Last night was a night I will never forget.

[Schumi]

This may be long, but I need to type this down. My room smells of lots of blood. The following will explain why. I prefaced this in the friday drinking thread.

A little backstory: I live two houses down from a friend I met about a year ago: Matt. Nice guy, usually fun to be around, throws great get togethers, etc. I see him all the time; when I see him out I go over and talk with him on his porch, we BBQ every now and then, etc. Nice guy, nice neighbor. When we hang out we tend to drink abundantly. That was how I met the guy; at a neighbor's 4th of July party, drinking. That's our common trait.

Last night (or, tonight- I haven't been able to sleep) started normally. I went over to his place because I was out getting some groceries and when I drove in I heard some music coming from his place. I walked over and found that he was hanging with our other neighbors. So I go over and Matt, the guy this is about, had gotten a few cases of Cola for free from some business adventure or other. I don't know the details, but he had 96 cans of cola in his fridge and said he needed to get rid of them (mixers!).

I left and came back 20 minutes later with a handle (that's 1.75 litres) of Whiskey. Already some of you are seeing how this is going to go. Both Matt and I had a rough week. I figured we could relax and toss back some drinks, and bought a handle of Whiskey because- well hell, why not. I'd use it all up eventually, right?

What I never anticipated was that a few hours later, that handle would be empty. There was a lot of people stopping by; the other neighbors, friends, etc. But only myself, Matt, and our neighbor Andy partook in the drinking from this handle. We drank it all.

Around 4:00 AM something happened. The handle of whisky was pretty much gone somehow, and Matt was inside the house. I went in to find him distraught about something. The following details are not very clear to me as this was the point at which I was most intoxicated- but Matt was in his living room and very upset about something. I do not know what. He was doing a combo of yelling about his life and what I would describe as 'tripping balls.'

This is where I preface this with some more backstory. Matt is a grown-ass man. He's a regular guy, but has had a pretty wild past. To give you an insight into his past, let's just say that he was once deported from Belize and is never allowed to set foot in that country again. He is a party guy, and doesn't shy away from this.

I remember about a month ago that he told me that he was once bi-polar and took medicine for this when he was a kid, but not anymore. I kinda shrugged this off as he always seemed normal to me. I think this would play an important role in last night's precedings.

Anyways, back to last night - Matt is upset about something and me and Andy are trying to calm him down. Again, I'm rather drunk and cannot remember what set this off. I do know that at some point Matt picked up a homemade ceramic ash tray on his coffee table and slammed it into the floor, breaking it. Why I do not know. When it broke, near my feet, a shard of it sliced into my ankle. I did not even feel it. It cut me extremely deep however.

The other people there tried to calm Matt down more and more, but he kept going on and on about how he wasn't comfortable, and blabbing about things we couldn't understand. I believe he was having some sort of anxiety attack. I stepped outside on the porch and got some air for a few minutes, when someone started saying "Who is bleeding? Where is this blood coming from?!!!"

I look down and around and see a lot of blood on the porch, on the sidewalk, and on the living room carpet. I then felt my left sandal to be sort of squishy when I walked. That is when I saw that my left ankle was cut open badly and bleeding everywhere. I told everyone that I needed to get home and ran two housed down to my place, ran in the back door, upstairs to my bathroom, and proceeded to mop up my foot. Literally, mop up. I did not have any Band-aids or gauze, so I grabbed some toilet paper and masking tape and wrapped my ankle up.

I then ran back to Matt's because I was really concerned about him. I didn't understand why he was freaking out. There were no drugs involved here. At least not that I saw. Matt is a drug-type but tonight was clean, normal drinking. Just lots of booze. So I run back up and I see that the porch is a mess. There is blood everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. I realize it's ALL MINE. At this point I run inside, past Matt who is being consoled on the couch by our neighbor (I still do not know what he was freaking out about, and can't really describe how he was freaking out. He just wasn't 'stable')- and grab some cups and fill them with water to take on the porch and wash my blood away with.

From the pools of blood I saw, I estimate I lost about 2liters of blood. Not a joke. Between my house and Matt's house (100 feet) there was blood all down the sidewalk. My ankle was taped up and had stopped bleeding, so I figured I did not need stitches.

I go back in and Matt is still freaking out. Me and Andy were consoling him, over nothing- I think it was some sort of Bi-Polar episode. Matt was repeating 'why is this happening?' over and over. We thought this might be drug related- but again, no drugs were at this party. There was lots of bro-hugging (not gonna lie) and eventually I thought I should go home. For some reason Matt seemed to be associating his angst with my presence, which felt awful. Here is a grown ass man, in his own home, crying and mumbling nonsense to me, his neighbor, having a full on breakdown.

I get home at about 5:30 AM and notice that my place smells. It smells bad. I realize that I had left a lot of bloody paper towels laying in and around my bathroom from my previous escapade. They smelled like that smell you get when cleaning a lot of fish. Now I know what a lot of blood smells like. I re-garnished my wound on my ankle, which closed up really well - it was not that big, and I assume the reason it bled so heavily was because of the alcohol in my system.

I tried to get to sleep but could not. I kept thinking about how I just watched my neighbor have some sort of psychiatric breakdown right in front of my eyes. It was a very strange feeling, seeing a man who was so unsure of everything without knowing why. When I had left, he was tiring down and going to sleep; I knew he would be OK in the morning.

A little bit ago I got a phone call from him. I guess he had woken up. I was tired and when I picked up, he said something to the effect of "Hi man. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

I replied "I'm tired, I'm getting some sleep. Don't fret; we'll talk later." and hung up.

I still have not slept.

I'm going to walk over to his place in a few hours I think and see if I can take him to breakfast and talk. I think something last night- not just the booze, but something- triggered some sort of episode that really weired him out. I feel really bad for him.

I know there will be plenty of PPOT opinions on this, how I should stay away from this guy, how I should not hang with these kind of people, whatever. But I never saw something like this coming; I've never had an experience around mentally disturbed people but I honestly think that now I have. Like I said, there were no drugs involved that I know of- I am hoping that somehow there were and I did not know it. That would actually make me feel better. But I do not think there were and I honestly think that I just witnessed my friend Matt have a nervous, psychiatric breakdown.

I'll leave you all with a photo I took earlier of one of the paper towels I found on my floor. This was one of about 10 rags I picked up throughout my room and bathroom. All equally soaked in my blood. Absolutely a night I will never forget.

[targa911S]

Alcohol ...It's a wonderful drug.

[livi]

Sounds like its a wonder that you remember anything at all!

[Dottore]

That was not necessarily a mental breakdown at all IMO.

Those quantities of alcohol can induce very strange behavior in the sanest of people.

The world of drinkers divides into "happy drunks" and "unhappy drunks". Get an unhappy drunk totally legless, and some very, very ugly scenes can result.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

It sounds like one or both of you have a very serious drinking problem that could best be described as "alcoholism". I'm not kidding. If one (or both) of you cannot drink without drinking to excess, this is a problem. Think long and hard about this before launching into predictable denials and rationalizations...

On the subject of the blood. 2L of blood loss would have been severe. It's like gasoline - a little bit looks like a lot. A pint of blood will look like a liter the way it can spread out and look so thick/deep/black/messy. However, drink a lot of fluids for the next few days and for heaven's sake get your foot looked at.

[Schumi]

My foot looks fine now- like a cat scratch. I don't really understand how it bled that much. I'm still finding bloody pieces of TP between here and my bathroom. I'm pretty pale.

Like I said, this was a party and we intended on drinking. I'm not going to say I do not drink frequently- I do. But it doesn't affect my work or my social life. Hell, I drank all that last night but I'm sober and here talking about it right now, at 9AM.

Now Matt on the other hand... Matt worries me.

[creaturecat]

Almost bleeding to death, not noticing. Drunk.
These are not good things. Seriously.

[jwasbury]

Originally Posted by Schumi

There were no drugs involved here. At least not that I saw. Matt is a drug-type but tonight was clean, normal drinking. Just lots of booze.

Umm...Alcohol IS a drug. 3 people splitting 1.75 liters of Whiskey, followed by one of them going nuts and smashing a glass ashtray is not clean, normal drinking. It doesn't sound as if you want to hear this, but you may want to recalibrate your definition of normal drinking.

[Jims5543]

I was waiting for you to tell us when you started inhaling the ether.


Man, that was an interesting read, like something out of a HST novel. To be honest BTDT with drunk friends in my late teens early 20's. Anything that you think was meaningful from last night was not, it was not the booze talking or bringing out some profound truth. It was merely a dude screwed up in his head blabbering on.

Don't give it too much thought, but maybe throttle back the binges a little.


Great story though. I give you 100 internet points for that one.

[jyl]

That much alcohol is a poison as far as your body is concerned. Do you have to poison yourself to have a good time? Then you're an alcoholic. A functioning one, so far.

[Seahawk]

Learn to drink as well as you write.

You got lucky. This time.

Edit: I know how to drink, used to be really good at it. It was the Navy way in the 80's. I have boomed the world over. Stop soon.

[scottmandue]

I not a medical expert... but I'm pretty sure you are either bi-polar or not... that to say if your friend was bi-polar he probably is bi-polar.

Presuming he was diagnosed as bi-polar and not imagining he might be that way because he is depressed some times.

As far as the drinking/bleeding escapade BTDT so I can't preach.

But I would recommend stepping away from the bottle a bit.



And +1 on alcohol=drugs... all a matter of semantics.

[Buckterrier]

Don't miss the bad old times at all. Had a similar episode with a good friends wife. Long story short she busted out a large picture window with her fists while drunk and after an arguement then started clawing at the glass trying to get back in the living room. Blood EVERYWHERE. She refused medical treatment after the cops showed up. I went home after I thought everything was cool. Got a call in the middle of the night from my buddy who's now in the ER. She came back after he was asleep and hit him over the head with a dresser drawer.
Did I saw I don't miss the bad old times?

[porsche4life]

I want my click back.

I click expecting to see a tale of a night of wild monkey sex with that girl you have been chasing and I get this.


I will tell you the same thing I told that guy that was hurling his guts out in my bathroom the other day. "Maybe you should give up alcohol"

[Moses]

Drinking problem? ...... Nah.

[Schumi]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

Learn to drink as well as you write.

I don't know if you noticed, but I wrote that all out only a few hours after this ended. I think I drink rather well considering I'm not hungover, I wasn't the one out of control, and I didn't end up hurling all over anything/body. I've actually been doing housework- as I planned- this morning. So I don't consider this a problem. My friend on the other hand gave us the scare, and that was my reasoning behind writing this all down.


I walked over there a bit ago and woke him up. He did not have any recollection of the weirdness he experienced and didn't know why he did such things. Alcohol is a hell of a drug for sure. Mind you, this is a guy who is, right now, laying on his couch, shivering with a bad, bad hangover. And I'm typing on the internet, cleaning my house, and doing other normal saturday morning stuff.


So if you think I have some problem, or can't control my habits, I'd disagree. I wrote the story to convey my night partially as a way to sum it up for myself and partially as a warning to others. Not to be chastised for my actions which resulted in absolutely nothing detrimental to me besides a bad cut which wasn't of my doing.


Yet obviously I won't be repeating this sort of escapade for a while.


And yes, my friend did actually tell me once that he was diagnosed, by a medical professional, as bi-polar. However this 'episode' I described, after talking to him this morning, was just a lot of drunkeness. I assumed that, because of his craziness, that his previous medical condition might have had something to do with it but I was wrong. He was just that drunk. It took me a bit to understand this because, as I said, I had about the same amount, if not more, to drink and I sobered up and went on with my business.

[mossguy]

Like a river in Egypt!

Best,
Tom

[Schumi]

Originally Posted by mossguy

Like a river in Egypt!

ooooh you guys sure are unrelenting.


guess that's the last time I post any adventurous story, dare I slander myself again..

[URY914]

You are stupid.

[Jim Bremner]

DUDE! get a handle on your HANDLE!