We all know that alcohol affects our ability to think straight and that means embarrassing drunken stories are common. That said, while we might all cringe at things we have done when under the influence, some people take it that bit further and end up becoming headline news stories.
These are the tales of people who set a standard for drunken disasters that the rest of us can only dream of reaching.
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10 Got stuck in a photo stand
Most of us who like a drink tend to go a bit over the top on our birthdays, so perhaps we should not judge Danny Melody too harshly. His mad moment also happened in Dublin, a city that is renowned for being party hearty. Danny is from Cheshire, in England, but was visiting Dublin to mark his 21st and decided to pose for a cheesy souvenir picture with his head in the hole of a photo board of a leprechaun. Unfortunately for him, it seems as if alcohol causes his skull to inflate, because once he had stuck his head inside the board he could not get it out again. His friends did what all true buddies would do at a time like that: filmed it on their mobile phones and uploaded it onto YouTube. He also became a magnet for people passing by, who started snapping photos of him.
Speaking to the newspapers once someone had finally freed him, Danny said: “I was quite drunk at the time so I wasn’t that embarrassed, but I am now looking back at it”.[1]
9 Sold their car to buy more booze
People often buy useless things when they have had too much to drink – the boozy Amazon shopping spree could be used by temperance campaigners – but selling something you actually need is a lot less common. That is what happened to a man from New Zealand, who somehow managed to keep his name from hitting the headlines. The man from Rotorua was in the middle of a truly epic binge when he ran out of money and decided to sell his car to a stranger for $800, to give him the cash to keep going.
Waking up the next day, he completely forgot that he had done this and went to his local police station to report that it had been stolen. The mess was only sorted out because the man who had bought it from him started to suspect he might have bought a stolen vehicle and decided to do some checking into the car registration number. With the police believing it to be stolen, they were alerted when the man entered the number into the website. The car buyer then brought the vehicle back to the embarrassed seller. Still, it is better than drinking and driving.[2]
8 Gone fishing
Fishing is a popular hobby, but not many people attempt it while they are under the influence. That was not the case for one man from Boston, who must have had the worst craving for fish in human history. This led him to take his boat out onto one of the city canals after a night of spectacularly heavy drinking. Unfortunately for him he was seen by the Massachusetts Environmental Police, who were on patrol in that canal at the time, and he ended up with a criminal record.
His conviction was not for drunk boating, but for being too good at fishing. By the time the police caught him, he had netted roughly 122 sea bass, which is about 121 more than most fishing fans manage when they are sober! Apparently, the city has a rule that people are not allowed to catch more than eight sea bass at a time and the man was forced to give his fishy cargo to charity. Which lucky charity received over a hundred dead fish was not made clear.[3]
7 Forgotten to finish a burglary
In what might be the most French story ever, a burglar in that country was captured by police after being tempted by a bottle of champagne in the middle of his crime. This bizarre incident took place in Provins, a historic town just outside of Paris, in 2014. The couple who owned the property that he had broken into came home after a night out and their suspicions were sparked by the sight of closed blinds, as they remembered that these were open when they went out.
Instead of going inside, they called the police, who went into the house and found the burglar watching television while drunk out of his mind. He was stealing money, passports and (for some reason) a pair of sunglasses, as well as a bicycle that he was apparently intending to use for his getaway. While ransacking the house he must have stumbled across the bottle of champagne and what Frenchman worthy of his country could possibly resist? According to a spokesman for the police department he was “very relaxed, completely intoxicated and had apparently forgotten where he was.” Hopefully they let him keep the sunglasses to help with his hangover the following morning.[4]
6 Climbed a mountain
Making your way back home after having a bit too much to drink can sometimes feel like climbing a mountain, but one man from Estonia really did turn into Edmund Hillary under the influence of alcohol. The man, who was just called ‘Pavel’ in news reports, was on a holiday trip to the Cervinia resort in the Alps at the time. Apparently he had opted to hit the bars of this resort after a day on the ski slopes before wandering home to his hotel for the night.
He headed down a road, but apparently it was the wrong choice and it took him onto one of the ski runs that led directly to the Ventina Mountain. Now most people would probably have realized that they had taken a wrong turn when they suddenly found their walk home becoming a lot more of an uphill trek than usual, but Pavel was so drunk he managed to scale 2,400 meters, where he found a restaurant called Igloo. By this time it was around 3 am, but he succeeded in getting inside and was discovered zonked out on a bench the next morning by the restaurant staff. This actually seems like an oddly impressive feat and some of us would have been eager to get our full names in the paper afterwards.[5]
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5 Dreamed of being a time traveler
Delusions caused by drinking are pretty standard, but most of us just kid ourselves that the hot woman at the other end of the bar would date us. One man from Casper, in Wyoming, took a more imaginative approach to losing his grip on reality though, as he became convinced that he was a time traveler from the future. When Bryant Johnson was reported to the cops for disorderly behavior, he told them that he had traveled back in time from 2048 to let people in Casper know that hostile aliens were planning to hit the town the following year and that they had to get away while they still could.
He had worked up an impressively detailed story, claiming that these aliens had pumped booze into his system and put him on a transporter pad to send him back in time – although he did not say why they would want to give their victims advance warning. He also maintained that the aliens were meant to send him to 2017, but he had ended up in 2018 by accident (maybe they had been drinking too). He finished by demanding to speak to the town president, in true “take me to your leader” pulp sci-fi fashion. All in all, the breathalyzer test that showed he had a .136 blood alcohol level was surely the most redundant ever taken.[6]
4 Had a meltdown at work
Who has not a day at work that was so bad that it has made them want to quit in the most public way possible? That is one reason why working and drinking do not mix very well, which was demonstrated by the case of Daniel Kochanski. Back in 2012 he was working as a court stenographer, typing up reports of court cases so that accurate records could be kept. It is possible that this job could be both boring and depressing, but the meltdown he had under the effects of booze was still pretty amazing.
Apparently Kochanski starting typing the words ‘I hate my job’ over and over again in his transcripts of court cases, rather than what was actually happening. News reports stated that over 30 transcripts were sabotaged by him, which meant that the people convicted in those cases could appeal and possibly get their sentences overturned. Kochanski was annoyed at the suggestion that he might have been unprofessional though, saying: “I never typed gibberish. I always did my job 100 percent. I was let go because of substance abuse.” Ironically, that might be one of the worst defenses ever.[7]
3 Bitten a car
While all of the stories so far have been about men, women are just as capable of getting drunk and doing insane things. In 2014, Rhian Jeremiah from Aberystwyth in Wales was taken to court after a drunken night out that saw her bite a passing car and then get into a fight with the police. Apparently, the 26-year-old had been to a special event to honor the memory of her boyfriend, who drowned, but that still does not really explain her actions.
After leaving this event, she came across a Fiat 500 car in the street and started yelling at the people inside it. She was so drunk that they could not work out what she was shouting about and tried to drive away, only for her bite into the frame of the car! They saw this via the sun roof and told the court that it had made a “screeching noise.” Her lethal teeth also managed to leave marks in the bodywork of the car that cost £220 – or $278 – to repair. She was sentenced to community service and cast as the daughter of Jaws in an upcoming James Bond movie (that last part may be made up).[8]
2 Toured Scandinavia by taxi
The taxi trip home is a standard part of a night out, but it helps if you are sober enough to remember what country you live in. That was a problem for one unnamed man, who booked a taxi to get him safely home after a drunken New Year celebration in Copenhagen and ended up getting the driver to take him on a 372-mile ride through no less than three different countries. Starting in Denmark, the taxi then drove across Sweden before heading into Norway – which seems to have finally reminded him that his house was in Oslo.
That was not the end of this Scandinavian saga though, as the man did not pay his fare when he finally reached his home. For some reason, the driver let him get out of the taxi and go into the house and then sat outside for hours fuming while his car battery slowly went flat. The following morning he called the police, who found the man asleep and at that point he agreed to cough up the fare – which was $2,200 in US money.[9]
1 Got friendly with a rubber dinghy
Drunken people often dream of performing heroic acts, but none of the Avengers could match the heroism of one intoxicated 22-year-old man from Brittany, France, who spotted what he thought to be an unconscious person lying inside a rubber dinghy in a shipyard. He decided to do what most people would do in that situation and give the person the kiss of life – except that there was no person and he was discovered by the police getting intimate with the dinghy itself. It is hard to imagine just how drunk you would have to be to see someone who is not there, but to add to the embarrassment the man had called the fire service as well as the police before he started smooching!
He was taken to the cells for the night to sleep off his binge, but none of the news reports stated whether he managed to stop the dinghy from dying. What we can safely say is though that France is just as capable of producing superheroes as the US.[10]
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About The Author: I am a freelance writer based in Dundee and also make short films under the name Wardlaw Films.