What terrifying secret has someone told you while drunk?

What terrifying secret has someone told you while drunk?

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What terrifying secret has someone told you while drunk?
Story one. I have two stories.
I had a housemaid in college whoseveral years before had
accidentally shot and killed a friend during a hunting trip.
He went to trial and was acquitted of all charges years
later. He never told me, but he told a
woman I was involved with that it had not been an accident.

(00:21):
Years ago when I worked at the Las Vegas Hilton, in the main
kitchen, I had a very high strung boss named Hussein.
He was from Turkey. We jokingly referred to him as
insane because of his personality.
Once, after our shift ended, he grabbed a case of beer from the
supply refrigerator and invited a few of us to help ourselves.
He probably had four or five himself.

(00:43):
Then he told us that when he lived in Turkey, he had kicked
some guy's ass and came to the United States to get away.
We did not think much of it. About a month later, while on
vacation in Mexico, Hussein was walking back to his hotel room
after drinking at a bar. He ducked down an alley to
urinate and was caught by a policeman.
He was charged and convicted of public urination.

(01:06):
At the time, the United States did not have reciprocity with
Turkey, but Mexico did. It turned out that what Hussein
had described as kicking someone's ass had actually been
murder. He was extradited back to Turkey
where we assume he spent the rest of his life in a Turkish
prison. The movie The Midnight Express
shows what life there is like. Story 2A friend of mine died

(01:28):
from a drug overdose. After the funeral, a mutual
friend and I were drinking when he broke down crying.
He asked me if I remembered the time when he and our late friend
told me about an accident they had witnessed where a truck
driver died. I told him I did.
Then he told me something I willnever forget.
He said our friend had run up tothe dying man and stolen his
wedding ring while the man looked up at him terrified and

(01:51):
helpless. I knew they were deep into drugs
but I never thought they could do something like that.
I grew up with them, they were like my brothers.
I do not really trust anyone completely anymore.
Story 3 My best friend disappeared for a while,
supposedly left town. We were both in our mid 20s.
He came back after about a monthand would Take Me Out drinking

(02:14):
and partying every night. I wondered how he could afford
to blow so much money on drugs and alcohol, but he would not
tell me. One night I saw him pay our tab
and noticed he had at least 12 or $15,000 on him.
After returning, he stayed intoxicated all the time and
wanted to hang out constantly. He would come over to my place
after the bars closed and we would party until morning.

(02:37):
Often he broke down crying saying he could not live with
himself over what he had done, but he never gave details.
Night after night this continueduntil 1 evening he finally
confessed. He said he had been paid a lot
of money to do bad things to badpeople.
He told me someone from his father's gang paid him to burn
down a business over a money dispute.

(02:58):
Then he admitted to killing two men accused of molesting
children. He said he was given a handgun
and a shotgun and paid $10,000 after each execution.
More than 10 years later, I still do not know if I believe
him. After he came back, he was so
broken and depressed. If it was true, it made sense.
He kept using drugs and drinkinguntil about 5 years ago when he

(03:21):
had a heart attack at age 27. He quit using, but the damage
was done. He had another heart attack six
months later and died a few daysafter his 28th birthday.
He was the funniest and kindest person I have ever known and I
miss him. Story 4 At a family gathering,
my grandmother got tipsy and started telling stories from her

(03:43):
childhood. She does this every time, sober
or not, It is just a grandma thing.
But this time it took a dark turn.
She told us why she hates going to the dentist, especially the
drilling part. She said that when she was six
years old, during the Second World War, her family lived in
Hamburg, Germany, near the harbor.
During one particular week in 1943, the city was continuously

(04:07):
bombed. Over 35,000 people died and more
than 100,000 were injured. The houses that were hit burned
down, creating a massive firestorm that sucked in oxygen,
creating strong winds that even pulled people into the flames.
The fire was so intense that people running from their
burning homes got stuck in the molten asphalt and burned to

(04:28):
death. It happened all around her and
the smell lingered in her neighborhood for over a week.
The smell of drilling teeth reminded her of that exact
scent. She once had to stop the dentist
because she recognized it immediately.
The story shocked us all. It came out of nowhere.
It still sends chills down my spine.
Story 5. One of my best friends since

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middle school opened up to me onour last day of high school.
We had been partying all day after getting off at 10 in the
morning, but most people left around 3:00 in the afternoon to
get ready for the senior dinner and after party, my friend
stayed behind with our class president.
I told him I would pick him up for the dinner and left.
When I returned, both of them were drunk and crying.

(05:11):
A few years earlier our class president had lost his father.
I took my friend home so he could change for the dinner and
on the way he told me what had happened.
They had kept drinking after everyone left and started
talking about their dads. I had never met my friend's
father, I only knew he had died.I never knew how it turned out.
His dad had been a lawyer or something similar in his home

(05:34):
country and was being extorted by a gang.
When the money ran out, his father sent the family to
another country and told him he would join them soon.
A few weeks later they learned that he had been murdered by the
gang. It completely destroyed my
friend. We used to drink heavily since
high school, but while it was just drinking for me, for him it

(05:54):
was a way to numb the pain. It was shocking when he told me
this and it made me understand him so much more why he acted
the way he did. Story 6.
I shared an off campus apartmentwith a very cool older guy in
college. He was a nurse who got up super
early every morning for his shifts.
Every night you could find him at his regular Irish pub.

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They let me drink there without an identification card because
they knew I was with him. He was basically a high
functioning alcoholic. One day after finishing my
exams, I came home and he brought out a bottle of Jamison
to celebrate. It was about 2/3 full.
After a few shots he started talking about his time in
Vietnam. I had known him for two years

(06:36):
and he had never mentioned it before.
I knew he was a veteran but assumed he had been a nurse.
I was wrong. He told me he had been in
Special forces. His entire demeanor changed
after a few drinks. He started describing covert
missions where he was ordered toassassinate civilians.
He said he still dreamed of the faces of the people he had
killed. We finished the entire bottle

(06:57):
that night. He got up the next morning at
5:00 and went to work like nothing happened.
I spent the whole day hungover and haunted by what he had told
me. Story 7 I had a boyfriend who
never talked about his past. He spoke fondly of his old
state, but only about the place itself, never about the people.
If I tried to ask more he would just say it did not matter

(07:18):
anymore. We were young, I was about 19
and he was probably around 23. He drank heavily all the time,
but I thought it was just normalyoung fun.
One night while extremely drunk,he started talking about how
much he loved going into the woods and how he and his friends
used to play in the rivers and streams back home.

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Then he got really sad and started babbling incoherently.
I heard him say something about a friend coming to his house on
drugs, then something about his friend getting shot in the face,
and finally that it was the reason he could never go home
again. He was so desperately sad and
missed his home terribly. You could see it every time the
subject came up. I am pretty sure he accidentally

(08:02):
or maybe intentionally killed someone and was on the run.
I believe it was an accident because he seemed so distraught
but you never really know. At 19 you barely understand
anything about life. I still wonder if he ever had to
face those demons. Story 8.
When I moved to the city where Ilive now, I found a roommate on
Craigslist. It was 2011 so it was not as

(08:24):
strange as it would seem today and he was really cool.
He lived in a double master house so I had plenty of
privacy. He was a young real estate agent
and we ended up hanging out in each other social circles.
We will call him M. He developed feelings for a girl
who happened to become close to me, and when those feelings were
not reciprocated, he started getting weird and resentful

(08:46):
toward me. Over time, I discovered that M
had a serious drinking problem. I would get home from work
around 1:00 in the morning and it was common to find him passed
out on the couch after finishingone of those cheap one liter
bottles of wine. One night I came home early and
noticed him sitting in the dark with his back against the couch.
I asked if he was OK and I couldimmediately tell he was

(09:07):
emotionally distressed, sitting next to his half empty bottle of
wine. He began telling me that when he
first moved to the city, he caught his girlfriend in bed
with another man and shot and killed him.
His girlfriend fled the state and because it happened in a
rough neighborhood, the police never paid much attention, so he
got away with it. He said he thought about it all

(09:28):
the time. I quietly excused myself and
went upstairs, completely terrified.
The next morning he asked me what time I had gotten home
because he did not hear me come in, meaning he had no memory of
confessing to murder. I had my dad help me move out
the following week and I never mentioned it again.
Story 9 When I was 16, my mother's first husband, my

(09:52):
biological father, got extremelydrunk after she left him that
very day. He told me that I was never
supposed to have been born and that I should have died with my
brother. I asked what he meant by my
brother since I had no siblings,and he confessed that he had
beaten my mother so badly while she was pregnant that she ended
up in the hospital. I survived, but my twin brother

(10:14):
died in the womb. At the time, my mother's English
was not very good since she was Polish, so he told the doctor
she had fallen down the stairs. He threatened to have her
deported and used me as blackmail if she ever told
anyone. Soon after I followed her once
she found a place to stay. I asked if she had anything to
tell me about my birth and she told me the same story.

(10:36):
I guess that explains why I always felt like I was missing a
part of myself. Story 10 My mother once told me
a story while she was drunk. She had been pregnant before me,
but her boyfriend at the time was not ready for a child, so he
kicked her in the stomach until she miscarried.
For revenge, she had a friend who was a sex worker seduce him,

(10:57):
take him to a hotel room and tiehim up.
My mom then described how she took a baseball bat and broke as
many of his bones as she could, even throwing water on him to
keep him conscious. She was never tried for it so I
assume he survived. I had heard the part about her
being kicked until she lost the pregnancy before, but the story

(11:18):
about the baseball bat was new. She has never mentioned it
again. Story 11 My girlfriend at the
time confessed that she had onlystarted dating me because I was
a relatively big guy and she felt safe with me after being
sexually assaulted about a monthbefore we met.
I already knew about the assault, but not that part.

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It explained a lot of the problems in our relationship.
We had made out at a party, wordspread, and suddenly all the
guys who used to hit on her stopped.
From that point on, she decided that pretending to date me was
worth it because she finally felt protected.
On one hand I understood and wasglad that I could somehow help
her heal from the trauma, but ithurt deeply to realize the girl

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I loved only saw me as a bodyguard.
Later I found out she often flirted with other guys behind
my back, knowing they would never actually pursue her
because of me. And eventually she did cheat on
me. I fell into a deep depression
and could not tell anyone the real reason why because if that
story had gotten out it would have destroyed her far more than

(12:23):
any revenge ever could. Story 12.
This happened to me when I was drunk right after finishing high
school. I was at a small get together
with a few friends and I got both high and drunk.
At the time I was not on any medication and I ended up having
a really bad trip and getting into a terrible headspace.

(12:44):
I had previously tried to take my own life and literally no one
knew. I had rope burns on my neck
afterward and spent a week or two hiding them by shrugging my
shoulders and keeping my hoodie up.
During class that night, surrounded by the people closest
to me, I put my hand on my best friend's shoulder and told him
everything. It got super quiet for about two

(13:04):
seconds before he hugged me, andthen the rest of the boys joined
in for a group hug. In that moment, I went from
suffering silently and alone to realizing that I had an entire
circle of people who genuinely cared about me no matter what I
was going through, whether it was about some girl, some guy,
or my own mental struggles. Story 13.

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It did not go unanswered, but I found out about it before the
guy was arrested. I knew someone in high school
who made one really terrible decision.
He confessed it to me one day while we were skipping class.
He came in drunk and visibly shaken.
He told me that he and a couple of friends had gotten into an
altercation with a man at an apartment complex early in the
morning after drinking. It started as a fight, three of

(13:51):
them against one man. As anyone with common sense
knows, alcohol and street fightsnever mixed well.
He said the man fell down some concrete stairs and cracked his
head open during the brawl. And that was how he died, or so
he told me. I later found out that the truth
was far worse and that he had lied about almost everything.
The group panicked after realizing what they had done and

(14:13):
decided to dismember the man's body in their garage.
I was not told all the details, but apparently they cut him up,
stuff the remains in the trash bags and plan to dump them in a
river. I do not know exactly how they
were caught, whether they turn themselves in or someone
reported them, but later that same day two police officers

(14:34):
came to our school cafeteria andarrested him.
I never saw him again. He always swore he had only been
an accessory, but when the case details came out it turned out
he had been one of the main perpetrators.
The victim was mentally ill and there had not been a three on
one fight at all. In reality, there were only two
attackers and they had brutally stabbed the man to death.

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Finding out the truth later really messed me up.
This guy had always seemed so calm, friendly and level headed.
He was a black belt in Taekwondoand we used to spar together.
I was into martial arts back then, which is How I Met him.
At first, his story about a fight gone wrong sounded
believable, but learning what actually happened was

(15:16):
horrifying. It remains one of the most
disturbing things I have ever known someone personally to do.
He tried to appeal his case fouryears later, but it was denied.
There were plenty of news reports about it, though the
details varied. I lived in a small town where
things like that just did not happen.
There were occasional fights or minor gang issues, but nothing

(15:37):
as gruesome as this story. 14 A girl I had only met a couple of
times once confessed to me that she had purposely stopped taking
birth control so she would get pregnant and trap her boyfriend
into staying with her. She had found some text between
him and a friend where he said he was planning to leave her.
By the time she told me this, their child was already about a

(15:59):
year or two old and they were engaged.
With the wedding coming up soon,I did not know either of them
well enough to say anything, so I told a mutual friend that
night before I left, the guy somehow thought my friend was
flirting with him even though she was there with her
significant other, so she left the party immediately.
The couple eventually got married and later divorced.

(16:20):
Story 15. My mom was not drunk when she
said it, but she was angrier andmore hurt than I had ever seen
her. She was hurt because I had
broken her trust again. I will never forget what she
said, that I was a failure. She told me this happens even in
the best families. Sometimes kids are just failures

(16:40):
that cannot be fixed. I do not know if she remembers
saying it, but it hurts me everytime I think about it.
I have never been able to talk about it with anyone, not even
my best friend. I just needed to tell someone,
so I'm sharing it here. I hope everyone who has heard
hurtful things like this find some peace.
Story 16 I once had a beautiful girlfriend whom I love deeply.

(17:03):
One night she got really drunk and told me she wished I were
more handsome, that I was ugly, but if I were better looking I
would be perfect. For what it is worth, I am not
bad looking, though I have neverconsidered myself attractive.
I usually try not to offend anyone, even though I am known
for being quick with a comeback when I feel hurt.
But that comment crushed me so badly that I could not say a

(17:26):
word. I just wanted to cry.
Looking back, I wonder why my self esteem was so low that I
stayed after something like that.
I was already bruised by life and did not think I deserve
better. A couple of weeks later I
brought it up and she said she did not mean it, but I knew she
did in wine. Truth.
So I finally said what I wished I had said that night.

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I told her I understood her point and I would also like to
be more handsome. But she should remember one
thing. If I were any more handsome than
I am, I would never, ever, ever have settled for you.
She looked like I had slapped her.
She lived in Cuba and I lived inCosta Rica.
We spent about six months a yeartogether, alternating months.

(18:10):
About a year later, she told me she had a big surprise for me
and asked me to call her that Friday.
I thought she was going to say she finally got her passport and
could move to Costa Rica to be with me.
When I called, her mother answered, barely able to speak.
She passed the phone to her husband, who told me that the
day before, my girlfriend had taken the money from the sale of

(18:30):
a house I had bought for us and run away with her boyfriend to
South America. That was her big surprise.
It was an act of sheer cruelty. It broke me at the time, but
years later I am grateful she isno longer in my life.
Last I heard she was 42, pretending to be 30, overweight
and trying to make it as a thirdrate lounge singer in rundown

(18:53):
hotels in Miami. People who say hurtful things
will almost always go on to do hurtful things.
Never tolerate that in your life.
Story 17 When my mom was drunk and angry one night, she told me
that I reminded her of my father.
That cut deeply because my father had raped and assaulted
her. I am the result of that assault.

(19:15):
Her words hurt me so badly that night that I overdosed on my
medication on purpose. I was only 12 years old.
She never apologized. Instead she kept calling me a
liar and a spoiled brat. I tried to overdose again later
and after that I moved in with my grandmother.
Things are better now. My mom is trying to make amends

(19:35):
and I have forgiven her because I know she went through a lot in
her life. She had me when she was only 15.
She never had the chance to learn the things she needed to
know. Story 18I grew up in the South
where a lot of people would start saying racist things once
they got drunk. It usually began with an edgy
joke early in the night, and if I didn't react, they felt safe

(19:57):
enough to start complaining about black people later.
My favorite time this backfired was at a Halloween party and
punk show that had a lot of skinheads there.
What most people don't know is that there are non racist
skinheads called traditional skinheads who actually hate Nazi
skinheads for giving them a bad name.
Anyway, this one guy clearly didn't know the difference and

(20:19):
decided to call a black man at the party a racist slur and
square up for a fight. Immediately, four or five of the
traditional skinheads jumped him, knocked him into a corner
and beat the hell out of him. The funniest part came after the
fight when the guy got in his car to leave but had left his
shirt behind. Someone brought it out to him
and as he rolled down the windowto take it, they gave him one

(20:41):
last punch in the face as a goodbye gift.
Story 19. A friend of my brother's used to
tell me in disturbing detail about her love life, how she was
a sex addict in a nymphomaniac, and how she never usually told
anyone this story. Every single time I hung out
with them she would get drunk, forget we had already met, and

(21:03):
tell me the exact same things all over again.
Whenever I tried to tell her we had already met, she insisted
she would remember if she had. I was too young back then and
had been taught not to be rude, so I just sat through it every
time. It honestly terrified me.
Story 20. My ex roommate came home drunk

(21:23):
one night complaining that she couldn't bring her boyfriend
over because our nosy landlord lived downstairs.
I asked her why they didn't justgo to his place and without
hesitation she said he's married.
Then she told me he was an older, overweight man who worked
at the same hospital as her and that they would meet in empty
hospital rooms to hook up. She was around 25 and had

(21:46):
recently divorced her high school sweetheart.
I don't think she would have gotten involved with that man if
she hadn't been so depressed from the divorce story. 21 In
2010 I was at a party where a guy got stabbed multiple times
and badly injured. The injuries were life altering.
I heard later that he has to usea colostomy bag now.

(22:07):
He can still walk though. Four years later in 2014 I was
drinking at a bar with a friend and some guys I only knew
casually. One of them, who was very drunk
and already saying questionable things, started talking about
that same party from 2010. He said it was a case of
mistaken identity and that I wasactually the person who was
supposed to be stabbed that day.I don't think he was lying

(22:29):
because first, he said he was atthe party, which was easy to
verify, Second, I knew he used to hang around those types of
people, and 3rd, around that time someone had shown up at a
place I used to frequent asking for me by name in a way that
made everyone there uneasy. He explained that someone might
have wanted me dead because of afalling out I'd had with a

(22:50):
friend. We had been close, but he got
jealous when I became better friends with another guy.
Eventually he and that friend got into a fight and he got
completely humiliated, beaten badly, and I didn't defend him
because he had made an inappropriate joke about being
with an underage girl. That was probably why he grew to
hate me. I heard later that he moved to

(23:10):
Jamaica and was killed, but I don't know if that's actually
true. Story 22.
I once dated a man who confessedto me that when he was a
teenager, he had killed someone in a bathroom at a rest stop in
New York with a lead pipe. He said it had been some sort of
retaliation for a friend and there had been a whole group of
them, but he was the one who delivered the fatal blow.

(23:34):
He told me this while visibly emotional and remorseful, not
proud or reliving it with satisfaction.
I tried to stay calm and sympathetic at the time, but
deep down I was terrified. We had only been together for a
few weeks when he told me this, and I got out of that
relationship as fast as I could.I wanted no part in being close

(23:54):
to someone who carried that kindof pass just beneath the
surface. Story 23 One night my friend was
high on acid and got unusually talkative and honest.
He told me about a time he had gone to the local red light
district and decided to hire someone for the night.
He picked out a person, brought them to a hotel room, and once

(24:15):
things began, he discovered thatthe person had male genitalia,
which they hadn't disclosed. Shocked, but already having
paid, he decided to go through with it anyway.
During the encounter, the personput a finger inside him, but
accidentally broke a sharp fingernail in the process,
causing him an anal fissure. He had to go to the hospital and

(24:35):
was given one of those soft rings to sit on.
Afterward, he told everyone it was a sports injury.
Story 24 When I was a child, I woke up one night to the sound
of gunshots inside our house. I was terrified and hid.
The next morning, I saw three bullet holes in my door and
through my wall. When I asked my parents what the
noise had been, they both insisted nothing had happened.

(24:59):
I showed them the holes and theysaid it's always been like that,
honey. So I convinced myself I must
have imagined it. About five years later, my
stepmother got drunk and told methe truth.
She said that during one of her fights with my dad about guns in
the house, she had wanted to prove how dangerous they were
drunk. She broke the lock on the shed

(25:19):
to get a crowbar, pried open thegun safe, smashed the plastic
box holding the gun, broke into a filing cabinet to find the
ammunition, loaded the gun, and then fired three shots into my
room at child height to prove how easily someone could get
killed. She swore she did it to show my
dad the danger, but it was horrifying.

(25:40):
I haven't spoken to her since that night.
Story 25. I was in law enforcement dating
someone from a different agency.I work for the city and he was
county with some rank, both in the Deep South.
I had family staying with me fora wedding and he stopped by one
night drunk and agitated, still wearing his sidearm.

(26:00):
It was completely out of character for him.
One of my guest boyfriends was apolice chief from a large
northern city. He managed to calm things down,
got the gun off him and had me walk him home since he lived one
street over. When we got there, he asked me
to stay and talk. I didn't want to.
People were waiting for me, but he was clearly unstable.

(26:21):
He started talking about how years ago he had killed someone
while hunting with his father. They had gotten into an argument
with another hunter and he shot him.
His father, who was a police chief in their small hometown,
had covered it up. That was why he ended up working
in our rural area instead of a bigger city.
He said he thought constantly about the man's family and

(26:43):
wondered if they ever got closure.
I ran back home and told the visiting police chief what had
happened. Together, we made an anonymous
call to the state police in thatstate to report it.
Anonymous because I didn't trustanyone.
Our department was corrupt, and I feared for my safety.
Within two days, state police tracked me down anyway.
My friend vouched for me, explaining the man's drunken

(27:05):
state and the weapon incident. What followed were months of
harassment and intimidation. My phone number and my family's
numbers were shared. People called my mom to spread
rumors about me. Cops would run my license plates
wherever I went and broadcast mylocation over the radio.
Friends tried to intervene with the sheriff, but it never
stopped. I sank pretty low, even tried to

(27:27):
ruin a few careers with information I had, and I'm not
proud of that. Eventually I gave up, packed my
car and left. I never worked in law
enforcement again. The state police said they found
some possible matches for the case he described, but his
father had alibis for each time frame, backed by his officers.

(27:47):
The man I once dated eventually transferred to a larger
metropolitan department and probably went on to have a
spotless record. When I visit home, I
occasionally see old colleagues who never stood up for me.
I pretend not to know them. My former boss, who played a big
part in getting me fired, eventually fell from grace and
died years later. I once heard he said vile things

(28:09):
about me during an employment check.
That's who he truly was. Not the kind old man who once
recruited me from the Academy. I'm not angry anymore.
If I had stayed in law enforcement, it probably would
have killed me. I would have lived a small life,
married another cop or firefighter, spent my nights at
Applebee's, and never seen the world beyond that town.

(28:30):
Leaving saved me, but I'll neverforget that a murderer and an
entire department that protectedhim still walk free, along with
the many officers who joined in tormenting me until I left.
Someday I might write a book about it all.
There was so much corruption forsuch a small place, and some of
the crimes that happened there made national news.

(28:52):
The things I saw behind the scenes could fill volumes.
Story 26 I had a really close friend and roommate who was what
you might call troubled, but he was also one of the most amazing
people I knew. He had spent much of his 20s in
the Army, then followed the Grateful Dead for a while before
going to architecture school, which was where I met him.

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He had a strange temper that would flare up maybe once a
year, but otherwise he was a great guy, funny, loyal, and
kind. One night around 3:00 in the
morning we were sitting on the roof after a night out, just
vibing and enjoying the rare warm weather.
We were both pretty drunk and aswe talked he started opening up.

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From what I could piece together, back in high school or
shortly after, he had been racing his car while drunk with
a girl in the passenger seat. He lost control, wrapped the car
around a tree, and she didn't survive.
He had walked away physically fine, but that guilt followed
him for years. It explained a lot why he
drifted through the army and spent years wandering before

(29:56):
trying to build something new inhis life.
We never spoke about it again after that night and eventually
we lost touch. Story 27 When my then best
friend got blackout drunk, she confessed that she had cheated
on her husband right after telling him they needed to
separate with a guy she had onlymet once.
That, on top of all her other selfish behavior, was the final

(30:19):
straw for me. She used to dump her kid on me
in the middle of the night whileshe went off drinking or
sleeping with random guys without even telling me
beforehand. She blamed me for all of her
problems and constantly gaslighted me.
It was a miserable six months ofbeing manipulated and used.
When she got back together with her awful husband, I cut her off

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completely. So if you ever read this, Emily,
screw you. You're a terrible person.
Story 28 While in Peru for research for a book, I was at an
art show late one night and met a 17 year old from Hamburg,
Germany. We were all exhausted, but we
started talking and I asked him what he was doing in Peru.

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He told me he was in hiding and had fled Germany.
About a year earlier he had participated in a protest that
turned violent. People were throwing rocks at
the riot police and someone handed him a lit Molotov
cocktail. When he threw it, it landed
inside a police car and killed two officers.
He said he couldn't live with himself afterward and had come

(31:22):
to Peru to dedicate his life to becoming a shaman and helping
others as penance. His story has stayed with me
ever since. Story 29.
This one isn't terrifying, just interesting.
I was splitting a cab with a guywho was very drunk and texting
his crush, saying how in love hewas and how he didn't want to
mess things up. I tried to take his phone so he

(31:43):
wouldn't embarrass himself and he handed it to me before
passing out. When I looked down I saw the
name of the person he was texting and realized it was a
man. He had never told anyone he was
gay. I quietly held onto the phone
until we got to our stop and gave it back to him.
I never said a word about it andhe never brought it up.
That was six years ago and as far as I know he's still

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publicly straight. Story 30 A long time friend's
girlfriend of about six months told me and my roommate after a
party that she really liked my friend and thought he was a
great guy but wasn't sexually attracted to him.
She said she planned to break upwith him the next day.
About an hour later he woke up, came downstairs smiling, and was

(32:28):
completely unaware of what was coming.
My roommate and I just quietly went to bed to give them space,
but as I walked past him I wanted to warn him so badly.
I just couldn't find the words. Story 31 After college, I was
living with my grandparents to help out because my grandmother
was bedridden and in poor health.

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One night I got home from the bar after meeting friends for
drinks. I grabbed a beer in the kitchen
and my grandfather joined me. We talked for a while and had a
few more drinks together. Eventually he started telling me
about his time in Vietnam as a tank operator and instructor.
He told me about a young man whowent through his training course
who clearly wasn't cut out for combat.

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He and the others decided the best way to save the guy's life
was to get him medically discharged, so they dropped a
300 LB piece of armor plating onhis legs to send him home.
It was shocking, but in a dark way I understood they were
trying to save him the only way they knew how.
Story 32. We run a fairly large adult
entertainment business and have been successful for years.

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We never told my parents the full details because we value
discretion. About 3 years ago my dad called
out of the blue absolutely furious, accusing us of lying to
him. He then called my siblings who
laughed at him because they already knew it wasn't a big
deal. The truth is the business
started as a side project when my wife was a fetish artist and

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model. After a few years, she stopped
performing and began managing the business full time, handling
payroll, accounting, taxes, and helping other models.
However, old clips and images ofher still circulated online and
some of them couldn't be removedeven if we wanted to.
For about 6 months, my dad sent endless threats about taking our

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kids away and acted like a complete bully.
To try to smooth things over, I agreed to go on a weekend trip
with him to talk and hopefully repair our relationship.
Over dinner after getting drunk,he confessed that he had spent a
lot of time tracking down my wife's old material online and
was sharing it with his friends on Facebook.
Men like him who wore MAGA hats and made disgusting jokes.

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He bragged about it as though itwere funny, when in reality he
and his group were using my wife's images for their own
gratification. It took everything I had not to
punch him right there. I was seconds away from hitting
him, but the restaurant was crowded and I knew it would just
look like I'd attacked an old man.
Three years later, we're still not OK.

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I've never been so disappointed in someone in my entire life.
He lost any moral high ground heever thought he had.
Story 33. My dad and I have always had a
strained, distant relationship. I grew up with my mom and
stepdad and I have 1/2 sister through my dad, but neither of
us is close to him now. Last August I called him to wish

(35:22):
him a happy birthday. He answered completely drunk,
slurring his words. I was pregnant at the time and I
said something like next time wesee you you'll have a
granddaughter. Something about that made him
snap. He started ranting about how he
had been a terrible father, thatmy sister wanted nothing to do
with him, and that he regretted being a bad husband to both our

(35:44):
mothers. He said if he had been more
involved, his daughters wouldn'thate him now.
I tried to reassure him, but he just yelled over me.
Then he started mumbling incoherently and said that
neither of us would care if he died, that he should just die.
Then he hung up on me. I called him back several times,
but he didn't answer. I texted him later telling him I

(36:05):
didn't mean to upset him, that Ijust wanted to say happy
birthday and tell him I loved him.
When I texted him a couple of days later, he responded as if
nothing had happened. Story 34 My old roommate once
drunkenly tried to convince me that his girlfriend was in no
way attractive, physically or otherwise.
I was sober and tried to say that everyone is beautiful in

(36:26):
their own way, but he was relentless about insisting she
was hard to look at and that there was not a single thing
about her that anyone could findappealing.
The worst part was that this happened the night before she
was moving to Canada to join him, and I was the one picking
her up at the airport. They had dated for about a year
before he moved, and he and others who knew her constantly

(36:48):
said how annoying and not very bright she was.
I knew far too much about what he disliked about her and almost
nothing about what he actually liked, though they did seem to
have some kind of connection. Before she came to Canada, I
used to defend her, or at least try to stay neutral when people
from their Irish circle talk badly about her.

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They warned me that living with her would be a nightmare and
they were right. She was exhausting to be around
and didn't seem to notice or care that everyone found her
unbearable. She thought she was a social
butterfly and inserted herself into everything, even when
people clearly didn't want her there.
The Irish immigrant community inour city tolerated her because

(37:29):
she organized events and did allthe hard work giving them
something to gossip about. It was a toxic mixer, need for
attention and their need for drama.
I eventually realized how toxic they all were and moved on with
my life. Also, she used to go into my
room and rummage through my laundry without asking.
Yet the one time I closed her window during a storm while she

(37:51):
was away, she lost her mind screaming about boundaries
without even acknowledging that she constantly violated mine.
Story 35. My crush, who had also been my
best friend for about a year, and I got drunk one night after
my messy breakup. I spent $100 on drinks for us at
the bar, and later we ended up at a party together.

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While hugging me, he suddenly told me that he knew his best
friend had raped me. About seven months earlier, I
had gone to visit that same bestfriend because he promised to
let me record a song in a real studio.
He was a musician and I was a singer, so of course I was
excited. But when I got there, it was all
a lie. He viciously raped me instead.

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I never told anyone because I knew everyone loved him and I
didn't think anyone would believe that a flirty girl like
me could have been raped. So I stood there shocked as my
crush looked at me and said he knew.
Then he added it's just a guy thing you wouldn't understand.
He actually said the word rape and still tried to justify it.
I called an Uber and never spoketo him again.

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Story 36 My grandmother survivedthe Holocaust and used to tell
me stories about her experience when she was sober, mostly about
starvation and being taken from her home.
I think she told me those milderstories to make sure I
understood that the world is in all sunshine and it gave me a
sense of perspective growing up.But one night during a family

(39:16):
gathering when she was drunk, she took me aside and told me
the darker truth. Her older brothers were twins,
and they were victims of Joseph Mengele's horrific experiments
at Auschwitz. She told me that she had been
forced to clean the room where they were murdered and to help
move their bodies into a pit. She said she could never look at
my twin cousins because they reminded her of her dead

(39:38):
brothers. Whenever she saw them, she said
all she could see where their lifeless eyes, their bodies and
the smell of death. She said she could still
remember their blood on her hands.
Hearing that broke something inside me.
I had never known about the twinexperiments before that night,
and realizing what she had livedthrough changed the way I saw
everything. Story 37 For my friend's 21st

(40:02):
birthday, we went to a local bar.
He got wasted, but I stayed sober since I was the designated
driver. Later that night, he opened up
to me and confessed that he was a pedophile.
He said he had never hurt a child and never would, but that
living with those thoughts was unbearable and had made him
deeply depressed. The next morning when we talked

(40:23):
about it again, he said I'll leave, just please don't tell my
mom. I told him it wasn't his fault
for having those urges, but thatwe should find a way to get him
help. Four months later we're still
best friends and he's taking medication that reduces his sex
drive. It's sad how quickly people
would cut someone like him off without understanding it's not

(40:44):
their fault unless they actuallyharm a child.
Story 38. My friend was blacked out and I
was very drunk. We were venting about how some
male friends can be creepy harmless things at first, like
hitting on you when you've made it clear you're not interested.
Then she said yeah listen to this and told me something that
made my stomach turn. 2 weeks earlier she had gone out

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drinking with a group of male friends.
She has a boyfriend and she was also on her period that night.
She got very drunk and the last thing she remembered was
repeatedly telling one of her male friends that she didn't
want to hook up and trying to push him away.
She woke up the next morning in his bed with her pants off.
He swore they hadn't had sex. Then she noticed she wasn't

(41:28):
wearing a tampon, which immediately struck her as
strange. Later, when she got home, she
found the tampon still inside her but shoved up uncomfortably
far in a position that made no sense.
She just brushed it off, never confronted him again, and didn't
tell her boyfriend or anyone else.
I don't think she's ever spoken about it to anyone but me.

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I hadn't realized that our lighthearted drunken conversation
that night would turn into something that dark.
Story 39 One of my closest friends got drunk and high one
night and started opening up to me about wanting to end her
life. She said she couldn't go through
with it because she'd been told it wouldn't be fair to her
family. She said she didn't care about

(42:11):
her grades, only her parents didbecause her older brother had
failed in school and she was expected to make up for it.
Then she told me about how she and her brother used to get
beaten as children, which she said was normal where she was
born, but it left deep scars. She said that's why her brother
turned out so troubled. I was only 14 at the time and

(42:32):
she was older, so I didn't really know what to say.
I just told her that things would get better when she could
move out and start her own life.That night made me promise
myself I'd never get drunk. Story 40 I've always been a
weird kid. Shy, awkward, and bad at keeping
friends. Even when I tried.
I had no support system and lifejust felt heavy.

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I was 10 years old and in 6th grade when we moved from
California to Nebraska. It was a huge change and I had
already been through a lot of trauma as a child.
My mom thought that because I was young, I'd forget it all and
adapt easily, but the truth is, I think it affected me the most.
One night she came home drunk after a gathering with her

(43:15):
boyfriend's family. She looked at me and told me she
wished I were a different kid, that she didn't understand why I
had to be the way I was. I already hated myself back
then, so hearing that from her hit hard.
I snapped at her and her boyfriend told me to be nicer
because she was drunk. I ignored him but I've never
forgotten that moment. I still carry it with me and in

(43:38):
a way still blame myself. Story 41 My long term boyfriend,
now a distant X, got drunk one night and kept pressuring me to
share my deepest secrets. I didn't really have any, so I
told him he had to go first. His tone instantly shifted and
he confessed that when he was inhigh school, his first cousin
came to stay with his family andthey ended up sleeping together

(44:00):
multiple times. He claimed it was mutual, but
years later I found out he'd been charged with first degree
sodomy, which in my state means sexual activity with someone
under 14. I was horrified and disgusted.
The next day I brought it up andhe brushed it off saying he made
it up. I didn't believe him for a
second. Thinking back, every time his

(44:22):
cousin was at family gatherings she was quiet and withdrawn,
especially when he was around. I'm convinced he assaulted her.
I'll probably never know the full truth, but I broke up with
him not long after that. Story 42 Back in college I was
drinking with my roommate at ourCatholic University.
We were playing Halo and taking shots, probably 9 or 10 each,

(44:45):
when he suddenly broke down crying.
He told me he hated himself and that since childhood he had
struggled deeply with his genderidentity.
He said he'd attempted suicide multiple times and had once
tried to talk to his parents about it, but they called him a
Sinner and threatened to cut himoff financially unless he went
to a Catholic college to set himright.

(45:05):
He chose ours because it was 4 hours from home, far enough to
stay on campus during breaks andavoid them.
Despite it all, he kept pretending to be fine, desperate
for their approval. Everyone thought he was the
happiest guy, always joking, always laughing.
The next day when I tried to talk to him about it, he
pretended not to remember and went right back to his usual

(45:29):
cheerful self. Last I heard, he got married and
divorced two years later. I still hope he's OK.
Story 43. This isn't exactly my confession
but it changed my life. By pure coincidence I ran into
my ex wife's brother at a bar while out of town for work.
He happened to be there for business too.
We hadn't seen each other in years so we started drinking and

(45:51):
catching up. After a few drinks he got
emotional and told me I was a great guy and deserve better.
I laughed it off and said you realize you're talking about
your sister right? That's when he told me the
truth. She had only stayed with me for
money and had been cheating on me with one of my Co workers.
At the time we were already struggling and had been going to

(46:11):
counseling for about 3 months, but hearing it from him hit
hard. I didn't want to believe it, but
after she skipped three straightcounseling sessions while I sat
alone in the lobby waiting for her, I confronted the guy.
He confirmed everything. I filed for divorce immediately.
Even though she admitted to the affair in court, I still ended

(46:31):
up paying off all her debts. Years later, I'm still grateful
her brother told me the truth that night.
If it hadn't been for that random encounter in a bar
neither of us had ever been to, who knows how long I would have
stayed trapped in that miserablemarriage.
Story 44 A man who used to be myhusband's friend once told me
something horrifying while he was completely drunk.

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He laughed as he confessed that 35 years ago he had raped a
disabled girl multiple times when he found her alone.
He said he knew no one would believe her because of her
disability and that he used to torment her afterward by hanging
around the small store her parents own whenever she was
there just to watch her fear. He admitted he enjoyed the power

(47:14):
he had over her even long after the assaults.
That poor girl couldn't speak and was also deaf.
Her parents never knew what happened.
They thought she was acting out and had her institutionalized
out of fear she'd hurt herself or someone else.
She spent time in a facility before eventually moving to a
group home after her parents died.

(47:34):
Meanwhile, that monster still lives in town, respected and
well liked, pretending to be an upstanding man.
My husband and I cut him out of our lives completely after that
night, but the thought of what he did and how he got away with
it still makes me sick. Story 45, A Vietnam veteran who
was a regular at the bar where my roommate worked once told me

(47:56):
a story that has haunted me eversince.
He said that a few months after coming home from the war,
suffering from what was then called shell shock, he went on a
three day LSD binge. During that trip, he vividly
remembered seeing what he thought was a young Vietnamese
girl running toward him with a bomb strapped to her back.
In his drug traumatized state, he used a bayonet to kill her

(48:18):
before she could reach him, believing he was saving his
unit. When he finally came down, he
found himself in an alley behinda condemned hotel, convinced it
had all been a terrible hallucination until he read in
the paper about a local child who had gone missing nearby.
He never found out the truth, but he always feared that his
hallucination hadn't been one. That was when he started

(48:41):
drinking, and he never stopped. Story 46 As a bartender, I've
heard countless drunk confessions, but one has stayed
with me. A woman came in regularly,
always drinking heavily. She was in the middle of a
custody battle and was terrifiedshe would lose her kids.
She had a history of alcoholism and had been caught multiple

(49:03):
times trying to pick her children up while drunk or
leaving them home alone to go drinking.
One night she told me her plan If she lost custody, she was
going to kill her children and then herself.
She said they'll be better off dead than living with their
father. I was horrified and had no idea
what to do at first, but I called a friend who works in

(49:24):
mental health. She told me to report it
immediately, so I went to the police.
The next morning, detectives visited the woman and she told
them the same thing she told me.We banned her from the bar after
that, but I still saw her name pop up in the local police
blotter. Later on, she lost custody, kept
drinking, and never got help. I'll never forget that night.

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It was the first time I felt theweight of a confession that
could have cost lives. Story 47 The day my husband
deployed, I threw what I called a pity party and invited some
friends and new neighbors over. I drank way too much and blacked
out completely. I woke up the next morning
naked, wet and confused, with myclothes scattered on the stairs

(50:08):
and several open packs of cigarettes outside.
I panicked, thinking I might have done something humiliating,
and it took almost 8 hours before anyone finally called to
fill me in. Apparently I hadn't done
anything inappropriate, but my new neighbor, who had also been
drinking, had told everyone a story that chilled me.
When she was 16 and pregnant, her boyfriend cheated on her.

(50:31):
One day she saw the other girl walking down the street and lost
control. She ran the girl over with her
mother's truck, backed over her,and then drove over her again,
three times total. She told her mom she had hit a
dog and her mom helped clean thetruck and repair the damage.
The other girl somehow survived after two months in a coma, but
couldn't prove anything because the evidence was gone.

(50:54):
My neighbor never faced any charges.
After hearing that, I realized Iwas living next door to someone
dangerous. Thankfully, drunk me had
apparently cheered her on that night, saying something like
serves her right, which probablysaved me from becoming her next
target. Story 48.
I was drinking with a guy who opened up about his time in

(51:15):
Afghanistan. He told me about an attack on
their outpost, which was set up on a mountainside to protect a
nearby village. The enemy came from a Ridge
overlooking the town, and one ofhis fellow marines was shot and
bleeding out. He said something inside him
just snapped. He started firing at everything
that moved, including the villagers below laughing
hysterically while doing it. He said he saw a demon that

(51:38):
night, though I think he meant it metaphorically.
I didn't judge him. I can't imagine what being in
that kind of hell would do to someone's mind.
He seemed like a good man who had been pushed past his
breaking point. I'll never forget how calm yet
broken he looked when he told me.
It was one of those rare momentswhen you realize someone trusts
you enough to show you the absolute worst part of

(52:00):
themselves. Story 49.
My close group of friends went on vacation together, and one
night my friend Alexander and I went out drinking alone.
They got completely blackout drunk and started ranting about
how they had built our entire friend group and could destroy
it if they wanted to. They claimed to have created the

(52:20):
personality of their childhood best friend Tom, saying all of
Tom's growth and success in recent years were because of
their influence. I managed to get Alexander back
to the hotel and put them to bed, but the whole thing stuck
with me. While it was true that Alexander
had been the one who originally brought us all together, we'd
each formed our own friendships independent of them.

(52:42):
It disturbed me that they viewedrelationships like some sort of
social currency they could control.
That night, I realized my friendwasn't just confident, they were
manipulative and deeply insecure.
Fast forward three years and ourgroup is still tight, but
Alexander's no longer part of it.
Story 50 One of the best roommates I ever had was

(53:04):
intelligent, kind, and fascinating to talk to.
We had deep conversations about politics, psychology, and
philosophy. I was studying psychology at the
time, and in hindsight, I shouldhave recognized his behavioral
pattern sooner. He was hyperactive, suspicious,
and drank more than he should have.

(53:24):
He'd had a rough childhood and suffered from mental health
issues, though I can't remember his exact diagnosis.
One night while we were talking about relationships, he
confessed that he'd nearly beaten his ex-girlfriend to
death in a fit of uncontrollablerage.
He said it felt like something inside him took over, like he
was watching someone else committhe violence.
He described it in chilling detail, eyes empty but full of

(53:47):
guilt. The woman survived and even
forgave him, and that event was what pushed him to finally seek
psychological help. As terrifying as his confession
was, I could tell he carried real remorse.
He vowed never to be in a relationship again, believing he
was too dangerous to love anyone.
Even with therapy, I don't thinkhe'll ever forgive himself.

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Some people truly are aware of their brokenness, and that's its
own kind of tragedy. Story 51 When I was 6 my dad got
drunk and told me he had killed my grandfather.
At the time, my grandfather was dying of cancer, his third
round, and it had spread everywhere.
I loved him and spent almost every moment by his side.

(54:30):
One day, my dad kept telling me to take a shower so we could go
to the store, but I didn't want to leave.
Finally, I gave in. While I was in the shower, my
grandmother came in crying, helping me finish quickly.
When I got out, my grandfather was gone.
For years, I resented my dad formaking me leave the room and
robbing me of a final goodbye. Decades later, when I was in my

(54:53):
30s, my dad got drunk again and told me the truth.
He said my grandfather, grandmother and he had talked
while I was showering and my grandfather decided it was his
time. The hospital had sent him home
with morphine and my grandmotherhanded my dad a syringe.
My dad gave him the injection and he passed away peacefully.

(55:13):
They never spoke of it again. I wish my dad would get help or
talk to someone about it, but henever has.
I think that memory haunts him more than he'll ever admit.
Story 52. It was during my sophomore year
of college when I found out whatmy roommate had done.
We were both drunk after a long night of partying, sitting on
the dorm floor surrounded by empty bottles.

(55:36):
He had always been quiet, the kind of guy who smiled too
easily but whose eyes looked like he hadn't slept in years.
That night, after a few too manyshots, he started crying.
He said he couldn't sleep anymore because he kept seeing
her face. I didn't understand what he
meant until he told me about a girl he used to date in high
school. She was a senior when he was a

(55:57):
junior, and one night after prom, they got into a terrible
fight while driving home. He said she wanted to break up
and he snapped. He drove the car off a bridge
into the river. He managed to escape through the
window. She didn't.
Her death had been ruled accidental.
He said he never told anyone that.
He didn't even try to save her. He just watched the bubbles rise

(56:20):
until they stopped. Then he swam to shore, pretended
to have hit his head and told the police she'd been trapped.
He buried his face in his hands and kept whispering, I didn't
mean to kill her. I sat there frozen, realizing
the person I'd shared a room with for almost a year was a
killer who'd never been caught. Story 53 I used to work in a

(56:42):
small town diner where everyone knew everyone.
One night after closing, my boss, a kind older woman named
Janet, invited me to have a drink in the back.
She was the kind of person who had stories for everything, and
I'd always liked her. But that night she told me
something I'll never forget. She said when she was younger
she worked at a nursing home andthere was this one patient, a

(57:04):
mean old man who had no family and spent his days insulting
everyone. He used to call her horrible
names and even spat in her face once.
One night he went into cardiac arrest while she was alone with
him. She said she froze for a moment
watching him gasp for air, and then she unplugged the heart
monitor just enough to delay thealarm.
She said it took him 2 minutes to die and she watched the whole

(57:27):
time. She told me it felt like
balancing the scales, but she hadn't slept properly since
then. She looked me dead in the eyes
and said sometimes justice doesn't come from heaven, it
comes from people like me. I quit 2 weeks later.
Every time I drove past that diner after dark, I couldn't

(57:48):
stop wondering how many other people she'd balance the scales
for. Story 54.
It was around 2:00 in the morning when my neighbor Paul
stumbled into my backyard duringone of our usual late night beer
sessions. He was a retired paramedic, a
good guy, the kind of man who helped everyone on our street.
He'd patch up kids who fell off their bikes, Dr. elderly

(58:10):
neighbors to appointments, even shovel snow for the single moms.
But that night he was different.Quiet, heavy, like the air
itself was pressing down on him.After a few beers, his voice
started to shake. He said there was something he
had never told anyone in his entire life.
I told him it was fine, that everyone had ghosts.

(58:31):
He gave me this look, half relief, half terror, and started
talking. Back in the 90s, he was one of
the first responders to a massive car crash just outside
the city. A drunk driver had hit a family
head on and the father had died instantly.
The mother was trapped in the front seat, bleeding badly but
conscious, and their five year old daughter was pinned in the

(58:53):
back seat. Paul said when he got there, he
realized immediately that the little girl wasn't going to make
it. Her spine was crushed.
He told me he saw the panic in the mother's eyes, the way she
begged him to save her child, and something in him broke.
He said he reached into his kit,pulled out a syringe of morphine
and injected it into the girl's IV.

(59:15):
She went quiet, he whispered. Peaceful.
No more screaming, he told me. The mother never knew.
The official report said the girl had died before the
ambulance arrived. The father was gone.
The mother lived, and the paramedics were praised for
their response. He said he'd convinced himself
it was mercy, that he'd done theright thing.
But every time he hears a child cry now, he feels like he's back

(59:38):
at that wreck, holding the syringe, deciding who gets to
live and who doesn't. He started crying so hard that
night I had to help him back to his house.
The next morning, when I saw himon his porch watering his
plants, he waved like nothing had happened.
He never mentioned it again.