Three Drunks

Never Too Young To Start

Our 11-year-old patient left home with his 13-year-old cousin to go visit friends. When the mother’s boyfriend went to pick them up, he noticed they were not acting right. After asking a few questions, he learned they had been drinking tequila. The boyfriend took them home and put them to bed. Later, when the mother arrived home, she was unable to wake her son. So, she called the paramedics who brought him to the emergency department. He was unconscious, unresponsive and was found to have a blood alcohol level of 168, which is double the legal level for adult drivers in our state. He had to be admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit and watched carefully overnight.

Open Bar at Your Local Emergency Department

Paramedics brought in a very drunk 54-year-old lady at 11:00 PM. Her blood alcohol level was 302. Remember, in our state, a blood alcohol level of 80 will land you in jail for driving under the influence.

Our usual practice in these situations is to keep a close eye on the patient until she sobers enough to call for a ride or leave on her own. At 3:30 in the morning, she seemed to be getting worse rather than better. I guess we didn’t watch her as carefully as we should have because, when she tried to get up to walk, a vodka bottle fell onto the floor. Her repeat alcohol level was 450.

A Man Stands Up for His Constitutional Rights

A man was arrested for being drunk in public. The police brought him in to get cleared to go to custody. When I asked him if he had been drinking, he said, “I’ll have to take the fifth* on that.”

* Paraphrased from Wikipedia:

In the late nineteenth century, liquor was often sold in bottles which appeared to hold a quart but, in fact, contained 2, 3, or 4 fluid ounces less than a quart and were called “fifths” because they held about a fifth of a gallon. The fifth was the usual size of bottle for distilled beverages in the United States until 1980.