I think OP must have grown up in a pretty affluent neighbourhood. (How many schools have programmes with epidemiological institutes?) If I had done TY in the school I went to with the others in my cohort that did, my experience would have likely been much closer to theirs than to OP's: rarely attending school, drinking, smoking weed, and in some cases not returning back to school at all to finish the leaving cert.

I was much happier getting out of school as soon as I possibly could like yourself.