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People Share Their Craziest 'Oh You Thought This Was Bad, It Gets Worse!' Experiences

People Share Their Craziest 'Oh You Thought This Was Bad, It Gets Worse!' Experiences
krakenimages on Unsplash

The best stories are ones with exciting plot twists.


But the next best type of stories are the ones that continue spiraling out of control.

Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor _Mitnix_ asked:

"What's your best 'oh you thought this was bad, it gets worse' story?"

It's story time. You may want to buckle up.

It All Started With A Cat

"This is a long one, but I promise it's worth it:"

"A buddy of mine was cat-sitting for a friend of his while the guy was out of town on a vacation. My buddy didn't have a car, so the dude told him that if he needed to go out and pick up more cat food or anything, he could borrow the car."

"At the time, my buddy was living right down the street from this guy, staying at his parents' house. So my buddy was just going over for a few hours each day to feed the cat and keep it company, then going back home."

"Meanwhile, he's also been flirting with this woman online. She lives several states away, but he feels like they seem to be getting pretty serious. So he decides to take some liberties, really push the envelope on where he'll pick up cat food from, and he takes his friend's car on a little multi-state road trip."

"This is insane, right? Just atrociously bad judgement, especially since someone does need to feed the cat. To solve this, he left his parents a note. It read, 'I am camping in the woods behind our house. Please go over to ____'s and feed his cat. I'll let you know when I'm home.'"

"Boom. Problem solved, right?"

"Except that the 'woods behind our house' are about 20 yards deep. It takes less than five minutes to walk through them and come out into the neighboring housing development. So his parents went looking for him, calling out for him, and couldn't find him. They got worried and contacted a family friend, a local police officer. He subsequently got a hold of the fire department. There was a full-on search party combing through about 1/50th of an acre of woods. Unsurprisingly, they were coming up with nothing."

"This was before cell phones were common, so my buddy was completely unaware that his plan had fallen apart. He was cruising along on his 12-hour drive, expecting to get to this girl's house just in time for dinner. Except he didn't have a GPS. So he got lost. Very lost. Like, by the time he turned up at this woman's house, it was almost midnight."

"When he got there, she was crying her eyes out. He assured her that it was okay, he was fine, wasn't hurt or in a wreck or anything, he'd just gotten lost. And she said, 'No, no, I wasn't worried about you. My dad just died in a motorcycle accident.'"

"So he bailed on his cat-sitting duties, stole a car, and inspired his parents to file a missing-persons just so he could awkwardly watch a woman cry for a few hours and then drive back home."

– GavinBelsonsAlexa

The Beekeeper's Nightmare

"I will try to keep it short. I am a beekeeper. My 3rd year of beekeeping, I suddenly developed a severe allergy to bee stings. It was spring and I was installing bees for the beginning of the season. I was up to the last hive, went to install that package of bees and one stung me right in the top of my head."

"I finished up a few minutes after and went up toward the house to do some other things. I started feeling flush and I could feel my heart racing. After I few minutes I realized I was having an anaphylactic reaction."

"If you’ve never had one, aside from the physical symptoms, they also say you will get a feeling of impending doom. That was spot on. I absolutely felt I was going to die and people do die from these reactions."

"So I am now in the house and desperately searching for Benadryl of which I have none. I am also having trouble breathing, my body is going haywire and I feel like I’m going to black out shortly."

"I call my mom, who lives an hour away, to call 911 because I feel like I will be unconscious soon. She says okay, phone rings 30 seconds later. It’s my mom, she goes 'I called 911 but they said you have to call'. This was my first wtf."

"So I call and it’s a very typical 911 call she is trying to keep me talking and I essentially started vomiting and she is still on the line and I am waiting and waiting for this alleged ambulance."

"A full half hour goes by. At this point I am actually coming out of the reaction. So I go to sit at my kitchen counter. I’m still on the line with the 911 dispatcher. I see the ambulance pull up and I say, oh they’re here. She’s like great, are you okay? I’m like yes and then she says goodbye and hangs up."

"I see the EMTs outside but my driveway has a gate so they are just standing there and they ring the bell on my gate and I am just looking at them, dumbfounded. Like I called for an emergency over a half hour ago, and they’re gonna roll up here and ring my bell and wait for me to come out when I more than likely could be unconscious or dead on the floor."

"I literally had to go out and let them in. Then they basically talked me in to going to the hospital to get checked out. Another huge mistake because this took place in the 2 months in my entire life when I didn’t have health insurance. So I ended up paying $4000 for a late ambulance and some IV Benadryl and epinephrine."

"Oh which also reminds me, a paramedic also showed, put the IV in when I agreed to go to the hospital. Then I felt something dripping and turns out he put it in my artery rather than a vein and it was just pushing the fluid out of the IV."

"0/10 would not go through any of that again…but I did 10 years later when I had another anaphylactic reaction due to a bee sting. However this went a lot smoother and I had epi-pens and a responsive ambulance."

– soline

Oil Everywhere

"Arrive home from work, my house reeks of oil."

"Go in the basement, and there's a pool of oil, with my stuff floating in it. The oil filter on my burner rotted out (it was defective and recalled, but the tech never bothered to notify me or replace it). Call up the tech, he throws a new one, charges me the emergency call fee, and advises I call HO insurance before running away (it was his fault, I didn't know it yet)."

"This was February in NY, about 13F out, and obviously the burner wasn't on while sitting in a pool of oil. But, they get there pretty quickly soak it up, and get things running so my pipes don't freeze."

"Only way to get the smell out is to dry clean everything I own, then shampoo all the carpets, run deodorizers, etc. Takes weeks. Had a headache the whole time."

"Turns out, my basement has cracks, most of it leaked through. They had to cut out my foundation and dig out the contaminated soil."

"Oil in soil means DEC gets involved. Whole new can of worms as they now had to monitor the process, test at every step. Big enough deal I have a spill number in their database."

"A 20 yard dumpster, with 20 yards of oil soaked sand, is so heavy that it broke through my driveway, destroying it. They did that twice, took out my entire driveway."

"Remember how I said this was in February? March brought the COVID shutdown."

"I spent over a year with my basement in shambles, holes in my driveway, plastic sheets taped up, no washer/dryer, and all sorts of equipment kicking around."

"The next spring, they're back and working, and screwed everything up. Not going to get into every detail, but after a big fight, I managed to get rid of them and bring in a new company to fix their screwups and finish the job. Old crew got very difficult when the new crew requested permits and reports. Turns out, they never bothered. Had to do all that before they could start working again."

"New company dropped a storage crate on my yard to store my stuff while working, destroyed my grass, took out a sprinkler, took out my neighbor's driveway curb, got concrete all over my brickwork, but at least the nightmare was finally over."

– MyNameIsRay

The Depressed Employee

"I worked with a guy who had previously dealt with 999/911 calls. He got very stressed out by it, so ended up getting a job spending a year looking after the ground for some gentry estate in Scotland to get over it."

"After that he came to work for us in it support for a while. He was really nice, really friendly, but he got stressed by everything remotely negative. If he couldn't solve a problem straight away it would throw him for a loop. He needed a smoke break every hour. We gave him the support we could as an employer, time outs, pretty much what we could within reason but he wasn't really with it."

"Eventually he quit. I saw him a few times after that, always shaking, scared to cross the road even. His partner left him."

"The last I recall seeing him was him walking up the other side of the street. I called out but he didn't reply."

"And then he threw himself in front of a train."

– ASK_IF_IM_PENGUIN

In Deep Grief

"My dad was cheating on my mom with a woman a year younger than me (22) when he was mid 40's."

"Christmas time, he's sitting in church next to my mom crying, but won't tell her why."

"Younger brother knows dad is cheating and thinks maybe the side piece broke up with him and so confronts him."

"Turns out girl died in a car crash."

– Business_Loquat5658

The Seance Gone Wrong

"A work friend told me about a party where some of his friends decided to prank a mate of his. The target was one of the underdogs in the group, and he was often the butt of their japes."

"In advance of the party the pranksters jig-sawed a hole in the top of a coffee table that was going to be thrown out. With a cloth thrown over it the coffee table looked fine."

"Anyway, when the party was well and truly underway at one point the host suggested they hold a seance. Everyone who was in on the prank agreed, and a large group of guests clustered round the coffee table where, unbeknownst to the intended victim, one of the guests was hiding, concealed under the table and the cloth."

"So the seance started and the host started intoning spookily, something like...'Eddie...!...I hear a VOICE, Eddie! It's someone who knows YOU, Eddie!'"

"The guy at this point is white and starting to tremble while the room is chuckling behind their hands."

"The voice wants you to go closer to the table so you can hear their voice, Eddie! Closer! Closer!"

"Eddie is wide-eyed with terror at this point and goes close to the table - at a signal, the guy hidden underneath the table stuck his arm up through the hole in the top of the coffee table as if a spooky form was rising up from the table surface under the sheet."

"Eddie flipped. I mean, Eddie FREAKED. While the room laughed he collapsed in tears, hyperventilating, screaming, sobbing, thrashing around. He was past inconsolable, it seemed like he'd lapsed into absolute psychological breakdown, and it didn't at all help when the prank was revealed to him."

"As he lay on the floor hysterical and literally inconsolable, one of the guests finally made the decision to call his mother - who was furious when she heard about the prank, because Eddie's father had passed away a few days before, and he hadn't told anyone."

"In the end it seems they had to call 999 and a medic arrived who sedated him. I don't know if he went in for observation or was allowed home, but you can bet that the hosts got grounded and ass-kicked by parents left, right, and centre after word got round."

– MagicSPA

These Redditors have been dealt with some major blows.

People who say that things will always get better, are partially right. Things do come around, eventually.

But you never know how many curve balls life has to throw at you until there's a resolution.

Want to "know" more?

Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.

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People Who've Lost Weight Break Down What Surprised Them Most

Reddit user apprenti8455 asked: 'People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?'

Man's waist line
Santhosh Vaithiyanathan/Unsplash

Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.

The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.

Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.

Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:

"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"

Redditors didn't see these coming.

Shiver Me Timbers

"I’m always cold now!"

– Telrom_1

"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."

– r7ndom

"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."

– mr_remy

Drawing Concern

"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."

– dee-fondy

"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"

"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."

– LizardofDeath

Unleashing Insults

"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”

"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."

– alanamablamaspama

Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight

"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."

– KeltarCentauri

"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."

– KatMagic1977

"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."

– Jaew96

These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.

Shopping

"I can buy clothes in any store I want."

– WaySavvyD

"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."

– ganache98012

No More Symptoms

"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."

– colleennicole93

Expanding Capabilities

"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."

– Ramblonius

People Change Their Tune

"How much nicer people are to you."

"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"

– LiZZygsu

"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"

"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"

– awholedamngarden

It's gonna take some getting used to.

Bones Everywhere

"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."

– Princess-Pancake-97

"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."

– bekastrange

Knee Pillow

"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."

– snic2030

"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."

– Strongbad23

More Mobility

"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."

"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."

– dma1965

People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.

But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.

That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.

In 2017, I returned to my office after my lunch break to hear my supervisors discussing Tom Petty. This seemed like a random topic to me until one of my supervisors told me Tom Petty had passed away. He was a huge fan of Petty and spent the next hour or so combing through the internet to get more information.

He came back into the room my other supervisor and I were working in and announced that Tom Petty wasn't dead after all. News outlets had jumped the gun to announce his death, but he was actually still alive.

The next day, I came in to find out that Tom Petty was dead; the news may have been premature, but true.

This is a classic example of the rumor being started on the internet. Sometimes, like with the news of Tom Petty's death, the rumor can run wild and appear everywhere. Other times, the rumor can be seen by just a few people and dismissed. However, a lot of times, these rumors turn out to be true.

Redditors know a lot of internet rumors that turned out to be true, and are eager to share.

It all started when Redditor strakerak asked:

"What started out as an internet rumor that ended up being infamously true?"

The King Of Pop

"Michael Jackson writing the music for Sonic 3."

"He actually did, but was never credited on the game because it would breach his contract with his record label."

– -WigglyLine-

"He did the same when he appeared on The Simpsons. He appeared under a pseudonym, and the Producers said it was an impersonator."

"Only years later they confirmed it really was Michael."

"His singing voice was actually done by an impersonator, though."

– given2fly_

The Truth Comes Out

"In 1998, US Men’s National Team captain John Harkes was shockingly cut from the team right before the World Cup. The coach claimed it was because Harkes wouldn’t fit into his new preferred formation, but rumors flew on the early internet that it was actually because he had slept with his teammate Eric Wynalda’s wife. The rumor was so well-known in soccer circles that Harkes expressly denied it in his autobiography the next year."

"Fast forward 12 years to 2010 and Wynalda admits it’s true. The coach then came out and admitted it was why he dropped Harkes, but that he’d planned to keep the secret as long as Wynalda did."

– guyfromsoccer

Video Evidence

"The Tim Burton Hansel and Gretel that aired once on halloween in the 80's."

"I heard for years that it was fake but I knew it was real because my dad recorded everything in the 80s and he recorded that. We let a good friend of ours borrow it and switch it over from VHS to DVD and soon after that it made its way on to the internet , and there it is now. I know it's our copy because the tracking in the beginning is screwed up. Still have the VHS."

– Frozenthickness

"There was a similar story with a Nickelodeon movie called Cry Baby Lane. It was supposed to be so scary that Nickelodeon got complaints and denied its existence for years. Someone uploaded a taped copy to youtube about a decade ago."

– PattiAllen

The Movie Business

"That North Korea hacked Sony Pictures because of The Interview movie."

"I worked in the movie business at the time and the account managers at Sony all basically needed to get new identities as all of their personal information got leaked online."

OldMastodon5363

"My partner worked on that movie and the production bought all the crew 1 year of an identity theft tracking service."

CMV_Viremia

Keep Away From The Ears Of Kids

"Some banned episodes or scenes of cartoons."

"For example, I remember there was a Dexter’s Lab cartoon where he clones evil versions of DeDe and himself and they swear like every other word (censored of course), and people debated whether it even existed cause they only aired it like once. Now it’s pretty accessible online."

– Spledidlife

Yes, It's True

"Echelon, a massive electronic espionage system by the US and allies to intercept all electronic messages, especially emails."

"In the mid-nineties it was a topic on conspiracy BBS boards. A lot of people in my bubble at the time (mainly uni students in Europe) were including fake threats to the US in the their email signatures as a way to "protest" and "fill the system with false alarms" (obviously useless)."

"Then, in 1999-2000 came out to be true and a lot of security service agencies from UK and other US allies started to admit they were part of the espionage network."

– latflickr

How The Mighty Fell

"John Edward’s love child."

– ACam574

"A reminder that he was cheating on his wife while she was hospitalized for cancer treatment."

– Fanclock314

Ugh...

"Carrie Fisher's heart attack. Some a**hole who was on the same flight was livetweeting the whole medical emergency and justified it by insisting she was just making sure the family was informed."

– everylastlight

It Actually Happened

"Every year around her birthday there was a rumor that Betty White died. When I heard she died, I scoffed, saying that dumb rumor is back.... then saw it on the news. I was in shock."

– Known-Committee8679

"The fact that Betty died literally right before she turned 100 is such a Betty White way to go out."

– Paganigsegg

Big Actor, Small Roles

"I distinctly remember some rumors about the reason why Bruce Willis was taking so many roles in sh*tty movies before it was announced he has dementia."

– KampferMann

"RedLetterMedia did a deep dive on his recent movie activity to try and work out why exactly he was taking part in basically scam-movies. They noticed he had an earpiece in one of the scenes and joked that the director was feeding him lines. I remember they even disclaimed over the rumours at the time, and possible made a follow-up vid when it was revealed to the public."

– CardinalCreepia

What To Do Next?

"That the writer of LOST were making it up as they went."

"Turned out to be absolutely true."

– homarjr

That last one was kind of obvious!

Do you have any to add? Let us know in the comment below.

Person holding large stack of books
Photo by Jay Lamm on Unsplash

Whether you're naturally interested in fun facts and trivia or not, it's always nice to know a few that you can pull out of your pocket at a moment's notice as a nice conversation starter.

But there are some fun facts out there that are so weird, people become more preoccupied with how the teller found out that information rather than the information itself.

Redditor Dry_Bus_935 asked:

"What is your 'don't ask me how I know' random fact?"

Nuclear Fail Safe

"You have quite a lot of time, certainly more than ten seconds, to turn back on the main pumps of a nuclear reactor once you have accidentally turned them off."

- egorf

"I'm not surprised. The amount of fail safes, redundancies, and emergency scenario planning for nuclear power plants is insane."

"I toured a nuclear plant and wrote my high school senior thesis on the plans put in place to ensure the Fukushima disaster would not happen at that plant."

"I'm sure the secondary pumps are plenty capable of handling the reactor until the main pumps are repaired or just turned back on."

- Borderlandsman

Happy Cat

"If your cat chews on fresh eucalyptus, they might start hallucinating and fall over repeatedly, leading to a $400 emergency vet bill just to be told she’s just kinda high."

- oddidealstronghold

"And, that's part of why koalas love it. Little stoners."

- littlebluefoxy

Archaeology: Do Not Lick

"Old human bones are very porous, so if you lick them, they’ll stick to your tongue."

- clanculcarius

Sharing is Caring

"A pigeon will only eat a Starburst if you chew it up a little bit first. Just to clarify: chew the Starburst, not the pigeon."

- OhTheHueManatee

"Instructions unclear. Pigeon unhappy."

- Wild-Lychee-3312

Intriguing Anatomy

"Everyone is here with the creepy crime stuff, and I'm just like, 'A soft fur rat has 22 nipples.'"

- horroscoblue

"Okay, so either they have really small nipples, their nipples overlap, or they have nipples in places where there shouldn't be nipples."

"(I've never written the word 'nipples' so many times in a singular sentence before.)"

- GdeGraaf

'Don't Ask Me,' Indeed!

"Turmeric can be used as clothes dye. It is capable of permanently dyeing cotton cloth even after it has passed through the digestive tract of an adult male."

- SlefeMcDichael

"You s**t your pants, didn't you?"

- PMmecrossstitch

"I'd prefer not to answer that question."

- SlefeMcDichael

High-Risk Survival Skills

"If you ever trying to survive in the Arctic, don’t eat polar bear liver. It is so high in vitamin A, it will kill you."

- WrongWayCorrigan-361

"It's also surrounded by a lethal amount of angry polar bear."

- horanc2

Real-Life Spies

"TV shows and movies go out of their way to make military/intelligence officers look bada**."

"But real-life 'spies,' by design and training, are boring. They have regular houses and standard second-hand cars, they dress down, and they have vague, boring job titles (accounts receivable) as cover, and they do not draw attention to themselves. Most come from specialized academia."

- Ok_Worth_1093

Haunting Reality

"Your muscles can keep twitching for several hours after you die."

- JustDave62

"Also, beards can appear to grow. This is however not because the beard itself grows but because the skin shrinks."

- RRautamaa

"I worked at a morgue for over eight years. If you grasp the hand of a dead body to move the arm, the hand will grasp back, but that's just muscles and tendons reacting to the tension."

- goneferalinid

The Sneakiness of Drowning

"When a drowning victim is revived, get them to a hospital as soon as possible. Drowning is the leading cause of death of kids from the age of one to seven and is ruled as accidental drowning when it comes to secondary drowning or dry drowning."

"Basically, your lungs are full of water despite being revived. Your lungs will absorb the liquid, but not before your body acidifies from high levels of carbon dioxide. The only chance to survive is to have the lungs pumped with oxygen via CPAP machine and time."

"Also, drowning is extremely quiet. You don’t hear the victim go under. And if you see flailing, do not attempt to save the victim otherwise you’ll become another drowning victim. Throw them a lifeline and hope their amygdala realizes that a rope or something is floating near them and grabs on it."

- Dfiggsmeister

Not Everyone's Favorite Chocolate

"Hershey’s chocolate has the strong smell of vomit or feces to some people (me), and that’s because they use butyric acid as a preservative. Butyric acid is the compound that makes vomit smell so bad."

"Edit: Digging further into it, there are some claims that they may not be “adding” the butyric acid, but rather it is occurring from essentially spoiling the milk in their milk chocolate. Either way, the butyric acid and putrid smell remains a part of their product."

- hefewiseman1

"That explains the weird aftertaste I always get! I don’t smell it but their chocolate always has this super unpleasant sharp/acidic aftertaste that I find repulsive. I assume this is why!!"

- PomegranateNo975

Do Not Lick the Asbestos

"Asbestos tastes like chalk. And if you lick it, it has the texture of extremely gritty sandpaper. Which is actually the feeling of microscopic asbestos needles piercing your flesh!"

- TooYoungToBeThisOld1

Mapping Out the War

"Beginning in 1911 in anticipation of the outbreak of WW1 in 1914, two statesmen, one from England and one from France, began visiting locations in France that they believed would be the settings for a number of major battles that would occur during the great war."

"Long bike rides through these future battle zones in the countryside and weeks spent building a foundation for a French-Anglo codebook that would later prove important in helping win the war."

- fjordperfect123

Avoiding Lawsuits > Protecting Patients

"Doctors, or surgeons more specifically, that make too many mistakes during surgery, ie, leaving instruments in patients, frequently gets ‘quietly traded’ to other hospitals where they continue their path of destruction with the patients not being aware of their past record. Hospitals tend to keep quiet about the matter to avoid lawsuits."

- Kittytigris

Bonus Points: Do This While Having Lunch in Your Car

"If you overfill a fast food gravy cup and then put a lid on, it will create a pressurized gravy stream that sprays all over your face and uniform while your coworker looks on in horror."

- thechaosjester776

This subReddit thread was so a roller-coaster of random facts, we've surely all walked away learning something.

But the biggest takeaway might just be: Maybe don't lick so many things.

Shocked woman covering her mouth
vaitheeswaran Nataraj/Unsplash

When we're intoxicated, or even the slightest bit tipsy from having a little too much to drink, our immediate perspective on things is hazy.

But there's nothing like a bit of alarming news or a jarring incident to snap us out of the fog and focus on the moment.

Sometimes alcohol isn't always to blame for our impairment.

It can be a state of mind, like a perpetual numbness from being complacent in life, and all it takes is one shocking moment to rattle us back to our senses.

Curious to hear from strangers online about this type of scenario, Redditor Known_Challenge_7150 asked:

"What’s one thing that sobered you up real quick?"

These individuals were witness to shocking events that sobered them up right quick.

Bleeding Out

"Got out of a taxi and found a naked man profusely bleeding from his head crawling up the driveway in my condo. Called him an ambulance completely forgot I was absolutely wasted until 45 minutes later when I'd helped him translate and in to an amublance and stepped in my front door."

"Later a few days later learned he'd slipped in the tub and literally crawled out for help. Poor dude. He was fine but I genuinely thought he was going to die there."

– DongLaiCha

Tragic News

"At a bachelor party and we got a phone call that the groom’s father had suddenly passed."

– accountnameredacted

Bottom Of The Barrel

"I went to visit my parents back in July. I was homeless and deep into fentanyl addiction so I lost a lot of weight. My folks could see it. They knew something was up. Anyway, I spent the night and I was getting ready to leave in the morning and I looked at myself in the mirror for a good long time. I finally had enough and told them everything. They took me to detox, from there I went to rehab. Graduated in August and been living with them ever since then. I have 160 days clean and sober."

– Crotch-Monster

A reality check can be enough for some people to snap out of it.

Like Father, Like Son

"Was driving a drunk friend home, he had been on a bender again and was smart enough to call me for a lift rather than try and drive. As I helped in to his house his mother came down the stairs and said 'your as drunk as your father' and went back upstairs. I haven't seen him drunk since then, he still drinks but the thought of turning into his dad scared him out of hard drinking."

– psycospaz

Busted

"Flashing blue lights."

– FiddleOfGold

"This sobered me up just thinking about it."

– redmaple_syrup

Losing Sight

"Woke up to no sight in one eye. I had cataract surgery so just thought one of the lenses had slipped and it was an easy fix. Eye doc says nope, you had a stroke. I loved soy sauce, teriyaki sauce and salty food, which caused high blood pressure, which caused retina damage. Over six months was able to get most of my eyesight back with medication, and all back within a year. Trying to navigate life with one eye was very sobering. Started taking HBP much more seriously."

– MissHibernia

Quitting The Bottle

"Looked up someone I went to highschool with who was an awesome guy. Found out he had been dead for 3 years from alcoholism, at age 33. I made an overnight change. I hadn't started drinking that night yet, 10 months ago. Haven't touched it again since."

– omgtater

These disturbing moments were enough for Redditors to immediately come to their senses.

Unplanned House Guests

"Me and a buddy Woke up in someone’s living room, realized neither one of us knew the people, they were just nice and let 2 drunk guys sleep on their living room floor. We didn’t even say goodbye."

– Oneinsevenbillion75

Serious Health Warning

"Elevated liver enzymes."

"And the knowledge that this sh** was gonna kill me and I just couldn't orphan my family over it."

"So I opted for recovery, instead."

"Clean and sober since June 5, 2009."

– Far_Meal8674

The Joyride

"Grew up in a rural area. The little town hosted dances at the hockey arena, everyone (adults and kids) went and they overserved everyone, regardless of age. I was maybe 16 or 17 and was absolutely sh*tfaced, and jumped in the back of someone's truck with about 8 other people to go back to someone's cottage for after dance drinking. The driver (still don't know who it was) started racing one of his buddies and we whipped around small dirt roads, flying around blind corners on the wrong side of the road, going god knows how fast. It was basically a disaster waiting to happen. It was crazy scary and I was sober and thankful to be alive when we finally arrived."

– foxfood9116

The human psyche is a fascinating thing, isn't it?

How we can automatically focus on something urgent at a crucial time, even after getting buzzed from drinking too much alcohol.

But as we're in the thick of the holidays, it's a good reminder to drink responsibly and stay off the roads if you drive to your celebratory destination.

Cheers. Stay safe. And happy holidays.