At some point, we've all dome something that had us repeating the mantra, "Never again." Maybe it was eating at that sketchy restaurant and paying the intestinal. Maybe it was taking a risk on a travel deal and rueing the day we ever left home. The people below made mistakes so bad, they had no choice but to learn from them. The upside is, at least they have a hilarious story to tell from the experience.
Pixabay
29. Medications that shouldn't be mixed.
I had 103-degree temperature, sicker than a dog from the flu and constipated. I was miserable. I took 4 "fiber" pills in the morning and had hallucination fits for the next 4-5 hours. Desperately trying to get some sleep, I took an Ambien sleeping pill (extra strength) and passed out. Meanwhile, the fiber pills were doing their terrible work. Woke up 9 hours later not constipated anymore and having to do a super-gross load of laundry
Pixabay
28. Train track travel woes.
Rode an Amtrak train from New Orleans to Washington, DC. I thought I was a prodigy by choosing coach seating over a sleeper car or flying as I was saving some money by doing so.
Jump forward to 25 hours in the same seat, dude next to me pulling a Germany vs. Poland invasion of the armrest, baby screaming all night in the back of the car and I couldn't sleep. The toilet situation had deteriorated onboard to the point where I would use elbows and my boots to open and close the door and flush the toilet as my fellow riders were baffled by the concept of flushing and utilizing a trash bin for paper towels.
I've been awake 25 hours by this point and it's 3:45am. If I ever do this again, it's gonna be in a sleeper car, forget the savings. Murder on the Orient Express had the right idea.
Pixabay
27. Designated driver indignity.
I was the designated driver for my son's 21st birthday. He was out with his dad and about 10 of his close friends, so I was pretty busy driving back and forth schlepping them all home. Finally, I get the call from dad that it's time, and our son needs to go home.
My son is in the back seat with one of his friends when I feel a hand come from behind and grope my boob, then quickly moves down to my inner thigh... my son then says, "What do I need to do to get me some of that?"
We don't talk about that night.
26. Next time make it $10.
I was once in a bet to do an "Apple Juice Challenge" where I had 30 minutes to drink a gallon of apple juice. Not too hard right? Easy $5 to be made? Not so much. What my friends didn't tell me is that when you drink so much apple juice in such a small amount of time it all needs to exit the body, back-end style. What followed were the most intense, volcano blasting, dignity-destroying hours of my life. It was like a fire hose spraying acid that someone lit on fire.
I didn't complete the challenge....I lost $5.....and I even paid for the apple juice. NEVER AGAIN apple juice...never again...
25. Time lost to timeshares.
Timeshare presentation. I now know what hell is like. 8 hours of my life I'll never get back. And of course the "free trip" was impossible to get. "We will call you on Monday sometime in the next two months, then you need to fly out on Tuesday and come back Wednesday."
24. Latecomers ruin a lovely trip.
Just came back from a three-week backpacking trip with FIVE other people. Trip was just originally just three others (my bf, brother and cousin), but two friends wanted to join. Big no-no. You gotta keep those trips intimate. And preferably, with family. The two add-ons didn't want to do any of the same stuff we did, couldn't keep up, didn't want to try any local food, complained about walking, only packed flip-flops, commented after thirty minutes at the Louvre that it was "just a buncha paintings", etc. etc. etc. Worst mistake. The original squad all chanted "never again" at least fifty times each the entire trip. So yeah. Never again.
23. Bleach and eyes don't mix.
Back in the days before soft contact lenses you were supposed to clean them with hydrogen peroxide and then use a special neutralizer tablet afterwards. I forgot to use the neutralizer before I put my contacts in. Hydrogen peroxide in your eye HURTS!
22. It's a dangerous pastime.
I used to go caving all the time when I was younger. It was a lot of fun but it definitely has opportunities for danger. On my 16th birthday, I went on a caving trip and wound up in the hospital. I remember I was climbing up this steep hill, slipped and tumbled off. I fell about two stories into a small river below and cracked my head against the rocks. I passed out, the group had to basically drag me out of the cave. I had a cracked rib, and a concussion. My mom drove about 7 hours to pick me up from the hospital and never let me go caving again.
21. Sorry, Jimmy Buffett.
The resort I stayed at in the Dominican Republic had a swim-up bar in the pool. The cocktail of the day was a piña colada. Being of newly legal drinking age and at an all-inclusive resort, I went hard on piña coladas. One after the other, in rapid succession. What I didn't know was that, when you drink while swimming, being weightless in the water means that you don't realize you're getting inebriated. I ended up getting a lot more intoxicated than I had anticipated, possibly the most I've ever been in my life. I don't remember anything between being dragged out of the pool by my parents and sitting in the corner of our hotel room, crying. Thus began many hours of tears, double vision, vomiting into the toilet, and fading in and out of consciousness on the bathroom floor. I couldn't smell any drink for 3 days without physically feeling sick to my stomach. I still drink, but because of that memory, piña coladas have been forever ruined for me.
20. The bad luck of the Irish.
19th birthday, fake ID, 8 Irish car bombs shots. (Yes, eight.) Ended up throwing up in the passenger seat of my Pontiac Grand Am, insisted I be dropped off at my ex-boyfriend's apartment, knocked on his door completely naked. Woke up hugging the toilet at 3pm the next day with my first ever hangover in the apartment my ex-boyfriend shared with his new girlfriend. (She lent me clothes to go home in... nice gal.) I bartended for years afterward, I refused to make an Irish car bomb my entire bartending career. The smell of Baileys still makes my stomach turn. Never again.
Pixabay
19. Why would you hope that?
I was in Reykjavik, Iceland, and I was bar-hopping and ended up in some sort of Viking metal bar. It wasn't really my scene but I was having a "when in Rome moment." Anyway at some point during the set, this super intimidating looking Viking dude calls for his thrall and this chick comes out holding a vat of what I hope was sheep's blood. He reaches into the vat smears the blood on his face while screaming something in Icelandic, and then flicks his hands sending a little blood spatter to the crowd. I have never noped out of a place so hard.
Iceland truly is a magical place.
18. Herbal remedy mishap.
I was reading that tea tree oil is anti-bacterial. I wanted to use it around my eyes since I recently had a tiny put painful infection in my eyelash gland. I DID NOT read that it has to be diluted.
I was beet red around the eyes. The burning would not stop, dish soap and ice helped. It looked like I just got hit in both eyes. Not worth it.
17. That's what you get when you date a witch.
Once I hooked up with a girl who claimed to be actively practicing a number of pagan rituals and religions, and also was somehow Buddhist. Ended up being nuttier than a squirrel turd, tried to put a curse on me and stuff like that. Never again! As silly as it might be I will always ask someone prior to dating if they claim to be or have at any point considered themselves to be "spiritual" beyond your basic belief in God.
16. Frugal travel as a form of torture.
I did a 22-hour train journey from Beijing to Shanghai. Cheap ticket, about $20. Now, there are a range of classes, and this is second from the bottom, known as the 'hard seat' (the class below in 'no seat', and shares the same carriage).
This was tough. The seat is nothing but hard plastic. The train is cramped beyond belief, with the 'no seat' passengers clamoring for what little space is left. When night fell, I was attempting to sleep upright with my head slumped forward. A guy's head, which was suffering from a lung infection of sorts (loud, wet cough) took the space between my knees. The carriage was hot as hell.
Every passing moment was torture. Every hour felt like days. Never, ever again will I try to be that frugal. It's okay to get something a little better if you have the money.
15. The last line will make you cringe.
I don't eat food that was shared in the common area at work anymore. I ate a jelly donut at work on a Friday, thinking someone brought them in that morning. Nope. Found out later they had been around for a couple days (explains the staleness, just thought it was a cheap brand of donut).
I started getting the rumbles down under around 5 and by 6, I was trapped in the bathroom at work crying as I tried to figure out how to get home between insistent diarrhea at 5-10 min intervals. I had to take 1 PATH train plus 1 subway ride. Couldn't uber home either, didn't want to be stuck in a tunnel, ya know?
ALMOST made it. I was 3 stops from home, sweating profusely and pale as a sheet, when some little kid opened a juice box that smelled like sickeningly sweet fake fruit. I clamped my mouth and managed to get out of the subway car before showering everything in a 3 ft radius with my lunch and 3 day old jelly donut. No one checked on me because they assumed I was just already sloppy, considering it was a friday evening.
I get food poisoning 1-2 times a year because I hang loose with refrigeration of leftovers and eating at places with less than stellar city health grades/foodtrucks, but that was the worst to date. Haven't had donuts since either.
14. Gaming snack backfires.
Can't recall how old I was but best guess is around 13 or 14. It was Easter weekend and among my Easter treats I had received an enormous bag of jelly beans. I love jelly beans. Well, seeing as it was the long weekend, I sat myself down in front of the computer and played games while snacking on jelly beans. Unfortunately, I was playing Civilization (3 or 4? I honestly can't recall). Anyone who has played it knows that sometimes you can just disappear into the game and when you next look up days have passed. Well that's what happened to me. Except I was absentmindedly eating jelly beans the entire time. For 9 hours. Until I ran out of jelly beans and realized what time it was. An entire massive bag of beans. I don't know the exact size but imagine a bag that's larger than an American football.
I became so sick I was puking technicolor for like 6 hours, passing in and out of consciousness with weird dizzy spells and headaches, massive stomach cramps, lots of explosive diarrhea. Basically just a miserable ball of colorful human excrement.
I can't eat jelly beans anymore.
Still play Civilization though, cause it wasn't THAT bad.
Pixabay
13. Hot vengeance.
I was having pho with two friends when suddenly I felt an awful burning in my eye. I realised that I had rubbed my eye after breaking up a hot pepper to put in the pho. I immediately ran to the bathroom. I knew I had to take out my contact lens and then flush my eye out with water, but the pain was so incredible that I could hardly open it. My friend came to check up and found me soaking wet from tears, water that did not manage to go into my eye, and sweat. I eventually went to sit outside with my buddy and after a while the pain subsided. The whole ordeal probably lasted for 20-30 minutes and was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.
12. A train trip so bad, it's unrail.
When I was young and poor I would travel ViaRail in Canada from the east coast to Ontario to visit an old boyfriend. Normally the trip took about 15-17 hours depending on delays. On the way back, we get hit by a snow storm and the train stops about 2 or 3 stops past Montreal (in fact we could still see the last station we passed) because another train (CN freight) is frozen on the tracks.
We were stuck in the same spot for 25 hours and they wouldn't let us get off the train and walk to the station because the tracks are still 'live' but really no other train could move past even if they wanted to.
This was before smartphones and everyone was whining and miserable. Toilets were clogged, food was limited. More than a few of us were reaching tge point of murderous.
Only compensation was a voucher for like 30% off next trip. I've never taken the train again.
11. A nightmarish lesson learned.
I went on the giant swing ride at the amusement park we were visiting. Thought, I like rollercoasters so a giant swing should be easy! So we're strapped together, parallel to the ground, 250ft in the air. My boyfriend has the rip cord that will make us drop, and he pulls it.
Those few seconds of free-fall were the most terrifying few seconds of my entire life. I've never screamed like that before. Once we start swinging we're fine, but the start of it was just nightmarish.
We get back down and the first thing I say is, "I am never, ever doing that again." My boyfriend immediately agrees. It turns out we both have a fear of heights in certain circumstances and the swing triggered it.
10. Short cut leads to a long ordeal.
I was planning a trip to London and saw it was much cheaper to start my flights in Dallas, 5 hours away. So I drove there, left my car, and took my trip. Everything went awesome. I figured I could get back to Dallas after sleeping on the plane and just drive home which tuned out to be a dumb idea. I left while it was still dark, driving through Oklahoma, and I saw a storm in the distance. Of course I got stuck in that storm in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't pull over, and there wasn't any place to stop, so I had to power through till I hit the next town. It was raining and hailing so hard I couldn't see, my car would occasionally lose traction, and the radio informed me there was a tornado watch in an area near me. It was one of the most terrifying experiences I've been through. I made it to the next town and got myself a victory McGriddle and swore I would always pay the extra money to fly out of the smaller airport near my home town.
Image by skeeze from Pixabay
9. Holding on by a thread.
I am now retired from bungee jumping.
To explain, ten years ago I was in New Zealand studying abroad, and surprised myself by trying bungee jumping. I loved it - the falling part sucked, but the neat part is during the bounce after you zoom up like Superman! So a few years later, I decided to try the world's biggest bungee jump, in South Africa... and I swear it felt like the cord around my legs was slipping.
Later when I wasn't seriously freaking out for my life I realized there was an emergency cord attached to my chest so I probably would have been fine, but still, I'm definitely never doing it again.
Image by Simon Steinberger from Pixabay
8. Took a midnight train to nowhere.
Took an Amtrak train from Montana to North Dakota, on trip that was supposed to take 12 hours. It ended up taking 28 hours due to mostly winter related delays. And another four hours of which was a surprise stop and search by heavily-armed border patrol. It reached nightmare proportions when the food and beverage car ran out of EVERYTHING. No food. No drinks. This was about 15 hours in... first time I felt the pains of true hunger in my life. It was a very rural/scenic route and included only one stop. Which happened to be the one place they moved quickly. 15 min at three in the morning. The lone vending machine at that podunk station was bum rushed and empty before we even got within five feet of it.
Even after the trip out ended, the nightmare didn't. Amtrak cancled the return voyage due to weather for SEVEN DAYS, which in turn caused the busses to sell out for the entire week, and every rental car in the region was taken. After desperately searching for two days, we found one luxury car available to go out west from the airport at $400 a day. We had to get back to work, and had no choice. The car was rear wheel drive and we spent the next 12 hours white knuckle drifting all over the highway, because Amtrak hung a full train of people out to dry. The irony was the whole reason we took the train to avoid driving in winter conditions, only our cars were far better equipped than the sports car we got shafted with!
NEVER AGAIN, AMTRAK.
7. This is better than The Odyssey.
So it's my buddy's 21st birthday party and we have just been cooped up on a commercial fishing boat for the last 3 months in Alaska. It's our first night in Seattle and we were going crazy. Then we get the idea to go to the wing dome and do the 7-7-7 challenge.
Mistake number one: I am a masochist and have terrible heartburn but love spicy things. These are 7 wings with 7-alarm sauce that you have to eat in 7 minutes with no drink. If you win you get a t-shirt and your picture on the wall. We start and he literally begins to cry and puke after 1 bite he completely bows out. I hunker down and begin the psychedelic mind trip that can only be induced by hallucinogenic hot sauce.
By wing 3 you are in a fevered state where you can't tell hot from cold, your mouth is a geyser of emotions and you are turning red in the face. Sweating profusely thinking there is no way you can keep up this pace of consumption.
By wing 5 your body is rejecting this horror in every way possible. You think that there is just no way the human body or psyche can endure a trauma so unbearable so it begins to shut down. Your auditory and visual senses are the first to go. People sound like they are going by in a tunnel. Your vision is obscured by what you hope is sweat pooling, or even tears possibly? But no, it is obscured by shear terror. Your sense of touch is gone for what you may believe to be forever. Your olfactory sense is only that of what I imagine the smell of hell to be...and snot.
By wing 6 it's about foolishness.
By wing 7 it's about pride.
As I finished, the owner came up to me to give me the t-shirt and snap the pic to go up on the wall. All he said, and I'll never forget it, was, "God help you tomorrow, son."
Other contestants in eating contests such as these I have later learned, learn to throw up after the meal, not healthy to let that sit in there, but me in my foolish youth had 911 on speed dial at 4 am as I was heavily considering the need for emergency services while sitting on the toilet and a trash can in front of my face almost in tears at the pain...and obviously I have a high tolerance for pain. But this, this gentle readers was pain I hadn't known existed in corporeal form. A pain so savage that, I do believe, somewhere, the devil himself was laughing in his slumber.
Long story short, I won the 7-7-7 hot wing challenge... or did I?
6. Friends no more.
I went to the city with my friend two months ago and we hit up two bars. At the second, a shady guy was close to our drinks. He tried bringing her home but was having trouble. I awkwardly stepped away to the bathroom and had her in charge of our drinks. Unfortunately, mine was spiked with something by time he left the table.
4 days later I had a delayed reaction. I started hallucinating before work but I didn't realize it. I drove there "fine" and then things felt normal. Then I went for a walk around my lunch break and lost touch with reality. I started walking normally, but the moment the sun hit my face, I was gone. I started walking and talking with God, and then I ripped off my clothes. Everything else is a blur, but I believe I even broke into a house or two while people were home just spewing gibberish at them.
I was found naked trying to break into a middle school apparently. My brain chemistry was so messed up that after I was brought to the hospital, I was still seeing English turn into Hebrew on the doors for a few days. I was in a mental health unit for about 6 days trapped.
So my mistake was to trust a friend alone with my drink with a shady guy. I almost lost my job over this. I could have been in jail over this. I could have hurt someone or I could have been seen by children. My entire life could have been ruined. I may have even made the local paper. The rumor mill reached my workplace of course; I'm known as the naked girl on "something something" road.
5. Went down the wrong way.
Never again will I engage in any sort of eating race. About 10 years back, I worked for Wal-Mart, and my co-worker and I would always take breaks together. I think he and I were in a constant unspoken competition to be the weirdest Wal-Mart employee. We both wore fake name tags, and we'd use the paging system inappropriately, but all in all, we were hard workers so our bosses never got onto us. Well, one day in the break room we decided to have a race that involved eating a cinnamon roll and chasing it with a cup full of maple syrup. We had a small audience for the event. We were sitting across the table from each other when someone said go, and before I could even unwrap my cinnamon roll he slammed down his cup of maple syrup. I asked him, how did you eat that so fast. He said, "I just swallowed it whole." I demanded a rematch and bought him another cinnamon roll from the vending machine. This time, I was determined to win. Someone said go, and I shoved the cinnamon roll in the back of my mouth, grabbed the syrup and swallowed...but I didn't swallow, I inhaled the cinnamon roll into my esophagus and began choking. Everyone was laughing until I leaped up from the table causing one whole side of the table to collapse spilling multiple people's lunches onto the floor. Then I heard someone say, "Dude, she's choking." I pointed at that guy and vigorously shook my head as I stumbled around the break room making the international sign for choking. I remember people saying, "do something!" "Does anyone know the Heimlich?" No one was helping, they were just all in shock watching me frantically hit myself repeatedly in the chest. It was then I decided to run as fast as I could into a couter and ram my rib cage. Then I just grabbed the edge of the sink and repeatedly used my arms to pull my chest to the counter and ram my ribs. After about 3 times I spun around and a fist sized cinnamon roll bullet shot out of my throat and splattered on the floor like a snowball. I took the biggest breath of air into my lungs after about a full minute of choking, and my co-worker says, "You totally lost." The choking incident in the break room was all the talk around work for sometime... and the fact that I high kicked a table in half and wrecked about 4 people's lunches.
4. Those are still on the market?
I ate half a pound of sugar-free Haribo gummy bears. I bought them cause they were on sale and despite the infamous results of eating them, I figured it can't be that bad. I get home and start eating them. They taste pretty good and I'm doing fine. 30 minutes to an hour later I decided I needed a drink and the moment I stood up it hit me. I had what felt like a ball of fire in my gut and I ran to the bathroom. The second my butt hit the seat I sprayed with the force of a truck going downhill. The dye in them is overpowered by the red dye apparently cause I look down and it's all red. I could literally feel the heat radiating off of the disaster brewing in the toilet. About 30 minutes of pain later I think it's all over. Stand up and NOPE.... get ready for round 2 my dude. I could have flown to the moon if it weren't for me clutching the toilet as strongly as I can. It was at this point I truly learned my lesson. The spraying was back and this time it brought friends. Imagine a waterfall with coconuts falling down the falls. Basically that was my next 15 minutes. Finally after retaining proper control I go back to the couch where I flopped down face first and slept for 6 hours. Gave the other half pound to my sister and told her not to eat these unless you need to cure some constipation.
3. Sounds like a typical day at college.
My mistake was being young and stupid enough to drink whatever mixed drinks my friends were handing me at the bar when I was in college. This was about 8 years ago and I was probably 22 at the time. Before this I had only ever really had beer.
My friend knew the bartender at the place we were hanging out. She was making the drinks WAAAY too strong. I remember one of the last drinks I had that night was called "Adios Forever."
After we left the bar, I'm told I refused to stick with the group and ended up walking a few miles to the other side of town because I'm a complete idiot. At some point I realized I was 'super hammered' and literally called the police on myself because I was sick, puking and lost. They ended up calling an ambulance, I had no insurance at the time and it cost me $600. Apparently when you're that wasted the police won't just take you home, didn't expect that and paid the price.
I woke up in the hallway of the hospital sprawled out on a gurney the following morning. I had puked on my shirt so at some point they had put me in a hospital gown. Eventually hospital staff realized I was up and moving around, they were all excited because apparently they had some sort of bet for how long I was going to be passed out. They handed me a pamphlet about the dangers of binge drinking and I was out the door.
I walked 1.5 miles back to my house with my hospital attire blowing in the breeze. I had to stop to puke twice. The funniest part about this lovely walk home is that it was smack in the middle of all the student housing by my college. I had long hair at the time and it was all greasy and crazy. My appearance was a mix between escaped mental patient / infected by zombie virus but hadn't yet fully turned. The looks I was getting from people I passed on the sidewalk were priceless, and even in my terribly ill state I had a few laughs at myself for how ridiculous this ordeal was. I managed to get home to take a shower and sleep for a couple of hours before having to go to work at Jimmy Johns as a delivery driver.
2. Wedged together.
When my wife and I first got together we lived in a tiny apartment and shared a twin bed. This situation continued even after she got pregnant. This of course substantially reduced my sleeping area. We slept in a spooning position. One night, when she was about 7 months pregnant, I awoke in the middle of the night and tried to readjust the blanket to recover myself. It often would end up bunched up between us, so I reached down to find it and pull it back up. There was some resistance, but I assumed that she had her foot on it or something. So I pulled harder and kept pulling, assuming it would come free any second now. At this point my wife turned her head around and angrily asked what I was doing. Turned out that I was not pulling the blanket. I had grabbed the back of her underwear and was forcefully pulling them up, giving her a wedgie. I broke out laughing and couldn't stop for quite awhile. She was substantially less amused and even less so after my explanation. So the mistake I will never make again is... Never tell an angry, rudely awoken pregnant woman that you mistook her underwear for a blanket. Especially if you're laughing hysterically at the time.
1. Double date leads to double food poisoning.
Once I made two terrible food decisions in a single day. This was years ago when I was in my mid-20s. I woke up hungry and went to the fridge to grab some left over Taco Bell. But I'd accidentally forgotten it in the car overnight. Still, I thought if I microwaved it, it'd be fine. So I ate a taco bell chicken quesadilla that'd been sitting out for over 20 hours. Just as I was finishing it up, my buddy called and begged me to join him on a "just friends" hang session with this girl he was trying to date. They wanted to go to this Asian seafood place I'd always seen driving by, but never been too.
So we go, and they have a kind of mini seafood super platter that's meant to feed the whole table. Like a super sampler. It's suppose to feed 6 but we finish it off as a party of 4. That afternoon... it began. My friend called and asked if I was feeling bad from the seafood, and I told him ya, but it was probably something from earlier in the day for me. He said, "Ya we are feeling a little queasy too, but we've got tickets tonight so we're just gonna drink water and go for it, I got a date WOO!" I wished him luck and went back to Fallout 3.
By midnight I thought I was going to turn inside out. It was so bad, I would have called 911 if my phone had been in the bathroom with me, but it was on my night stand and I physically could not get to it. I could hear it ringing occasionally, so I hoped that who ever was trying to call would stop by and take me to the hospital.
It was the longest night of my life. But by early afternoon the next day, I was coming around. I tried to stay hydrated by letting shower water run into my mouth during the "event". The toilet was right next to the tub and I could sit and hang my head into the tub at the same time under the shower head. So I just ran the shower on my head, crapped my guts out the back, and vomited my soul out the front.
Turns out the calls late at night were my buddy, calling to come pick them up because they had BOTH had accidents at the concert, on their first date (they are married now.) This was before uber or lyft in case anyone is wondering. They finally managed to get his uncle to get them.
Never. Again.
