Let's Get Drunk and Drive

By Cynthia Leslie, MD, FACS
Drinking and driving is as American as baseball and apple pie. Alcohol is our drug of choice and boy do we abuse it. Most of the time we’re lucky and people don’t get hurt. But, people who aren’t so lucky end up in the Trauma Center.

Think about it this way, Most of the people we know are fine, upstanding citizens that happily look down their noses at IV drug abusers. Most of those very same people have gotten very drunk. Not only have they gotten drunk, they’ve driven drunk to boot. We hear it all the time- “I only had two beers,” “I know how to handle my liquor,” and “I’m not an alcoholic.” The blah and the blah and the blah, never seem to end. But guess what fine, upstanding? You were drinking and someone is dead.

Here at the Trauma Center, we see patients in distress. We hear screaming and crying, pleading and dying and everything in between. We know that a lot of patients are unfortunate, innocent victims. But many of our unfortunate patients were drunk and incredibly stupid. We see every type of drunkenness that drinking has ever produced, but the drinker we see most often is The Drunk Who Isn’t Drunk. This amazing human being is a marvel to behold. He’s too drunk to tell you his name. He’s too drunk to tell you his age and when you ask him where he lives, he can’t remember that either. He took out a tree at a high rate of speed, and he killed his childhood friend. He’s The Drinker Who Isn’t Drunk and he doesn’t know how it happened.

We also take care of the drinker who’s Only An After Work Drinker. As soon as this drinker leaves her job, she drinks herself to sleep. From 6 p.m. through 6a.m., she’s as drunk as drunk can be and whenever she goes for a drive, bad things tend to happen. When she ends up in the trauma room, she asks the age-old question. But, I’m Only An After Work Drinker – how could this have happened?

And then there is the ultimate drinker, The Drinker Who Knows How To Kill. They murder your sweetheart, or husband. They murder your wife and kids. They also dismember your mother and leave your father face down in a ditch. The Drinker Who Knows How to Kill, look like normal people. They binge on booze on weekends, or they drink throughout the week. However they choose to do it, they’re drinking to get drunk and every time they tie one on, they always want to drive.

Now the last thing a drinker should do is go for a drive while drunk, but no matter how often we say it, no one seems to listen. People get on their ATVs and ride their motorcycles. They jump into their motorboats and rev up the engines. It almost makes me wonder why the trauma team makes a fuss. Perhaps we should all start drinking, just like out drunken patients.

So here’s to driving drunk and not caring about our children. Here’s to driving drunk and murdering all our neighbors. Here’s to driving drunk and becoming a quadriplegic. Here’s to driving drunk and learning to be a widow. Every time we drink and drive, we’re sure to have some fun. Here’s to drinking and driving and killing the people we love.