Sis, you could take my case as reference.
I was keshdhari all along and cut my hair when I was 15. When I was 20, I read about sant Ji and 84, and got inspired to take Amrit, but my feelings were really Josh and nothing else. I took Amrit from a taksali jatha. About 2 months later I went for a Sikhi camp, and was heavily influenced by different people. It started with eating eggs, then fish, then meat. Amritvela stopped. Nitnem stopped. Soon after I was drafted into national service. I removed all my kakkars so I could fit in, and picked up smoking, and weekend vice activities with my platoon mates. After basic training I was transferred to section leader school, where I had better company, I stopped smoking because the officer commanding of my company knew my father. I picked up sukhmani sahib, reciting it regularly. After 5 weeks, I was given my final posting, to Guards ( an elite infantry unit with heliborne ops) as a sniper. There were 15 of us in the platoon, mostly smokers. My path stopped and I picked up smoking again. During the next course of 15 months, I tried amritvela a few times but whenever it came to jungle/field training for weeks end, I'll give in to smoking to ease the fatigue. The usual platoon drinking sessions in the mess continued. A year left to completion I was married to a girl who was totally inclined to hinduism despite being a Sikh, which until today is a hindrance to me going for pesh. After my 2 years of national service, I started work In my family business. This time I fell into the trap of tantriks, saadhs and babas hoping to improve my financial luck in the stock markets. In three years, I lost all my 60k investment, which happened around 2 months ago.
That was what opened my eyes and I came running back to gurudev's feet. Ever since he has blessed me with vegetarianism, amritvela and an amazing nitnem of 11 banis. I'm now like a newborn child, opening his eyes to the truth and with maharaj kirpa I can Take baby steps to being a gursikh again, hopefully gaining enough strength to go pesh for all 4 bujjar kurehits. And I hope to be blessed with pesh from akj. :-)