So from ages 16 to about 22, I was the guy who would get blackout drunk and into wacky situations. This is one of them.

I had just moved to a little town in Ontario with some buddies from BC. We moved into our apartment on Halloween, and one of said buddy’s cousins was having a party. I tossed on my army jacket, put some blue hair gel on my head, deemed myself a punk and headed out with my 26 of Jamieson in tow.

The last thing I remember was telling the host “Nah, I don’t need a cup or chase, I’ll just keep drinking from the bottle.” Things got hazy, then suddenly I was in a holding cell.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. This wasn’t my first time inside a holding cell - but this was literally my first night as a resident of this place. I had only a vague sense of where my place was relative to the rest of the town. I did not memorize the address. I had no family or support network there, other than my two friends. And I had exactly zero knowledge of the journey from the party to the cell.

So naturally, I start screaming, asking why I was there and what I did, trying to squeeze through the bars, etc. etc. Cop comes by, says “If you don’t know why you’re here, that’s why you’re here. Just get some sleep and we’ll talk in the morning”. Still freaking out but recognizing there wasn’t much I could do, I passed out on the slab.

In the morning, the cops got me out of the cell, and explained that I had passed out on someone’s lawn on what I learned was the other side of town from the party. When they picked me up, I apparently told them I had no fixed address, and they took me in. As I was apparently very cooperative they handed me a ticket and sent me on my way.

So there I was - it’s about 7:00 AM on November 1st. I had blue-smeared, slept-on-a-concrete slab matted hair, I was in that nasty ‘still drunk but also hungover’ pocket, outside of a cop station with still no idea where I was relative to my place. So I just start walking.

Eventually, I make it to the centre of town. I notice a big gathering of people and stumble over to see what it was. Some guy sees me, and hands me a protest sign. After a few minutes, I realize it’s an anti-New World Order protest of some kind. I look around for some place to drop the sign, and see a sudden flash. Someone took my picture - and the dude was wearing one of those press passes around his neck.

My second day in town, and there was me - haggered, literal gutterpunk looking ass holding a protest sign at an unhinged protest, with a picture taken for the local newspaper. Neat.

Eventually I find my house. I walk in, and my buddies are like “Holy shit, what the fuck happened?”. Apparently, I got so drunk I fell off the porch and was just generally being a fool, and got kicked out of the party. These guys then took me to try and get some pizza in me at some place. At a certain point, I just dropped my piece on the floor, left the building, and the rest is history.

I don’t talk to those guys anymore. I don’t drink whiskey from the bottle anymore either.

What’s funny to me is that this isn’t even my first unhinged drinking story from that place - I found myself on the wrong end of a 12 v. 3 brawl at a chain pizza restaurant over someone calling my buddy a chicken nugget, the day we went to sign our lease - but that’s a tale for another day.

Weed’s soooo much better, kids.

Well here’s my worst: I relapsed after having dropped my tolerance and the EMTs scraped me out of a ditch and took me to my job, although thank God I don’t work in the ED. Apparently I said something to the effect of “just let me die” which wound up getting me a babysitter (suicidaldrunksitter?) and wound up having to talk to a pgy-2 who very clearly (and nervously) recognized me. Fortunately my hospital is relatively with it on the evidence-based-practice even in behavioral health so he knew to wait until I was sober again to do a full assessment, because that would’ve been a whole week down the drain in grippy sock jail.