tdn , you aren’t me, are you?
I can’t say I’m surprised by that, but… dayum…
brad_d, Lovett '93
A friend who drank himself to death. He was already a full-blown alcoholic by the time he was 20 - I’m talking a bottle of cheap sherry for breakfast, a number of pints with spirit chasers at lunchtime, followed by bottle of spirits in the afternoon. He usually didn’t last to see the evening, but if he did, it was spent drinking wine with his evening meal, followed by more beer and spirit chasers in the pub. He was a good cook, and on one occasion had a bunch of us over for a meal and ended up passing out face first in his plate, in mid anecdote. He was also extremely witty and intelligent, and a talented writer.
Towards the end he was told it wouldn’t make any difference if he stopped drinking or not, because he was already fucked. So he went on drinking and died at the age of 40.
Small in comparison to most but it’s happening right now and is therefore up front in my brain…
Several years ago, I got pulled over for speeding, changing lanes without signalling and expired tags. The nice Cop bought my story that I felt “trapped” in the pack and swerved out of my lane and accelerated to free myself.
That left the expired tags, a nice non-moving violation, and a $40 or so ticket.
I didn’t pay it.
Two weeks ago, my paycheck was garnished for the $118 that the ticket has grown to. I called the county and said, “What now?” and they said I should check for a suspended license and clear that if necessary.
Yup. Suspended for almost exactly two years.
I have to submit for a reinstatement, pay another $60, and take both the written and practical driving test again. Yup - I gotta drive for the examiner like a n00b 16-year old.
Duh.
Not destructive, but almost wantonly stupid.
Meanwhile, I’ve driving on my suspended license, risking having my license pulled altogether while I’m going through the reinstatement process.
Had a good buddy in law school. Obviously had enough on the ball to be accepted into a pretty decent law school. His grandmother had died and left him enough money that he bought a house in town. He was one of the biggest drug dealers I knew. In and of itself not a huge deal as many folks dealt various amounts of various substances. But he also was a heavy gambler.
A couple of highlights - he got kicked out of law school after 1 year for grades. He talked his way back into school. Got kicked out again. Was arrested while bouncing a guy’s head off a parking curb over a drug deal. Lost his house gambling. Was dead before aged 25.
I didn’t think they gave you an organ if you were on drugs?
My mother went out of her way to screw my father over in the divorce. I mean, he wasn’t fighting her for it, but she did some underhanded unnecessary crap that caused him to plead no contest to something she was responsible for (old, long story, he’s long since “paid his debt” and has since served on several county and city advisory boards, so no harm done. It was a white collar crime)
So, she got what she wanted out of my dad moneywise, but I disowned her after that and she’s no longer in my life and hasn’t been for the past 18+ years. I hope it was worth it for her.
It wasn’t Dylan Thomas was it?
Heh, your worst act of self destruction you’ve ever committed is that you occasionally get something lower than an A for a class? :dubious:
Not surprisingly, he would have been immensely flattered by that remark. 
In the 1970s, I worked in a state government office building. One day a pissed-off coworker decided to go out with a bang. Several bangs, actually. He began in the parking lot by ramming his car into the cars of people he didn’t like. Then, when his car became undriveable because of damage from the ramming spree, he came into the building, where he fetched two loaded pistols from his desk drawer (this was back in the days when government buildings did not routinely have metal detectors at the entrances). He shot up the place as if he were a drunk in a wild west saloon. He didn’t seem to be targeting coworkers, just shooting in all directions. There were bullet holes all over the room. Amazingly, nobody was seriously injured. The police arrived and tackled the guy. He was taken to a mental hospital for observation, and we never saw him again. There were no followup stories in the newspaper, and nobody in authority ever said a word about what ever became of this man.
Last year I gambled and lost £4,700 in one weekend.
Not quite as bad as it sounds, as £3,200 of it was money I had won over a couple of months, starting from £100. But after losing that I then blew another grand a half trying to win it back.
Not the worst self-destructive behaviour, but pretty dumb. I was going to spend a large part of it on a holiday… I ended up going camping in Cornwall instead 
My uncle was a very driven, introverted person growing up who only liked to study and learn. He got a 4.0 in undergrad school and easily got into the medical school of his choice. He aced his first year of medical school and things looked bright for him. He was great his second year as well until he finally started being more social. He went to a party and tried alcohol basically for the first time in his life despite the fact that his mother and father (my grandparents) were horrible alcoholics when he was growing up and they were still headed downhill then too. That was basically all it took and he was a full-blown alcoholic within a month. When the next wrong of exams came around, he figured that drinking was now preferable to studying or even showing up for the exams at all. He was kicked out of medical school shortly thereafter.
He later became a nurse and is now a (sober) hospital administrator but it all still affects him to this day. Unfortunately, his story repeats itself all over my family including me to some extent. Once that switch has been thrown, everybody better stand back to what the carnage.
Not to diminish your suffering, but man, that ain’t too bad. To lose “gravy money” is OK. I know people who have lost rent and food money gambling…
Joe
More alcoholic stories: One guy I knew was told by his doctor that IF he stopped drinking immediately he might live another five years; he increased his drinking and lived another seven years.
Another guy anchored his small boat adjacent to an oyster bar; when the tide went out, his boat settled onto the bar. He removed his shoes so the oyster shells wouldn’t cut them and jumped overboard barefooted onto the oyster bed. His feet were cut to ribbons; he refused all treatment in spite of being diabetic. Both legs were amputated within a couple of years. The real kicker is that his alcoholic father died from gangrene of the legs. I guess the guy wanted to follow a family tradition, to steal from Hank Williams Jr.
Witnessed: Three people close to me have killed themselves.
Enacted: When I was sixteen, I spent something like three days blacked out drunk, came to because someone was waking me up to keep me from choking to death, and began drinking again less than an hour later. All my friends were on heroin, so you know, I figured I had things under control.
Though I got more. Oh baby, I got more. One time I got in this weird, crazy chick’s car, I was fourteen, maybe. I met her in a dollhouse store. I wasn’t allowed to go more than six blocks away from the house, so I hung out in these little shops that used to exist down that street. Now there’s an insurance building taking up the whole block where there was a jewelry store, a record store, the dollhouse place, a pizza place, an antique store with an art gallery. So I met her and just agreed to take a ride in her car after dark for an hour or two, since my mother was a waitress who worked late and all, which was part of why the radius restriction. Anyway, I think we might have been going to see her dealer, because she made me wait in the car. I think she was also a witch. We had the same taste in music, though, so basically I got in a stranger’s car without even candy, just a good sound system.
Yea, I’m lucky I snap out of my bum phase. Though sometimes I worry it will last forever. That I will one day decide to move into a small town somewhere in Montana, get a job with very little responsibilities, and do nothing else but play video games and surf the internet for the rest of my life.
Doesn’t seem particularly self destructive to me. Just seems like he was apathetic about his job and didn’t care if he got fired.
Oh I know. I did say it’s hardly the worst behaviour. But it did give me a real insight into how people can lose everything to gambling. You were ahead, you lost a little bit, so you bet some more to get back to where you were, then you lose again… and then all your winnings have gone. Well, that’s not so bad, you’re back level, right? So you can just bet a bit more and you’ll be back in profit - until you lose and chase some more and…
Caravan camping in Cornwall is high on my wish list for an international holiday (I live in Canada). I wonder if that desire in itself is a self-destructive behaviour.
My friend’s brother was buried in gambling debt and was severely depressed because of it. He asked his mother for help (for the depression) and she basically told him to fuck off. He killed himself in the parking lot of a casino in Vegas last week. It took them over a week to find him in his car. They’re still working on a positive ID.