A party animal desperate for food and booze became unhinged during a “wild” night of ragers at a Columbia University dorm, plummeting seven stories down an air shaft early Saturday, police said.

The Ivy League drama began Friday night at 70 Morningside Drive, near West 118th Street, when the 29-year-old became increasingly soused and “erratic,” witnesses and authorities told The Post.

“He was drunk and was going around banging on doors and going into rooms looking to find parties,” said one student, who said he heard the man was “swiping food and alcohol in various rooms.”

The student later ambled up the stairs to the roof of the 23-story dorm, according to police.

Once al fresco — on a night where Big Apple temps dipped down to 26 degrees — he “panicked” when he realized he was trapped, as the door behind him likely locked from the inside, students and staffers speculated.

“He must have freaked out if he was locked on the roof….As cold as it was, he could have died,” one student in the dorm said. “It’s quite disturbing…I can’t imagine being stuck for all those hours in the walls [of the building.]

At some point, he dismantled and slipped down the narrow air shaft, and got stuck on the 16th floor, police said.

At around 7:30 a.m., he began shrieking for help, which prompted a swift response from emergency responders.

“They start hearing calls from the wall basically, to help him. But he had been in there, it looks like, all night long,” police sources said.

Emergency Services unit officers and firefighters broke out a wall on the 16th floor, along with some of the ceiling on the 15th floor to free the man, police said.

“This guy was s- -t-faced at a party. Instead of going down, he went up,” a law enforcement source said. “He’s not a bad guy, but he’s lucky to be alive.”

The man was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in serious but stable condition, officials said.

A security guard in the dorm said the incident was part of a “crazy” night in the dorm.

“Wild…a lot of partying last night,” he said, adding that there were “more [bashes] than the usual weekend.”