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We all have our vices. We’ve cultivated them since our late teens and into our early twenties to make them a honed, specialized set of immoral skills, almost like Liam Neeson in Taken if he specialized in bad decisions instead of brutally torturing sex traffickers. We all know the big ones, but what do they mean? Let’s break it down.
The Binge Drinker
You haven’t really given up drinking since college. If anything, you’ve honed it into a science. You might be in grad school or just working a shitty job. Hell, you might even be running your own division at a decent company or something enjoyable and well-paying like that. In any case, alcohol is your go-to vice.
What it means: You still like to party, but you save it for two to three incredibly out of control nights throughout the week. The other 4-5 days, you’re completely functional. You’re like the ninja of the postgrad world. No one expects you to do anything too crazy, unless you run into them at the bar on a Saturday night, then watch out. You’re a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The only concern is your liver, but by now you’ve so thoroughly pickled it that it responds like The Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail any time you try to damage it. “Tis but a flesh wound!” yells your liver, as you knock back Four Horseman shots and continue raging like you’re still 20-years-old.
The Gambler
You like to gamble. Your love of college football betting has turned into a part-time business enterprise. You might even take weekend trips up to Vegas and Atlantic City and try to run the tables. Some weekends you do, some you don’t, but you always have a good time. You’re on a first name basis with your bookie, and he sends you a Christmas card every year.
What it means: You’re basically a Kenny Loggins song incarnate. Your love of gambling has made you pretty good at reading people. Forget drinking and partying (though you probably like those because they’re comped for you), you live for the thrill of sitting a table of strangers and psychologically deconstructing them from behind that pair of sunglasses you probably paid way too much for. As a result, your day job is on Wall Street, and Gordon Gecko is basically your idol. Life is going pretty well, and if you play your cards right, you’ll end up a big time CEO. If not, you’ll have a good run before you make a bad bet and have to do it all over again.
The Stoner
The siren song of marijuana has not stopped playing for you since graduation. You know more about strains of pot than you do about your undergraduate degrees in plant biology and public policy. Smoking in undergrad was fun, but you took it to a new level after graduation, possibly attempting to do a tour of the Middle East and South America to sample the world’s best.
What it means: You’re either a drug policy lobbyist or still living in your parents’ basement. While casual pot use is really relaxing, pot enthusiasts tend to be into hemp clothing and new-age astrology. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You might have dropped by Occupy Wall Street, or maybe you’re more about occupying DC to lobby for drug policy reform, but either way, your life has a lot of pot in it. The problem with pot, much like many other jobs, is it’s damn easy to drug test for, so the pot enthusiast is not usually cut out for the corporate world. Plus, the environment is much too stifling for someone that in touch with the actual environment.
The Raver
You’re on a first name basis with Molly and have more than likely had a full-on philosophical debate over the musical merits of Avicii vs Tiesto or the impact of Daft Punk on dubstep. Sunrises are one of your favorite sights because you see so many of them after staying up all night partying. The Binge Drinker sees you at 2am, wishes you good luck, and heads for the cab home. Not you, my friend. Your night is starting at 2am.
What it means: Your brain probably looks like a bad Rorschach test on an MRI, but you have seen and experienced things that the average person probably can’t even comprehend. You probably do something artsy, or you work in the business world and have a willpower and tolerance that everyone around you envies. Your knowledge of electronic music is unparalleled.
Caffeine
Thanks to a schedule I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and demands from the higher ups to build Rome in less than 12 hours at half-cost and double the profits, you have to find a way to be Hercules. You do that with stimulants. Coffee, Diet Coke, Red Bull, etc. Anything that will keep you awake, you love. You don’t sleep much anymore, and your hours at home and at work would make the average Foxconn sweatshop worker feel grateful for what they have.
What it means: You’re wired all the time, but it’s cool because all your friends and coworkers are probably just as bad off, if not worse. At least you aren’t the guy that sits at his desk or in class and just twitches all day. He might have had too much of something before the last exam/big deal. Take a relaxing weekend somewhere or something…if they ever let you leave. Your heart and blood pressure could probably use the break from acting out your own personal version of Crank, without the explosions, crazy sex or diving out of airplanes.
Sex
The hookup scene in college was pretty much like Phil Mickelson playing a round of putt-putt. It was too easy. Girls were everywhere, and probably very often in your room. Being a postgrad hasn’t slowed you down any. You’re sleeping with a new girl every weekend, like the world is ending, which is consequently how you convinced a particularly religious girl to sleep with you. Satan himself would be jealous of your powers of seduction.
What it means: Other than one or two very horrifying pregnancy scares and some mornings filled with regret, things are pretty good. Long-term relationships aren’t your thing, and that’s cool, but your family is hounding you about grandkids like they are the only reason your parents will soon have to keep hanging around. Friends from high school who had kids in their late teens and early twenties will call you immature and decry your lack of moral fiber, but they’re just jealous. Chances are you’re in sales, because you could sell ice to a snowman, and then somehow get a blowjob out of the deal too.
So, enjoy your vice, whatever it may be. Indulge in it. Just do so in a way that doesn’t risk your life and health too often. Better to live a fun life with good times and good memories than reach the end after being “safe” about everything the whole time. A life not lived to the fullest is hardly a life at all, so have fun.
What if your favorite vice is ‘all of the above’?
Calm down Barney Stinson
Why’s the stoner gotta be a hippy dippy liberal?
yaaayyyyyyyyyyyy ohhhhhh
Tobacco…
It started out innocently enough with high school sports. You threw in a lip with the guys and now you’re at the point where you only use tobacco when you are drinking, golfing, fishing, playing poker or reading. So, daily.
What it means?
Your lip hates you. You’ve seen the images of baseball players with lip cancer and are confident enough that there will be a cure for it by the time it ever affects you. You could use this confidence to help you dominate your field, or not.
Dammit THIS.
This is my nightmare.