I'll be honest with you..... for many years, working FT in EMS controlled my life. I was working night shift (6pm to 6am), so almost all of my OT was on nights, I worked every other weekend, and worked a side job working 12 hours on a suburban ambulance. Con ed was every three months, for 4 hours, which meant another evening spent at work. Before OT became abundant, my regular part time job had me picking up extra night shifts (but when OT became available, i left the pt job because time and a half is always better than straight pay). And that didn't include when I was taking 9 credits over the summer because I was looking at trying to go to PA or med school.....
my friends were mostly my EMS coworkers, who were on a similar night shift schedule, but I spent time and dated others who worked shift work (a tall long legged blonde from the ER, a charge nurse from another ER, etc). It's tough to have a social life when you work shift work in a bankers hours world (tough, but not impossible)
One thing I think you need to keep in mind is many of the previous posters have years of experience working as paramedics, or have a working spouse. So they might not be working 60 hour weeks and picking up every OT shift they can to make ends meet, which is common among new people in their field. And truth be told, that's a good thing, because working 60 hour weeks when you have a family sucks.
Think of if this way: you are working FT in EMS (lets say you work three 12 hour shifts a week), and decide to to go paramedic school (2 days a week, 4 hours a day, and then add another 6hrs per day for all the readings and other work), which includes clinical shifts (1 day a week, for 12 hours), and you want to have a little spending money, so you pick up an OT shift for 12 hours on your day off, and then you add in mandatory department wide meeting or con edu, 4 hours on your day off, and you see where your entire week has been sucked into EMS. Thankfully, paramedic school doesn't last forever, and if you find a sugarmomma/sugar daddy, you don't need to pick up every OT shift to pay the rent. And when your priorities change, spending time with the kids are much more favorable than working OT.
I now work in the corporate environment, where I work 8am to 5pm, and when I leave at 5, I'm done. I might read and reply to an email, both that's it. I sleep in my own bed (most of the time, I do one night a week on the engine and have been working on completing one of my FF certifications), and spend much of my free time chasing after a toddler. I loved being on the ambulance, and had a lot of fun on the ambulance, but love my current work/life balance.
