My Interesting Day

4:00am - Dale (a good friend of mine) gets kicked out of Mike’s house (another good friend of mine) for drinking, passing out, and burning Mike’s carpet with a cigarette. Dale had been living there for 5 months, rent-free, with the understanding that he would:

  1. Not drink
  2. Not smoke inside
  3. Get a job

He hadn’t found a job. He hadn’t even really tried. Mike had given him two month’s warning to get a job or get out–last June. Instead, he decided getting liquored up was a better option.

Mike finds him passed out on the floor, cigarette burn on the carpet, vodka spilled on the floor, and gives him the boot.

5:00am - The cops arrive at Mike’s door asking him if he knows Dale. Mike says yes, but that he kicked him out earlier and doesn’t want him back.

It seems that Dale was found, passed out, on someone’s lawn about half a block away. Mike explains the reason for Dale being kicked out. The cops take Dale to Detox.

11:00am - I go over to Mike’s house and find out about numbers 1 and 2. The mail arrives. Mike finds out that the 12 months of chemo he just went through didn’t work; he still has Hep C. Mike is of a genotype that generally has a poor outcome regarding Hep C treatment; he’s already been informed that this was a one-shot deal: Either it clears or it’s not worth wasting the time to try it again.

Noon - A mutual friend of Mike and I comes over and asks us to watch her dog while she and her husband go fishing for a couple of days. Mike has a dog, but he says OK.

Mike’s dog meets the other dog and immediately tries to hump it.

He won’t stop trying to hump it. He constantly tries to hump it.

Both dogs are male. Mike finds out his dog is gay.

1:30pm - I go home and try to take a nap for a while.

Sometime later: I can’t sleep, so I get up, read the SDMB, and post a bit.

6:00pm - I go back over to Mike’s and pick him up. We go to a bar to watch the Vikings’ pre-season game. I ask Mike if he wants to go 50/50 on some pulltabs. He says no. I buy 20 pulltabs. I only find one winner, but it’s worth $250.

7:15pmc or so - The Vikings game starts. The Vikes win the first quarter (which is all that counts since that’s when the starters are in).

8:30pm - We leave the bar and go back to Mike’s house. The police are waiting there. Dale is in the back of the car. Seems he got out of Detox, bought another bottle, drank most of it, and then passed out by Minnehaha Creek. The police responded to numerous calls about a guy laying alongside the walking path.

The cops ask Mike and I if we know Dale. We say yes. They ask if he can come in. Mike says no. Mike says that the cops already took Dale to Detox once that day. The cop says they just keep them there until they sober up and then let them go. Since Mike won’t let him in, the cops take Dale to Detox for the second time that day.

10:15pm - I come home and post about my interesting day.

Wow. Sounds like Dale needs help. Hope tomorrow is better for you!

[Hank Hill] Dang it, Dale…[/Hank Hill]

Dale, hell. Mike needs help!

Go over to Mike’s and say a total stranger says she feels for him based on the fact that he has had the suckiest day EVER, and she really hopes he doesn’t believe in suicide, and when come back bring pie for Mike. Because like wow.

He didn’t even get the pulltab dough while luck descended on you.

Poor Mike! This complete stranger also feels for him.

Tell him to not let Dale back in. Nope, don’t let him in. Trust me, I had a house-guest very much like Dale. The first year wasn’t so bad. It was the second year, when he became very comfortable, that things became just too much to take.

It took alot of effort getting that guy out. And keeping him out.

Update

10:25am Sunday - Dale just called. They let him out of Detox at 6:30am. He’s at a Superamerica gas station. I’m going to meet him and see what the hell he’s going to do for the immediate future.

The last person I knew that bad on alcohol, died from drunk driving. You couldn’t do anything to help either. He wiped out going an estimated 80 mph in a 25 mph zone on his motorcycle. The only way it could have been stopped was if they would have forced him to attend treatment in lock up and not let him out. It was frustrating and ended in the only way that can end.

8:00pm - Well, Dale’s plans are to sleep under bridges or in the woods.

That’s it.

He says he might try to get into a treatment program, but he’s already been through almost all of them at one time or another, so I’m not holding out much hope there.

I guess it’s a good thing he doesn’t drive. He lost his license back in the mid-80’s and hasn’t owned a car or driven since.

We should all be very, very glad of that.

It’s a real bummer. He’s probably the most intelligent and funniest person I know. Until he’s drunk. Then he’s insufferable. Not mean or anything like that. Far from it. Instead he’s sloppy, stupid, and just plain disgusting.

Damn it all.

Sleeping under a bridge loses its novelty in five minutes flat. First hand experience speaking.

You could suggest to Dale that an inpatient treatment program will at least give him three hots and a cot until he can make his next move. If he can be accepted (?) into one, being utterly homeless will be one less worry he’ll have for the moment. OTOH, if all it took was kicking the nicotine habit in order to have a free(ish) roof over my head… I would still feel the need to ponder it before accepting.

Tell Mike one more random person is sending good thoughts his way.

Good thoughts to you, too, Rysdad, for being a good friend to them.

One last post on the subject…

Dale has found someone with a non-floating boat up on skids who’s going to allow him to sleep onboard for a while.

No electricity. No plumbing. No water.

We’ll see how long it lasts.

I put $20 on his pay-as-you-go cell phone so he can at least give a prospective employer a phone number.

Mike’s doing OK. I gave him all of your best wishes.

What a world.