I had to convince the school therapist I wasn't trying to kill myself

Since there aren’t many Clarkson posts here, so I thought I’d drop one or two stories.

My freshman year, before we decided to make our own id's, it was at times a pain in the ass to obtain alcoholic beverages. Then a neighbor across the hall told of his recipe to make our own hard cider. It’s pretty simple, I’m sure you can find it online. Anyway, of course we were down to try it. We each start out making our own half gallon. It only needs a few days supposedly, but I let it go all week. On Friday I use an old shirt to strain it out and we give it a try. Everyone hated the damn taste, but it didn’t bother me any. It also didn’t taste at all like alcohol to me; so I drank my whole half gallon in about a half hour.

A little while later, maybe an hour or so, it was getting to be party time on our campus. Not feeling any effects of the cider, I dove right into the keg at the party, slamming five or so beers promptly upon our arrival. I vaguely remember hanging with some girl, grabbing her and me a few more beers, and then it gets a little fuzzy. I also remember going outside where my buddy was out smoking some cheba. From there on I'm basically telling the story from his recollection and the police report.

Apparently I went in halves with my buddy on some cheba, and we finished off the whole damn bag. Then he said I just kind of vanished; one minute I was there stumbling around, the next minute I was nowhere to be seen.

I guess from there I went up the street a little bit, causing a bit of a ruckus. Some house had one of those porch swings, and after falling out of it I apparently got into a fight with it. These neighbors were used to drunken Clarkson students, and were nice enough to call campus safety rather than the police. The only problem is that our campus safety is also known as camping safely, so if you get my drift they’re basically useless. So I eluded them for an hour and a half before they gave up and called the Potsdam police. I guess I eluded them for some time as well, at one point falling into a swamp. This place is in northern New York, and believe me when I say it gets real cold. It happened to be during the cold weather, but luckily before the snowy season.

I eventually end up stumbling down a back road with the police car right behind me. They said they asked me to stop and lay down in the road, but I just kept attempting to run/stumble down the road. They said I fell three times before finally just staying down. When they got out to arrest me, they immediately ended up calling a rescue squad instead.

When I woke up I was in the hospital. I was told I had a BAC of .35 the night before and came in with hypothermia (my body temp was around 89, I believe). I also had cuts all over my forehead, elbows, and knees. The doc told me that half gallon of hard cider was probably the equivalent of downing a bottle of whiskey, and so I was I lucky to be alive. When my BAC was finally low enough to be released, around 6 the next night, they gave me what was left of my clothes. The shirt had been cut off me, and the pants were so muddy and ripped I just threw the f**kers away and left in hospital pants. As if that wasn’t enough of a bad night, I also had to stop by the police dept. to pick up my tickets for disorderly conduct (I hear I wasn’t so cordial to the cops when they approached me as I lay face down in the road), and for underage drinking. And as if that wasn’t enough I had to meet with the dean a few days later, who was a complete dick to me.

He insisted that I was trying to kill myself and, being a danger to the school and its students, should be promptly expelled. I ended up having to convince a school therapist I was just a regular idiot, not an idiot trying to kill myself. Making your own hooch (well, drinking it really), I’ve learned, can be a very dangerous proposition.