Seeing pictures splashed across the front page of a Victoria, British Columbia teen shackled to a wall in a drunk tank and strong armed by a crew of police officers brought back some not too fond memories.

It wasn’t my proudest moment. About a month ago, I had my own run in with the drunk tank. Following a night of heavy drinking at a hockey game with my brother, my dad and my friend, where beers run you $7.50 and come fitted with some infernal sippy-cup style lid, we decided to celebrate the win with yet more drinking.

We dropped my dad, the ex-cop, off at his car (he was sober, thank Christ) and went to a club where a close friend tended bar. Already red-eyed and hazy, I walked in like Norm Peterson and sat down after a much needed stop in the bathroom. My friend handed me a beer, and I knew that there’d be another waiting for me as soon as I was about half done my first. A bartender that on the ball is as convenient as he is dangerous.

I was riding an ego wave, fuelled by booze and our team’s victory, but instead of allowing it to crest, I kept riding it by downing drink after drink with tidal efficiency. Finally, we decided to go back to my brother’s apartment, a short drive away.

By this time I was a bumbling, mumbling moron, babbling on incoherently about God knows what. We arrived behind my brother’s building and he was unsuccessfully trying to calm me down as we got out of the car.

He was telling me to shut up, and although I should have, I didn’t. Instead, I punched him in the face in a drunken maniacal rage. He’s no hulk of a man, but thick, short and stocky and tattooed from head to toe. With the ease of a lion tackling a scarecrow, he took my scrawny 150-pound frame to the ground and put his knee on my throat.

“Get…th…the…fu…fuc…f*ck…off of me!” I could barely speak. I could barely breathe. By this time, the commotion had irked his neighbours who began yelling obscenities from their balconies. I was face up on my back in the snow.

It was cold and wet, but I didn’t care. The drink had rendered my senses so dull that it was impossible to contemplate consequence or discomfort. In a flash, two or three police cars showed up and officers poured out. “Get on the ground!” I was already on the ground. “Don’t tase me,” I said, fearing a death-bringing 50,000 volt jolt. “I’m not going to tase you,” the young officer said, reassuringly.

My brother and my friend were taken down at gunpoint, they told me later. I don’t remember any guns, but I remember getting slammed down on the police car as I looked over at my brother who faced the same fate. “Thanks Darryl,” he said sarcastically as he was handcuffed on the hood of the cruiser. But they kept their cool and were let go without consequence a short time later.

They tossed me in the back of the car like a rag doll. “We’re taking you to jail buddy,” they said. I was too drunk to give a sh*t. Take me anywhere, I thought, maybe a drive-thru window; I was famished, but no dice. For some reason, I mentioned that I was a reporter. Cops and reporters being natural enemies, the officers flashed demonic smiles like flesh hungry hunters after a kill.

We showed up at the station a few blocks away and they ushered me in like some crazed psycho and slammed me against the metal counter. They took off my jacket, removed my belt and took everything out of my pockets.

I don’t recall becoming belligerent until they brought me to my cell and shackled me to the wall. The cell was painted baby blue and shaped like half a deformed trapezoid. It was small but still voluminous with its high ceilings. I sat perched on a cold concrete bench for God knows how long. The shiny metal toilet was on the other side of the room, and my captors had made sure that I couldn’t use it by callously cuffing me to a small ring hidden in a tiny lockbox in the wall.

Reality sank in, but being an obnoxious rock and roller, I began yelling my head off. I couldn’t sleep on that bench, my feet in shackles, while a fluorescent light hummed above me, so I decided to let loose. “Let meeeeee goooooooo!” I began hollering at the top of my lungs, covering my ears as my raspy cries echoed off the stone walls. That changed to a slow mantra of “F*CK YOU! F*****CK YOU!” and later I just began yelling incoherently, peppering my vitriolic outbursts with every Nazi reference that popped into my head. “You Gestapo motherf*ckers! You are cogs in the machine that I rage against!”

I was a train wreck. I began rocking back and forth like some deranged mental patient, my fingers tightly planted in my ears, shouting every horrible thought that came into my head. I was completely primitive, devoid of reason and I just kept yelling until finally calming down. It didn’t last long.

After a few moments of silence, a team of officers came in and I told them to let me go. No chance, they said, because I was severely intoxicated, thus unfit to be unleashed back onto society. “I am not an animal! I am a human being! You can’t treat people this way! This is a democracy! You’re a disgrace to democracy you Guantanamo Bay motherf*ckers!”

It was bad. They looked at me in utter, understandable disgust. A little later, they unshackled me and brought me to another cell. It had a thin foam mattress on the concrete bench, but I was much too uppity to use it. I began kicking the door, yelling at them let me out. For some reason, I got the bright idea of yelling about my blood tester. “I am a diabetic! I need my tester! Or a cookie! Bring me my tester or a cookie!”

I’m not diabetic, but I knew panic would set in if they went through my jacket to find no blood tester. I was just curious to see what they’d do. And I wanted a cookie. After kicking the door for a little while longer, I had to take a piss. Seconds after whipping it out, three or four officers came in and told me I was being taken back to the other cell, where I was to be shackled again. They barely let me zip up before dragging me back there.

They promptly shackled me to that little ring inside the lock box again. I was getting groggy by then and as I was dozing off, the door opened and an officer walked in, flanked by two paramedics. “Holy hell,” I thought. They had a little blood tester, and took a sample. “Your reading is 5.4, and if you’re really a diabetic, that would mean something to you,” said the stocky ambulance attendant. “Have you taken any drugs tonight?”

“I brush my teeth twice a day. Fluoride’s a drug,” I said.

“Narcotics, any narcotics?” He asked.

I mumbled something and they left, turning their backs on the hollow shell of a man I had become. Time passed slowly as I contemplated the evening. I felt like Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, but I had no baseball and no glove to keep me sane. It was three days shy of my 24th birthday, I was in jail, and I had to work the next day. 2007 was surely going out with a debauched bang.

Periodically, a guard would walk by and peer through the small square of glass in the door, taunting me with his indifference. I made more noise by slamming the little lock box door against the chains of my shackles. It was loud, like a gun shot.

After tiring of the ungodly blasts, I finally sat back and waited for my inevitable release. It took forever, but an officer finally came in and unshackled me. “Did you piss?” He asked, wondering about the yellow puddle at my feet. “You shackled me to the f*cking wall. How was I supposed to use the toilet?”

He gave me a horrified look and walked out, shutting the cell door behind him. I could still feel the shackles on my ankles despite being free of the restraints. I heard the doors of the other cells open as the other drunks were let go. They let me out last. I walked to the counter and the officer handed me a bag. I put on my jacket and belt and rifled through the bag. My keys were gone, my cell phone too. He tried to get me to sign a form to confirm that I’d received all my possessions, but I refused, and after some harsh words, he kicked me out of the station.

My mouth felt like I’d been using a mothball as chewing gum all night, so I went to get a coffee across the street. Then I panicked. No phone. No keys. I found out later that my brother came to get me early in the morning. “I’m here for the long-haired loud mouth, he’s my little brother,” he said. “Oh yeah, we know him. He’s not getting out for a while,” the cops told him.

Panic stricken, I walked back to the station and demanded that they let me use a phone. The civilian secretaries looked at me like I was a crazed rapist who had just made bail. The officer who kicked me out refused, and kicked me out again.

I walked back to where the weird scene had happened. I lit a bent cigarette that had been cracked no doubt in the struggle. I looked around and with a sigh of relief, fished my keys and cell phone out of a puddle and began towards a bus stop.

I had to work in a couple hours. I was banged up, scraped, bruised and on no sleep. It was going to be one of those days. As I sat at the bus stop, I became overcome with guilt. I felt bad for the guy who had to mop up my piss and spit. I felt bad for the next poor drunk who got captured and shackled like an animal. I felt bad for saying some unspeakably vulgar things. But I know I’m not the first to fall victim to excess, and I’m surely not the last.

My story won’t make the front page though, thank God. And I have no one to blame but myself, just like that young girl in Victoria, British Columbia. Excessive drinking is surely no excuse for depraved behaviour.

The bus soon came, the guilt lingered, but I had an epiphany on the way home. Everything was going to be okay, I thought, and what the hell? I was just drunk.