from mangledman:
While I told Bondo I hadn’t had any experiences that let me see Beelzebub himself, I have been in the presence of abject EVIL. Well he had to bring up cheap trick. Cheap trick was a brand new band, and kinda where part of this story was taking root. Cheap trick hadn’t made it to Indiana, but a friend and I needed to swap cars with his sister in Melbourne Florida. I think I was led to believe that we were going to Florida to party with a couple hot chicks to find out when I got there his sister was a devout lesbian these days, and quite jealous when her partner threatened to climb in my bed in the night. We being white good looking heterosexuals, clubbing with them probably would have not gone over well. Suddenly awkward already a serious beerdrinker, I drank 10 cases of beer in 9 days pretty much by myself. Less than 2 weeks later, I would be pulling out of a coma, having been paralyzed in both arms and one leg. Well being in chronic pain back in those days, the doctors knowing the pain I was in would only prescribe anything for a couple of months. So here I am only 20 years old, trying to get back up on my feet to be a productive member of society, and the only tools at my disposal are alcohol, weed, and whatever I can beg out of the Doctor for very short intervals.
Well, after several years I am working doing odd jobs, because money is what helps me keep up a destructive lifestyle where I drink, manage to stay on my feet, get paid, and do it again.
It is a serious blizzard going on, I have a temporary licence, that lets me go to work. Today I get to go to the license back, and I walk right straight across the street to the bar and sit down and order a quart of beer and drink it from a small glass in about 15 minutes. So I order another one. I have been sitting there about 50 minutes, and barely had a little glass left, and I left a tiny bit in the bottle. A guy asks me which direction I am going, so I told him, but I had to run back to the house to get something, and it was about ten extra miles out of the way, and I would take him to Illinois (where I was headed) and be on our way. It is extremely cold the road has about 2 inches of packed snow on it with 2 ft. Piled along the sides, and no one in sight. I am driving a big old Ford luxury sedan with great tires, so 50 did not seem unreasonable having the road to myself. I came up a grade and as I get a little closer, a pickup is turning, he is about 400 yards ahead, and he is inching left, and getting ready to turn left in the oncoming lane. I am now about being 200 yards and closing on a snow packed road, and he is in the other lane, and slides past his turn!! I am still trying to slow down crowding the snowbank on the right, and getting over as far as possible as he inched past center and I still hasn’t seen me. I clipped about 6 inches of his bumper, went through the snowbank. Well the trooper shows up, I am only about a mile from home, and headed to jail for a breathalyzer. My passenger didn’t seem hurt at all until the cop got there. The time it took for the trooper to be done with the accident, my alcohol level is rising, and I was barely over the legal limit when I got tested. Noon until the next morning the Sheriff that lets me out to go to court tells me, he had been looking for my passenger all morning. The officer said “he had stabbed some people, stole their cars, and raped somebody, he could have raped YOU”!! I felt my knees buckle. I get to court to find the first of January the second DUI carries maximum of class D felony, and I can be looking at 1-4 years in PRISON!! Severely shaken up I decided that drunkenness wasn’t helping the pain any, and Jail, or by Prison was not a place I wanted to be, especially with limited abilities. The possibilities were endless. If I had made it to the house about a mile away, I could have been stabbed, possibly repeatedly, and the GOOD LORD had gotten my attention before, but this time REALLY shook me to the core. I decided I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I was going to change things, and the journey began.
A quick recap, lost my license, the day I get it back, I lose it again. I picked up up a stranger who probably had Ill intentions of leaving me at home dead on the floor (being nice probably meant very little to such a person) and figured very the continuous drowning in alcohol was not making life fun, or less complicated.

God has to knock us upside the head sometimes. Or swerve a truck in front of us! Great story, thanks for sharing.
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