drinking and driving

emilynicole02

okay. just have to vent a little bit here....so i am pretty much the only girl that hangs out in my group of friends..and out of all of our friends i am usually the one that is sober when we go out. yes i drink, but if you had to pick someone, it'd be me. anyways that being said every thursday we go for wings at a local bar-i NEVER drink, ever. for one main reason -->to drive our friends home. always. but 9 out of 10 times NONE of them will take me up on my offer and use the sayings "jesus drives after 2am so its okay" or "the hemi will drive me home" yeah they are funny sayings, but seriously...IM SOBER!

now for the weekends..particularly this past weekend we had free beer at a local bar for my boyfriends birthday... i only had a few drinks and stopped drinking around 1130pm bc everyone was way drunker than i was and i just wasn't feeling it...good thing i stopped and sobered up because we are going to leave and the girl my friend brians seeing melissa was sober and going to drive his truck with him and another friend of ours back to my apartment (8-10 miles away).. well she was backing it up she backed into another vehicle in the parking lot... (rewind a bit, brians truck was recently hit a month or so ago in this same parking lot and had about $2,000 damage to it) so he starts freaking out on melissa..

shes upset now and gets out of the truck, he goes to get into it but i ran over and pulled the keys out of the ignition bc i KNEW brian was going to drive (he even specifically said "im driving to black creek [town we live in] give me my ****in keys").. well he started yelling at me and tried taking his keys back. i told him that he was drunk and needs to calm down and that melissa is not used to driving a truck so it was hard for her to see and there wasn't any damages done to anybodys vehicles and that he is not driving because of how intoxicated he was. melissa is in histerics. hes yelling at me saying that he doesn't want his truck hit again and are you going to pay for the damages?! and all this and that.. i told him that we aren't leaving his truck here, but he is NOT driving it. so i pulled it back into the stall and then "re pulled" it out of the parking lot and to the road. by this time my boyfriend had him calmed down and melissa came back and they took off to my apartment.. i got into my car and we got back to our apartment..

well now everybody is kinda crabby but not fighting with eachother, i made some pizza for everyone and we all went to bed.


come morning. we were all taking about what happened and brian makes this comment "well next time you should learn not to take my keys or ill prolly punch you in the face" and it was said in a funny way but also had this tone about it like he was either still drunk and pissed or was kidding i couldnt really tell... and i was like i would have let you move it to the street for melissa to drive if i would kno for sure that you weren't going to just take off and head to black creek! he goes i wasn't going to drive anywhere blah blah blah which obviously shows how drunk he was bc everyone heard him say that...

so fastforward to tonight, wings night. our group is going up north to hang out this weekend and he mentions something about no fighting all this. im like fighting what are you talking about?? he says oh you and justin you guys have been fighting for the past 3 weeks! (which funny thing is we have only had one argument and have been amazing--even talking about marriage lately. so pretty sure we haven't been arguing lol) so jokingly i say wellll what about your shinanigans last weekend! and he got all bent out of shape and said again to me " maybe you shouldn't take peoples keys and just let them ****ing drive then there wouldn't be any issues now would there be?!"



ooooookay, sorry for the book but for those that are still with me...................lol

am i wrong for caring about my friends and not wanting them to get hurt? i mean if they were to get into an accident and i could have potentially stopped it from happening i would feel HORRIBLE. it just really bothers me that hes getting so mad when he KNOWS how drunk he was and how dumb he can get about because he admits it in the morning!

even another one of my close guy friends realizes it (who also has driven drunk and i have yelled at him bc i was yet again sober) and has stopped because he knows how unsafe it is. so i just don't get why im such a bad person??

ugh, sorry needed to vent and don't need to tell people around me here because that always leads to drama lol...

HiKaren

Maybe one day they will thank you for that. I take it, none of them got any DUI's yet? In my 20's... Yep I got one.. It wasn't nice. I paid my debt, & did everything your supposed to do. That was about 20 years ago. But peoples lives are at stake when people drive drunk. Their lucky that your one to speak up. Thats really cool of you to speak up like that. Too many people just brush it off, and don't say anything.

Drenched_N_Motivation

I didnt have the patience to read you entire post, but good luck with everything.

lulu9663

If these people are saying this crazy stuff when they are drunk, then acting like you blew it out of proportion, then they don't realize how drunk they really get. And, Jesus most certainly does not drive after 2am.

A few years ago, a couple guys at a party in my town got extremely drunk, and decided to drive home. They crashed less than a mile from my house. Both were in the military.The driver couldn't handle the car, and next thing he knew, his car was over the side of an embankment. His friend was dead, and when he saw what he had done, he ran the rest of the way to his house and shot himself. And this all happened because none of their friends wanted to stand up to them and keep them from driving. At least you give a **** about their lives, even if they don't. I say you need to videotape one of these little drunken outbursts. Then when they are completely sober, and make them watch it. They obviously don't think they have a problem.

Also, nothing says that you need to take the abuse. If they continue to act this way, call the cops before they get in the car. They likely won't get charged with anything, but they'll get thrown in the drunk tank for the night. Another way to keep them from driving is to know how high their BAC is. You could drop a little money on a Portable Breath Test. If they see how drunk they are, it could get the point across that they shouldn't drive. If none of that works, or anything else, then you've done all you can do. Sometimes you just have to walk away. You can't always hold people by the hand. At least you can say you tried to help.

Pebble321

They are lucky they have a friend like you who cares about them and tries to stop them. Having said that, you can only try so hard, if they really won't listen to you and you've tried everything you can, you have to let them take responsibiity for themselves.

I've met too many young men (almost all men, though some women) who have to live with a permanent disability like quadriplegia or brain injury after driving drunk. The sad thing is that most of us get more sense as we get older, but some people don't make it there.......

bradthemedic

Your friends are idiots.

Ps Jesus shields also protect all cars on Sundays. It's the only way I can explain why everyone on the road is an *kitten* after church.

hongruss

I once argued with my Brother over the keys to my car when I was drunk & I pestered him that much, he gave them to me! I went up the road turned around, crossed two lanes of traffic, mounted the kerb & tried to run him down!

Nobody in my Family would speak to me for three weeks(still at home then) & I HAD NO IDEA WHY. I stopped drinking for ten years after that & I still don't remember any of it, except rowing with him!

My Mum stopped a friend of 26 Years from drink driving by taking their keys & they never had the humility to realise their mistake & it drove a wedge into their friendship, broke my Mums heart BUT she did do the right thing!

I have come to realise I am a bad drunk & therefore no longer drink(excepting the odd social beer), & to be honest I don't miss it at all.

You did the right thing but people need to grow up by themselves

Russ

Jain

You did the right thing.

We have very strict drink driving laws here in the UK, you can have your driving licence taken away, a big fine or even jail time.
Next time I'd call the cops on their *kitten*.

lil_pulp

You are right that what your friends are doing is not okay. Honestly, after reading (parts of your really long) post, though, I'm much more worried for the rest of the people on the road than your friends.