By the time I was 19 I had lost 24 friends, including some short lived best friends from shootings, overdoses, suicides, murders, accidents of course and various other acts of violence and abandon, sometimes when it was a half dozen in a couple of months the pacing got a little discouraging but it was the good old days wasn't it.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that you're a few years younger than I am. When I was 19 I hadn't lost any friends yet. But there was a change coming over the Bay Area in the late 60s, and by the time that I was 22 calamity was everywhere. Schools began to have police on regular assignment, and some were even installing metal detectors in their entrances.
In some respects it was the good old days; I definitely had a lot of fun in the 60s but for some of my friends reality closed in and cancelled all the fun.