Eighteen - Is the party age inevitable?

After high school I took a gap year, which I used responsibly to experience a full time job and travel to places I was sure this was my last chance to see. While I saved and traveled many of my friends jetted off to the big smoke to get themselves an education. However, when they returned on holidays, rather than complaining about studying and a lack of social life I found that many of my unexpected friends raved about the wild parties they had found in their new life.
From atop my high horse I laughed off their immaturity as something that I was already long past. I even maintained this as I moved into a nice christian college in the centre of Brisbane. I was there to study, hopefully make a few friends and maybe check out a party or two between semesters. Well...
I'm not going to say I went 'off the rails' and failed my first semester or anything to that extreme (although I did see it happen) but I did find that my pre-existing FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) may have taken the better of me. I was scared, alone and in a new city full of wonderful and exciting new nightlife. So I went out. A lot.
The thing about living in a college is that there is always someone with a day off tomorrow who wants to let their hair down, and the thing about Brisbane is that it is always 'student night' somewhere. Tuesday night is the Down Under Bar (more commonly know to students as 'Dunder') Wednesday night is Toowong's Royal Exchange (that's 'the re'), Thursday is The Victory Hotel ('the Vic') and well, the weekend is a free-for-all at a mix of Valley and City clubs. With all the chaos and excitement of making new friends and experiencing a new city and a new scene it's hard not to get carried away in the madness.
This week we celebrated the 18th of one of our good friends who we had been dying to take out to the city for months and I have mixed feelings about watching him fall into the same spiral of night life that I did earlier this year. Watching a good friend of mine spend every night since his 18th birthday at bars has made me wonder, is the party age of 18 an inevitability of growing up? And if it is, is it something we should be worried about or trying to prevent? As his friend is it my job to stop him falling into the trap of late nights and strobe lights that I did? Or should I just embrace his new found sense of fun and make sure he stays safe?
I will admit that I thought I was immune to the lure of nightclubs when I turned 18 and still had no more interest in the scene than I did in classical music. Furthermore I thought I was safe when two months before my 19th birthday I was still content to spend my Friday nights at home with a cup of tea and my cat. There is no denying that it was the transition to university and college that sparked my wild nights out, but was I already a time-bomb waiting to explode into a cloud of late nights and bad dance moves?

QUT/UQ Toga Party 2013