single year.
Road traffic crashes are the leading cause of loss of life for young people aged 5 to 29 years old.
#4
Distracted driving. Arguing with his girlfriend over text and slammed into the back of my families car at 80mph. He k****d my 7 year old sister.
#5
Know someone who was a police officer, got called out to a road vehicle collision, boy racer had been speeding to impress his girlfriend who was in the car. Ended up crashing at over 90 mph, he survived but his girl was dead. Even after being told that he kept talking about his car. Hope he's still rotting in jail
#6
My brother was drunk and had a fight with his partner. He was locked out. They lived in an apartment. He tried to crawl through a window. Fell five stores and died.
Some of the main ways to stay safe on roads, according to the CDC, are the following:
- Always wear a seat belt, no matter how short the trip or your position in the vehicle
- Properly buckle children in appropriate seats, using appropriate seat belts
- Take care to always wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, motorbike, bicycle, e-bike, or e-scooter
- Never drive while under the influence of alcohol or controlled substances
- Avoid speeding, stick to speed limits
- Never use your cell phone while driving
- Be very careful when crossing streets or intersections
#7
Begged a bar customer not to ride his motorcycle because he was drunk, he didn't make it five minutes down the road, I had to drive past the crash scene.
angelmomoffour62 2 months ago
This hits home for me. My husband and 2 kids were killed by a drunk driver. They use to have this law called dram shop law. If a place served someone who was drunk they would of been liable if that person got in a crash. Some states still have this law but not many. A drunk driving accident is not a accident it is a crash. Drunk driving is 100 % preventable.
#8
A drunk driver ruined a woman's life and dream. She had just gotten married to the man she loves and birthed a beautiful boy. They both went to live in Paris and got a car (which was rare in the 80s) and big beautiful house. Only 6 months later, her husband got hit by a drunk driver and died, leaving his wife alone with a baby. She wasn't able to pay the bills so she went back to her hometown, her family refused to take her back in because of her baby. She worked so hard just to get a decent job, and ever since then, she had to work everyday from 7am to 7pm to get enough money for her and for her son, she had to be a mother and a father at the same time, nonstop, for the next 20 years. And the son lived alone, always on his own, had to walk 2km to go to school and 2km to go back home. A man chose to drink, and turned a woman's happy life into a labor hell, and snatched from a child the chance of having a father. That woman is my grandma and her son is my father.
Peeka_Mimi 2 months ago
It's so effed that her parents wouldn't help. I cannot fathom. I love my kids and grandkids and my home is always open to them.
#9
My wonderful beautiful friend . Her mother was over bearing and a bully she pushed her into getting married twice and when she divorced them she had to go home to live and then she just stopped eating and passed away at 30 from anorexia
It’s not just up to the individual to stay safe on roadways. Safety is a complex issue that demands a multi-pronged strategy. The World Health Organization stresses that road traffic injuries can be prevented via multiple approaches.
“Governments need to take action to address road safety in a holistic manner. This requires involvement from multiple sectors such as transport, police, health, education, and actions that address the safety of roads, vehicles, and road users,” the WHO states.
“Effective interventions include designing safer infrastructure and incorporating road safety features into land-use and transport planning, improving the safety features of vehicles, improving post-crash care for victims of road crashes, setting and enforcing laws relating to key risks, and raising public awareness.”
#10
Kid I knew decided it would be cool to buy a motorcycle and show off. He was dead about 2 weeks later. RIP Sam
#11
My brother shot me in the chest in cold blood for staying up all night with him, trying to talk him out of s*****e for 7 hours. He's facing a first degree felony.
#12
Had a friend who thought "noone can od on acid" did 9 tabs on a dare and was rushed to the er and went into coma and died
Kang has a whopping 395k followers on the social network. His viral post, which we’re featuring today, got 71.3k likes and counting.
Which of these stories shocked you the most? How do you deal with the fact that bad things sometimes happen to good people? What is the worst accident you’ve ever gotten into or witnessed with your own eyes? If you feel like sharing, you can do so in the comments at the bottom of this post.
#13
I’d say myself with cutting for the first time at 12. Went on until I was 17 and now I’m over a year clean. Scars will forever remain though so it’s difficult wearing clothing that doesn’t cover my arm and thighs
#14
A friend of mine was drunk and passed out in the back seat of the car. Unfortunately the driver was also drunk and hit another car at a high rate of speed. She flew through the windshield since she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Crippled from the neck down the summer after high school graduation.
Peeka_Mimi 2 months ago
I absolutely loathe drunk drivers. I used to party when I was younger and we either had a designated driver or called a cab. These days there's ride shares, absolutely no excuses.
#15
My neighbors son defended a girl who had gotten slapped, in Myrtle Beach and the boy who he stood up to ran a knife all the way across him and opened him up and he passed away right there. The guy only did 4.5 years for it and get this, he is also from our town and works at Walmart, where people have to constantly look at him.
Bill Swallow 2 months ago
I hope those people, one and all, show nothing but disgust and contempt on their faces when looking at him.
#16
Blacked out and fell down some cement stairs. Got a concussion that rattled my brain. Had to drop out of school, and don't enjoy reading like I once did. I also just feel... slower?? Anyways. Been sober a few years now! 10/10 would recommend!
Geoffrey Scott 2 months ago
Have had 2 concussions, they scramble you for life...10/10 do NOT recommend.
#17
Friend of a friend of a friend situation, I knew the guy but not so well. On his way to school with his friend behind him, he went up a hill in his truck and crossed over the line on accident and slammed into a pole. Friend behind him came out and pulled him out, watched him die in his arms. He was only 16. RIP Austin we never got to hang out again like we said we would
G A 2 months ago
Teenage drivers are very vulnerable. Additional driving restrictions on their vehicles like speed limiters or only allowing them cars up to certain powers would be a good idea for the first year or two. I saw a car with 4 teenage boys trapped in it who all burned to death, many years ago. One was a friend of my brother. We were far enough away we could see the glow of the fire through the trees (very late at night) and we diverted to avoid it, thank god
#18
Some dude in Florida didnt like how a fiber plant node looked in his yard so he cut it out and took out the internet for loads of people. Got charged with criminal vandalism and fined like 600,000 dollars
#19
The chick who got an internship at NASA and told one of the board members on Twitter to shut tf up
RedHairedDragon 2 months ago
That one was because NASA screwed up and she wasn't qualified. The board member never did anything with the exchange, he wasn't even involved in internships.
#20
My classmate in 7th grade called in a bomb threat to school because she wanted a day off. Cops tracked it back to her immediately.
BrownEyedGrrl 2 months ago
I worked for a law enforcement agency. Some guy called in a bomb threat from his land line. Surprisingly, his house was immediately surrounded by cops.🙄
#21
Decided to continue driving through a fogstorm at midnight with 3 passengers. I don't know why. None survived to explain.
Harry Gondalf 2 months ago
I never heard the term 'fogstorm' before, but I immediately knew what the OP was talking about. Give the OP a break, people: "fogstorm" is a cute word. In the Calif Central Valley the 'tule fog' brings highway I-5 to a complete halt. Visibility is 25 feet (6 m). The highway patrol leads the in convoys led. It only took a couple of years and several pileups of 70+ vehicles to get CalTrans to install a highway closure system.
#22
I girl I heard about was applying to colleges and she was the entire package, 4.6 gpa, 1580 sat, and CRAZY ec’s. Whe she submitted her personal statement on common app, sh accidentally copied the long breakup message she was sending to her bf that had a bunch of vulgarity in it to the common app instead of her personal statement and got rejected from every. Single. School.
#24
bloke walked into my store got mad we couldn’t do a refund on an item that hadn’t even arrived yet threw a monitor at me threw some stuff at other co workers then had a fight with security police and a random guy. Got minimum of 5 years probably closer to 10 all over a £280 bag
#25
He drives a dump truck for a living. He was a heavy drinker and drank while on the job. He k****d six people in an auto accident.
#26
I did it by taking that first sip of vodka at 17
Yrral Spavit 2 months ago
I was lucky. Tasted like acidic horse p**s and so never got any liking for it.
#27
So, I ruin my own life for kicks and giggles but there was this one moment where I really had to think to myself, "I'm really ruining my life here" I was a gambling addict and I did it to support mostly me. At first I was winning, then I was losing. I started doing it because I wanted to earn money the fastest way possible. It strained my relationships with my family and friends and also on top of the fact that a Hurricane hit my area and my brain couldn't think of ANYTHING ELSE TO DO. Needless to say, a month later I checked myself into a facility because I felt like I was really ruining my life.
#28
I went to highschool with this dude that was in the same grade at me, he always looked weird to me and I avoided him , was nice to him and said hello from time to time. Fast forward about 8 years later I saw on the news he was arrested because he stabbed his mom multiple times (she didn't died miraculously) however he is now in jail and won't be getting out.
#29
Homeslice went to a park after dark (his lawn was literally on the line with the edge of the park. Literally one step you’re in his lawn, the other you are in a park). Ended up falling into a culvert about 60 yards from his house. Paralyzed himself from the chest down. Somehow when he fell his legs gave out and his back hit a rock at the bottom just so that he ended up paralyzed. Btw this culvert was only about 3.5-4 feet deep.
#30
The kid didn’t do it to himself, but the teacher kind of did. When I was in h**h school this kid was fake sleeping and the teacher yelled at him to wake up. The kid did this another 2 times since the class kind of laughed. On the third time he was fake sleeping the teacher had enough and told him to just leave. When he asked where to go she said she didn’t care. The kid started to walk home and got hit by a car about a block from the school and died
#31
Friend’s brother, motocross accident, permanently paralyzed at 15.
Burritosaur 2 months ago
G A, you know that commenting is optional, right? Why even make that weird comment?
#32
I got pregnant by a dude I met online when I was 16. My parents refused to let me abort and the rest is history
Matthew Barabas 2 months ago
you could have gotten an abortion anyway. legally, your parents do not have the right to stop you.
#33
Didn’t know him personally but some kid a town or two over broke into his bully’s house and m******d his family but left him alive. Truly some tragic stuff.
#34
There’s a deep ditch behind my parents house next to a road with no sidewalks or street lights. One morning around 10am a runner saw 2 bodies in it who had been victims of a hit and run. Later that afternoon the guy who did it pulled into the gas station up the street and they caught him because of the damage on his car. He had no idea he’d killed 2 people because he’d hit them super early that morning when it was still dark and he assumed he’d hit a trash can (it was garbage day and since they’d been launched into the ditched when he looked back he didn’t see anything in the road. One day he was just a 27 year old guy working at a Covid testing facility and the next he was in jail facing two counts of vehicular manslaughter
#35
A distant relative of mine. Went for a regular check up. Something seems slightly wrong so the doctors suggested the ECG test. Found several small heart blockages. He decided he wanted to get operated immediately. They did so. As soon as they opened the blockages, a nerve in his brain burst open. Brain dead. A man who drove himself to the hospital to the test was brain dead in the next 7 hours.
#36
a kid i went to school with and another adult planned a robbery, botched it, k****d the kid and tried to burn the body, they got caught a day later, both doing life now
Jo Smythe 2 months ago
If you are going to write a story, then take your time, and write a story. You see so many like this, everything crammed into one sentence. As soon as they make a mistake or two, it becomes incomprehensible. If they had taken time to set out their various characters AND ACTUALLY SAY WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, then we could all all easily understand it. Plan what you are going to say, and proofread it once it is written. Preferably get someone else to proofread it as well.
#37
Lied to me about her age and then after told everyone to try to get me in trouble after I told her I didn’t want her bc of her age (no I could not tell she had tattoos everywhere and multiple face piercings and drank a lot)
#38
When my little sister ran across the road and got hit by a car
#39
An old classmate of mine had been in a boxing match for a charity event and ended up dying three days later all because the guy he was playing against hit him in the head since they werent trained at all. The guy still gets harassed to this day, and it affected everyone in both their lives over a silly charity event.
#40
A kid a town over started a fight with a 9th grader when he was in 11th grade and he definitely shouldn't have done that but people bullied him to suicide for fighting the 9th grader. He had a twin brother and a sister and a very loving mother that my mom is mutual with and its insane how something like that ended how it did, rip
#42
He married the girl that completly wrecked his friend circle and cut him off from everyone around him exept his family
#43
Had a friend who was a delivery motoboy. One day he rode a little too fast for a delivery and hit a car who was doing an U turn (it's not exactly right, but it was a straight line and there were no traffic so he wasn't entirely wrong either). My friend died on spot.
#44
A guy got in a play fight but slipped and smashed his head and went into a coma for 2 years and his family died and his girlfriend left him. He had nowhere to stay and nobody to go to.
#45
Kids with wrong person
#46
Me when i told my mom how i feel
Norm Gilmore 2 months ago (edited)
"Sometimes families are to the people to go to". Can't reply to G A now but I would like to point out that through this whole thread the ranting about punctuation etc...
#47
some guy from my country, studying to become a dentist in Europe, got his Moroccan gf pregnant, she refused to abort it, and he had to drop out to work some random job pushing boxes to sustain her and the child. Don't know who he is, but I hope he's doing better now.
#48
My ex cheated, and now drawn pictures of him being pregnant by luigi from Mario is all around his college
#49
Someone i know bought a hotel from a crime family in Romania because of a personality disorder he has.
#50
Got married
#51
Had a cousin who was a new driver speed backwards and ran over a cop and killed bro, he's in life for manslaughter man
#52
one of my former friends said the n word (as an Asian) a little too loud in a crowded hallway with like 3 admin there. he got entirely expelled and I'm pretty sure he's in juvy for something else cuz after that he just went downhill
#53
Ppl who cheat on their spouses with whom they have kids.
#54
bartender killed a late guest.
#57
Lying to the p0lic3 about something and ruining that relationship forever. Also being too angry at someone and saying things they don't mean when they should have just cut someone off, that was the person that had the p0lic3 called on them
#58
Getting associated with BAD people
#59
My best friend was a great wrestler and could’ve wrestled in college but instead went blue collar and we don’t talk much
Pittsburgh rare 2 months ago
Perhaps they *didn't want* to wrestle. A change in life is not necessarily ruining it
What do you think ?
LakotaWolf (she/her) 2 months ago (edited)
My family had hired some people to put up our Christmas lights and they were putting them up on Thanksgiving Day in 2000. They were up on our roof and they couldn't get a certain bit of electrical cord wrangled correctly. My dad decided to go up the ladder in his flip-flops to help them out. He'd had a couple of beers with Thanksgiving lunch and probably should not have been going up onto the roof at all. He fell off of the ladder and sustained catastrophic brain damage. He ended up completely disabled for the next 21 years - bedridden, diapers, feeding tube, needed 24/7 care. I was 18. It destroyed my entire family. I loved my father so much, but góddámn, he made a stupid decision that ruined his life - and his entire family's - in a matter of minutes.
Jo Smythe 2 months ago
Is this all just ai rubbish. Unintelligible story after unintelligible story. I say "story" but they are not stories, usually just single sentences, often not even FINISHED. If you want to tell a story, then tell it. These are all like, "I know a story but i can't be bothered telling it to you". Set out your characters, explain what happened to them and why, then describe the aftermath. Use at least 3 sentences to make an understandable paragraph. Avoid slang and jargon, you and your mates might know what you are talking about, but you are explaining yourself to people all over the world.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 2 months ago
A lot of these are comments that are replies to an Instagram post ( https://www.instagram.com/reel/DN81XbDklK5/ ), so they're not fully written-out posts/stories themselves. You can't really expect an entire fleshed-out story from a comment on a social media post. I get what you're saying (and some of the single-sentence comments are ludicrous), but these posts were taken from a social media post, so... can't really expect English-degree levels of writing, grammar, and vernacular XD
Load More Replies...
Emilu 2 months ago
Christ. Came here to read an article but only got 1/4 of the way through because of the grammar nazis. I'm sure you people that get off on correcting other peoples' grammar have also made grammar mistakes, so STFU and let everybody else read the article without your mundane corrections.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 2 months ago (edited)
My family had hired some people to put up our Christmas lights and they were putting them up on Thanksgiving Day in 2000. They were up on our roof and they couldn't get a certain bit of electrical cord wrangled correctly. My dad decided to go up the ladder in his flip-flops to help them out. He'd had a couple of beers with Thanksgiving lunch and probably should not have been going up onto the roof at all. He fell off of the ladder and sustained catastrophic brain damage. He ended up completely disabled for the next 21 years - bedridden, diapers, feeding tube, needed 24/7 care. I was 18. It destroyed my entire family. I loved my father so much, but góddámn, he made a stupid decision that ruined his life - and his entire family's - in a matter of minutes.
Jo Smythe 2 months ago
Is this all just ai rubbish. Unintelligible story after unintelligible story. I say "story" but they are not stories, usually just single sentences, often not even FINISHED. If you want to tell a story, then tell it. These are all like, "I know a story but i can't be bothered telling it to you". Set out your characters, explain what happened to them and why, then describe the aftermath. Use at least 3 sentences to make an understandable paragraph. Avoid slang and jargon, you and your mates might know what you are talking about, but you are explaining yourself to people all over the world.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 2 months ago
A lot of these are comments that are replies to an Instagram post ( https://www.instagram.com/reel/DN81XbDklK5/ ), so they're not fully written-out posts/stories themselves. You can't really expect an entire fleshed-out story from a comment on a social media post. I get what you're saying (and some of the single-sentence comments are ludicrous), but these posts were taken from a social media post, so... can't really expect English-degree levels of writing, grammar, and vernacular XD
Load More Replies... Emilu 2 months ago
Christ. Came here to read an article but only got 1/4 of the way through because of the grammar nazis. I'm sure you people that get off on correcting other peoples' grammar have also made grammar mistakes, so STFU and let everybody else read the article without your mundane corrections.
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