It doesn't take a genius

It doesn't take that many brain cells to learn from one's mistakes.  I guess some people just don't have enough.  I know what you're thinking - "Everyone has enough brain cells, Doc!"  Ok, that may be true.  But some people just choose not to use the brain cells they have.

A guy was brought to me a few nights ago having been found down by police.  "Found down" can mean one of several things:

• Pedestrian hit by a car
• Had a heart attack or stroke
• Really, really, really drunk

There are several other options of course, but what I've learned is that the third option is usually the right one.  Such was the case of the gentleman alluded to above.  He admitted to me that he drank about a liter and a half of liquor (that's about three pints) that night.  "How often do you do that?" I asked him.

"Whenever I can afford it, Doc."

Nice.  I like him already.

As the workup progressed, one of my assistants thought this drunken sot looked familiar.  She looked up his information, and sure enough he had been admitted to my hospital just 8 days prior having been in a car accident while piss drunk (yes, that's the official medical term).  His blood alcohol while he was driving was 320 (0.32, or about 4 times the legal limit).  I guess he figured he hadn't done well enough that time, because in spite of totaling his car a week before while drunk, he failed to learn a goddamned thing.

This night his blood alcohol was 380.

So what is it?  Had he been drowning his brain in booze for so long that the cells had decided to defect and now refuse to function properly anymore?  Or are some people actually that self-destructive?

Believe it or not, I'm actually glad when people get this drunk.  Wait, wait, stop screaming and keep reading.  There actually was one good thing about his being so inebriated - at least he was too drunk to get behind the wheel this time.