Give someone a few drinks, and they'll probably be more willing to open up and share their deepest and darkest secrets. They don't want to do it, but sometimes their biggest fears and regrets start flowing just like the drinks at the bar. And more times than not, those secrets should have remained secrets.
A Reddit thread recently asked people to share the craziest thing a
An Older Brother They’ll Never Know
“I learned that I have an older brother who I’ll never know.
One night, my mom had way too much to drink at a party and came home the drunkest I had ever seen her. I was working overnight shifts at the time, so I was awake all night and slept during the day. My stepdad had long since gone to bed but she was still up at 2 am when I came out for a coffee.
She stopped me on my way back to my room to ask me why I was still awake. Then the rambling started. She talked almost non-stop for about half an hour. Most of what she said was just inane, random gossip. Then she hit me with ‘Out of you, your older sister, and your younger brother, you’re my favorite. It’s a shame we’ll never know your older brother.’
When she was about 16, she got pregnant with someone before she met my dad. She had the baby, but my grandparents convinced her to give him up for adoption, and she never saw him again.
She never told anyone before or since and she took the secret to her grave. So did both my grandparents. I don’t think she remembered telling me, and other than myself, the only people in my family who know are her brother and two sisters. I haven’t told my sister or brother, and I’ve never mentioned it to the aunt I’m close to. I most likely never will either.”
The Source Of His Friend’s PTSD
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“One of my closest friends opened up to me about why he had PTSD. I knew he had it, but I never know why until that night.
He was manning a post when a car came barreling down at the checkpoint. He was given orders to open fire on the car. Their fear was it was a suicide bomber attempt, so he lit the car up and caused it to stop. He continued to man the canon while the rest of his squad checked out the car. What they pulled out of the car was something that will stick with him forever. He saw them pull out a bloody toy. It was a woman and her kids. From what they could find out, it seemed the woman was pregnant and was probably rushing to the hospital. There were no survivors.
As far as I know, I was the only one he has told this to. I am one of his closest friends and he trusts me, he just needed a bit a liquor (or a lot) in him to be able to let it out. I let him know I was there for him and to prove it, I told him a story that I never told anyone else.
I am pretty sure the bartender heard our stories because the guy gave us a drink on the house later on in the night.”
She Wanted To Share, And Share She Did
“I was at an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting one time when a drunk and distraught woman walked in and asked to share her story.
She told us about the time she was driving home drunk from a bar and hit a bicyclist. When she got out of the car to see if the bicyclist was okay, he was dead, so she dragged the body and the bicycle into the woods next to the road and drove home. It had been 10 years and nobody ever found out it was her.
And then she left as soon as she finished her story. I didn’t report it to any authorities because I had nothing to go off of. I didn’t know who she was, the name of the victim, or where it occurred. All I had to go off of was a vague timeline from long ago.”
“Life Is Complicated” Is An Understatement
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“I went to the bar to tell my friend that I wanted to start dating another common friend of ours. For context, he had been chasing her for many months, but she did not want anything to do with him and did not give him any indication that she did, but he kept trying. She and I had amazing chemistry, but I did not want to start dating her until he knew it was going to happen. He got mad at me because he ‘had already pictured me attending his wedding and our kids playing together in 20 years.’
I told him, we get drunk, and he said, ‘It is my fault… Karma got me!’ I asked him to clarify, and he confessed that he hooked up with his step-mom while his dad was away on a business trip. Apparently, they were on the brink of divorce, she had already cheated with other guys, she was one of those chicks with plastic surgery and he hated that he was not strong-willed enough to say no to that. He proceeded to tell me how his dad went crying to him to tell him about his upcoming divorce and that he had to hear all that and felt horrible.
I felt horrible. He felt horrible. I really liked this guy as a friend, but with everything that happened that night, we disconnected. I tried to reach out to repair our friendship, but he did not want any of that and went around saying horrible things about my current girlfriend and me. She and I ended up moving cities to start fresh with a new circle of friends because of it.
Even now, I still miss that guy and feel bad that we don’t talk to each other. Nevertheless, that girl has given me the best six years of my life and I cannot fathom spending the rest of my life with anybody else.
Life is complicated.”
That’s Not How You Go About Picking Up Chicks
“Some years ago, my then-boyfriend, a few friends, and I went to a rather infamous dive bar in town. In a stroke of absolute genius, I was sitting on one end of our group, and my boyfriend was sitting on the other end. An extremely drunk man in his late 20s sat down next to me, pulled out his phone, and with no introduction showed me a picture of his daughter, a very cute little girl of about 4. He told me all about her, then regaled me with many stories about how his ex is a horrible witch that is keeping his daughter from him, all while positively clutching the bar to keep from falling off his stool.
I suspect there is a reason why this scandalous wench is not allowing him custody of their child because he could barely keep custody of his beer. Then he asked for my number. He still hadn’t told me his name, but man, I did know the names of all of his ex-wife’s partners. I am not sure this would have been a great pickup strategy even if I had been single.”
Even The Nicest Of Guys Have Dark Secrets
“It was my first time living on my own in the real world and I ended up living below a Mexican dude who was super chill and nice, but was also an alcoholic. His ‘cousin’ came to visit from Texas and was pretty gangster, and not in an ironic way.
My Mexican friend, who was super nice and ended up being a huge influence on my life and a great friend for a while, was raised with his ‘cousin’ in a gang in Juarez. The police used to pay them to kill orphans and homeless people. I only found out because my friend appeared in my bedroom sobbing one night and told me he saw their faces every night and wanted to kill himself, which is why he drank so much.
I wasn’t close with the guy’s cousin, but I gathered the rest of the story through random bits and pieces. They made a deal with certain US federal agencies and gave them some info and were relocated and put in witness protection. At first, I was shocked and sickened, but I felt like I knew this person because he was so kind to me and had a truly good heart and was raised in a bad situation.
Besides his constant drunkenness, he was always a kind and caring person but tortured. I could write a book on this man and the parts of his life he told me. It was quite an experience for a 19-year-old white guy. Unfortunately, it does not have a happy ending. He ended up going back to the border and wasn’t careful about it. He ended up killing himself via alcohol to save his daughter from his former gang. I reached out to a friend of his after I found out about his death and he confirmed that his old gang caught up with him and was threatening him with his daughter and he ended up killing himself rather than have them kill him or his family. Absolutely heartbreaking. I will always love you and miss you, Mi Hermano.”
They Invited Their Neighbor Over But Quickly Regretted It When This Happened
“I had a new neighbor who was going through some financial troubles. I was only made aware because her son asked me for some smokes, and not wanting to give a 10-year-old a pack of smokes, I knocked on their door and asked if everything was ok.
We started chatting, she cried and said that she had lost her job and had a kid to look after. She seemed nice, so I invited her over for a glass of wine. As the night, and the alcohol, progressed, she became emotional. I did not think much about it, considering her situation, until she started muttering to herself. I leaned in closer to hear what she was saying, thinking she was addressing me. She was mumbling about herself in the third person, saying things like:
‘She loved him so much, nobody expected that she was the one who killed him, but she did it, she had to get rid of him.’
‘It’s for the best now, everything is better now.’
‘She had to do it, she had no choice, but they won’t find her, they can’t find her, they will never know.’
She was rocking back and forth in her chair, holding her knees, and twirling her hair around her finger the entire time. This freaked me out, and when I asked her what she was saying, she just looked at me, shook her head, and said she had to leave.
I feared for my life afterward.”
Was He Telling The Truth Or Just Extremely Wasted?
“One time, my best friend went missing when we were out at a bar. He had been drinking a lot.
I called him and he told me was walking home, but got lost on the way. I finally found him on a neighborhood street not far from either of our houses. He got into the car and started to scream about how he had a kid named Chad and that he loved him.
We haven’t talked about the conversation since, but I always wonder if he really does have a son named Chad and is hiding it, or if he was just really drunk.”
How Long Had She Been Holding This In?
“For some reason, people tend to see me as one of those people that you just tell stuff to when you’re drunk. I have no idea why. Do I have a trustable face? That being said, I have had a lot of odd things confessed to me.
The very worst one was my then-girlfriend telling me that when her older brother had his friends over for the weekend, they waited one night until their parents were drunk and asleep and took turns violating her.
She was a really messed up girl. Very sweet, but very damaged, and it made a lot of sense why afterward. I didn’t know what to say, but I was like, ‘That’s awful, and I’m really sorry.’ I don’t remember my exact words, but I also asked her to please let me know if I’m doing anything that is upsetting her boundaries because I wasn’t experienced with relationships and didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.”
The Phone Call No Parent Wants To Receive
“A couple of years ago, I had a coworker who was about to turn 21. For her birthday, we went out with a group of people and some of her friends, one of whom was her roommate. I thought she was cute and wanted to try and put the moves on her.
The night evolved into some crazy nonsense and I discovered that my coworker was a terrible drunk. She was belligerent, loud, and essentially evolved into a 5-year-old having a tantrum, but for an extended period of time. Her friend told me that this wasn’t uncommon.
A couple of weeks later, I worked late on a Saturday night and was just about to go to sleep when I received a phone call from my coworker’s roommate. She and my coworker were downtown, literally right across the street from the restaurant we worked at, and she needed help babysitting my coworker. At this point, it was like 2:30 in the morning, but I was trying to get into this girl’s pants, so I figured I would play the hero once and see where it went. I got there, talked to the owners of the club they were kicked out of to reassure them I was not trying to kidnap them, and helped my coworker into my car.
I drove them back to their apartment, where my drunk coworker was in hysterics. She was doing that kind of bawling where you take a slight pause to literally just scream, and I wanted to nope out of there as soon as possible. The roommate, however, begged me to stay and help. I couldn’t resist and stuck around to offer whatever emotional support to the roommate as she helped my coworker try to calm down. My coworker proceeded to rant about how she hated college and being away from home, and really wanted to speak to her parents. So her roommate dialed up her mom and dad, and managed to wake them up.
All better now, right? I figured we were in the clear, that her parents would be able to calm her down and she’d go to bed so I could finally leave. No. The reason she wanted to talk to her parents was to tell them she hated them, unfortunately. Her poor dad was the one to step up and take the beating. This is where the confession part comes in.
She went on this hour-long screaming/crying rant about how they never loved or respected her, that they didn’t protest when she moved a couple hundred miles away to go to school because they wanted her gone. She screamed about how all of her friends have great relationships and that she’ll never have that because she’s disgusting (she’s actually pretty attractive, mind you) and that she’s resorted to just sleeping with any and every guy that will give her attention and just wait for them to leave. She then talked about some childhood trauma regarding her brother attempting to drown her and how her parents supposedly forgave him and brushed it off, and how they love him more than her.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been as uncomfortable as I was in that situation. I wanted nothing more than to just bail, but the roommate looked at me and pleaded for me to stay. Honestly, it wasn’t about getting laid or anything at that point, I stuck around because it would be messed up to leave one person to deal with that. My coworker ended her rant by repeatedly screaming at her dad while holding up a middle finger to the phone, jerking it closer each time she reiterated her declaration. She then threw her roommate’s phone against the wall, put her head down on her bed, and started crying again, albeit a lot softer.
After another few minutes, her roommate felt she could handle it. I gave her a card I had with a counseling hotline number on it and told her about her university’s counseling center because I felt like my coworker really needed it. I hugged her goodbye and left.
I felt bad for that girl. She obviously had some issues that needed to be discussed, but I’m glad that she vented to her parents, and now they were able to talk about it. She went to Disney with them a few weeks later, so I hope it was all ironed out. I’ve just never seen someone make confessions like that, to their own parents no less.”
She Never Knew Her Boyfriend’s Troubled Past
“My boyfriend told me he beat a kid to the point that he needed a feeding tube when he was a kid because the kid kept bullying my boyfriend because his dad was gay. The kid kept bullying him about it and my friend snapped one day when the kid brought his mom into it.
He said he remembered slamming the kid’s head into the window on the bus and then blacked out until it was over. He had anger issues through high school and is now the kindest and most level-headed person I’ve ever met.
I’ll never bring it up to him or anyone else, and I’m not even sure he remembers telling me, but that was kind of shocking and provided a lot of insight to the struggles he’s had with his dad up until recently. They are on good terms now, but I know when we first met, they weren’t in as good of a position, and I gave him a lot of crap about not having a good relationship with him, which I feel bad about now.”
I Doubt They’ll Hang Out With “Ian” After This Confession
“When I was a freshman in college, my friend Craig and I decided to go hang out with an older guy (late 20s) who lived in our dorm hall named Mark. Mark had served in the military and was a great guy. He also loved to get really hammered.
One night, Mark invited us to join him and a friend of his named Ian at Ian’s place where we could get high, drink, and hang out.
When we showed up, both Ian and Mark were already high and both had been drinking and probably smoking too. Mark looked and acted as if he was sober pretty much but Ian wasn’t handling it very well. He was having a really bad trip. We tried smoking together to stabilize the mood but it didn’t seem to work. I’m not sure what clicked in Ian’s head but to make a long story short, he ended up crying and throwing himself on the floor as he confessed to his friend and two strangers that he watched and downloaded child smut. He repeated it over and over as he cried on the ground. He talked about how he was going to burn and how he was a bad person. It was a very surreal moment for myself and my friend Craig as this was the first and definitely last time we’d be hanging out with Ian.
Mark, who was coherent, apologized for the situation. Craig and I finished our drinks and left. We walked back to campus as we basically kept questioning what we had just heard.
I’m not sure what happened to Ian after that either as neither I or Craig ever brought him up to Mark again.”
Their Night Of Fun Turned Serious So Fast
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“I was home from school for the summer, working in a local factory. My college friends were coming over for the weekend and I invited a guy I got along with from work.
My parents’ garage had a mini living room setup in it because my brother and I stored our stuff there, so that’s where we hung out and drank.
Apparently, my coworker didn’t drink that much or just drank too quickly because after an hour or two, he stumbled outside and got sick. I went to go check on him, brought him water and some bread to soak up the alcohol. He ended up telling me about how he hated himself, didn’t have a reason to live, etc. This went on for a long time, at least an hour and a half. I tried to talk to him, told him he was a great guy and that he had a lot to live for. It kind of helped, but he was still drunk and distraught. He said he was going to go home, and started walking to his car. I told him he couldn’t leave because he was drunk and he would probably get in an accident. He said he didn’t care and wanted to die on his drive home.
I wasn’t going to let that happen, but he had already gotten his door open. I went over, put him in a full nelson which made him drop his keys on the ground. I kicked his keys under the car and told him he wasn’t going anywhere and that I would do everything I needed to prevent him from leaving. After a bit of arguing, he came around and I got him inside the house. I had him sleep on my bed, gave him water and a trash can. The second he got in my bed, he passed out.
I sat in my living room just thinking about what happened and didn’t know what to do. I never dealt with something like that before. I considered calling my grandpa who was a pastor to get some advice, but by that time, it was like 2 am or something.
I slept on the couch and my coworker left before I woke up. I saw him at work the next Monday and he apologized for everything.”
How Do You Even Respond To That?
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“My drunk uncle once told us a story about a guy who died on a job site where he was working. My uncle drives trucks and heavy machinery on the sites, and one night they were working late.
He said one guy was backing up a truck and another guy was behind it and the driver must not have realized it. The guy got pinned between the truck and a wall, and his head was crushed. My uncle said there was so much blood that he would never be able to get the image out of his head.
None of the adults around acknowledged this story, but it was really weird to me.”
