On the night of the 6th of December 2010, at a tavern in Geilenkirchen Germany, I was enjoying a few cold beers and some pleasant company. Upon entering the establishment, I had noticed a small group of young men engaged in an aggresive (by my American standards) effort to get hammered. One among them was visibly fit-shaced, but not anywhere near the point that I as a trained military medic could tell was concerned about his safety...I figured he'd soon be at the point when he'd slowly pass out (as I'd seen many of the locals do before) upon which his friends would roll him into a cab to suffer nothing worse than a God-awful hang-over the next morning.

These lads were keeping pace with each other drink for drink until...I don't know who ordered the straight shot of 77.7 proof Absinthe, but it went to the guy who was having the most trouble standing (the one I had observed earlier as being the one most likely to soon be counting sheep). Like a champ, he shot it back, and stood there staggering.

Please note...the Absinthes served in this establishment is legal. The thujone concentration is within the limits allowed by the European Union (and for that matter, the United States). I enjoy it on occasion myself. I'll leave the reader to research the details, but suffice to say, a legally brewed and distilled Absinthe will NOT make you hallucinate. You'd have to drink enough Absinthe to kill ten healthy adults from the alcohol to experience the hallucinogenic effect of the wormwood (thujone). For that matter, you can have a similar "high" offof the impurities in a decent Scotch...with the same level of alcohol poisoning. A "true" Absinthe is nothing more than a very potent liquor.

I watched all of this shaking my head. "There goes another," I said to myself. I looked away briefly to locate my own beer when I saw him begin to fall down out of the corner of my eye...then I heard a sickening thud as the back of his skull was the first to hit the marble and granite floor.

Mind you, the time it took for the shot to go down this idiot's gullet to the moment of the bowlingball-like crack of his head hitting the floor was less than two minutes. The sound itself jerked me from the attention I was giving my own beer...I remember saying outloud, "Holy $#!t, that was his head!" It's amazing how a sudden emergency will snap you out of a buzz. I was barely into my second beer when I sprung into action.

In the time it took me to cross the mere ten feet from where I was to the victim, his drunk buddies had lurched him up to a sitting position, his head whipping around every which way...bad news for a guy that had potentially suffered a C-spine injury. I grabbed hold of his head and neck to stabilize and laid him back down. What happened next leads me to believe that this guy's "buddies" may be future Darwin Award winners or At Risk Survivors in their own right.

They kept rolling him around trying to wake him up. I observed his breathing to be rattled and labored...REALLY bad news for a head and neck injury. Even as I stated "I don't like how he's breathing, somebody call an abmulance," they began to poor water on his face to wake him...right onto his nose and mouth causing him to aspirate the fluid (at this point I must point out how bad my zero German and their limited English was aggrevated by one or more parties having "had a few"). Just before the water rinsed it away, I noticed blood coming from the victim's nose...REALLY, REALLY bad news considering he was drunk and had hit the BACK of his head on a stone floor.

I was finally able to convince these guys to stop touching him as I held his head and neck in a stable position. The ambulance arrived, put a C-spine collar on him, and loaded him into the abulance...the whole time, he kept snoring away, not responding to anything.

I learned the next day that this man had a BAC over 0.3%...the machine they used for the test "pegs-out" at 0.3%. 0.05% is enough to get you convicted for DUI. In essence, he was more than six times over the legal limit...not too much more, and he'd have been at the "certainly lethal dose" of alcohol (0.5%). He woke up a few hours later. Aside from the lump on his head, he suffered not permanent injury. He was transfered to an inpatient alcohol treatment facility where he remains at the present time.

I also learned that he was taking some powerful psychiatric medications at the time of the incident, hence why I stated earlier that he might not be worthy of inclusion in the "At Risk Survivor" collection. While one might argue that his doctor had warned him not to drink on those meds (and therefore he'd be an idiot Hellbent on removing himself from the gene pool), another might argue that he was not of sound mind in the first place due to the meds and the underlying condition that he was taking them for, and therefore possibly not responsible for his actions (the maturity clause). Of course, someone had phoned his girlfriend (who, on a bicycle, beat the ambulance to the bar)...she told us that this wasn't the first time our guy had passed out drunk while standing up.

All I know is this event scared the crap out of me...I finished my beer and ordered a couple more, counting my blessings that I learned my lessons with alcohol early enough to NEVER get that drunk, and thankful that years of first aid training have become so automatic that I can function rationally after having had a couple drinks myself.

I'm also thankful (as a connoisseur of exotic spirits) that I was able to talk the bar owner out of removing from the bar what is the finest Ansinthe collection I've ever seen, and for the occasional free drink he now gives me for saving the life of one of his customers.

Submitted on 12/14/2010

Submitted by: Eugene Von Bon
Reference: 6 December 2010

Copyright © 2010 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Eugene, that was a truly well-written story! It would seem that there was real team-effort stupidity happening here, and your heroic actions prevented an almost certain tragedy! I'll keep this as an HM. I have NO DOUBT one or more of these mooks will try it again, only you may not be there next time! :-)

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
It sounds to me like this guy is extremely luck that you were there to keep a sane grasp on the situation while his buddies tried their best to do him in. Thanks, Eugene!

The Darwin Awards Gift Shop

The Darwin Awards Condom Keep yourself out of the gene pool! A condom in a matchbook, useful for emergency contraception, bachelor parties, frat parties, and important rites of passage. LOADED inside and out with funny quotes and stories. Everyone loves this item! Friends don't let friends reproduce! $13 for Pack of 4