What experience made you grow the fuck up?

When I was back in my country, I was 14 y/o in 1st year high school, I had 2 gfs at that time, the 2nd gf and I did something on school grounds. We got caught but not in the act. She admitted everything to her family. Her whole family made threats to me, even worse, my brother and her brother are bros. I got kicked out of school, my parents sent me to my mother's province for a while to live with my relatives.

In my 2nd high school I was a bully.

In college, I was studying in the country's best university, I was barely passing every semester, every year. During my third year, I burned out, went out a lot with my friends, smoked a lot of weed. After my third year, the university kicked me out.

In my 2nd college, I joined a fraternity, which in our country is not allowed. There were 5 of us who joined at the same time, all of us friends. We had to do 'service' before the initiation wherein any member of the frat could order us and we had to obey. They would call us during class and we had to go out of class, then they would order us to buy cigarettes, smoke with them, or just hang out with them. We weren't allowed to look them in the eye, and we had to call them 'master'. One member ordered me to do his 3-months worth of homework in 5 hours. They also ordered me to smoke weed in their car before going to class; ordered me to peddle weed. Ordered my friend to punch me, when it was not hard enough, they ordered me slap him. They also put a lit cigarette on my finger nail for a few seconds. They were allowed to beat me if they wanted, and they did. They didn't hit us on the face so it wouldn't be seen in school or in public. All that happened in just a week. After that, we couldn't take it, out of the 5 of us, 4 of us left and went into hiding. I told my parents everything and again, they sent me to the province. About a month later, a neophyte was killed during the initiation, and frat members were caught in a video dragging the neophyte minutes before he died. One of those caught in the video was the one friend out of the 5 of us that joined. Now he and other frat members had to hide. I thought it could have been me, either the one who died or one of the guys caught in the video had I went through.

My parents decided to send me to Germany to live with my aunt there but my visa got denied.

In my third college, after just a few weeks, me and my friend got caught smoking weed by the police. Police in our country are EXTREMELY corrupt they handcuffed us and threated us when we were in the police car. They dropped us in a small house, not a police station. They were asking for a bribe of $4700 EACH for our release. The father of my brother's wife 'knew a lot of people', they went to us, it was 3am at that time, they negotiated and the bribe was lowered to $230 each.

After a semester in my 3rd college, my parents sent me to the US to live with my aunt and to study. I'm starting my 4th college this August.

/r/AskReddit Thread