Worst traveler freakout you've seen?

[Mr. Expendable]

I got a short but shitty story that only an alcoholic would get.... well idk remember what we were doing it was either we snuck into a movie and drank or we drank with a bunch of locals but after we got back to our strawberry stand squat non of us could sleep because we where all D.T.ing so we walk to a cvs down the street, we had just enough for three 40oz but the cvs wouldnt sell because non of us had an ID so my friend said he knew a place on the other site of town... take into consideration this was about 1:30 am and prohibition was 2 so we walk and walk and ended up running the last few blocks only to get there at like 205... it sucked and me and one of my friends ended up arguing for a while and he bitched how he wanted to go back to the squat and i told him we where going to another place then he bitched about mosquitos we ended up going to the closer spot and to our luck someone brought down a king sized mattress... so we counted it as a good night just cuz that and tried to passout... the money ended up going to a good breakfast 3 ice cold hurricanes which hit us good cuz the lack of sleep and food.... then some clepto chick we where with went to albertsons and stole enough food to feed us all... it was a feast.... lunchables sandwiches cookies goldfish soda.... amazing.... thats why i love when bad shit happens cuz if you just get over it good shit eventually comes

 

[kai]

i've felt pretty stressed being in countries where I couldn't speak the language trying to navigate my way to a spot to hitchhike or just get by in general.

Never went home before because of a freakout. It did seem a little strange at first, going town to town so frequently and never having a place and barely a dollar to my name trying to get by...but I got used to it.

generally I tend to freak out more when I get job, place to live, girlfriend, think about going to school and all that other established lifestyle stuff- I suppose it's relative though.

 

[iamwhatiam]

havin trouble thinkin of a freakout at the moment, but it was pretty scary/freakish seeing a friend run down the hill clutching his head while blood gushing down his face, sayin he'd been hit by a train.....we couldn't tell for sure if his skull had been cracked.
yea...it was his own stupid fault tho. you don't get stoned and play around on the the side of the tracks near an oncoming train. lucky he wasn't killed

 

[venusinpisces]

There used to be a girl at one of the big NYC LES squats named A. I will not say her full name because she might be embarrassed about this. A. was completely obsessed with psychedelics and had a daily LSD habit that she passed on to me for a few short weeks before I had enough. Needless to say she was not all there. Well, one day somebody showed up with some Jimsonweed. Already a problem. A. decides to do some and of course has a meltdown. She then decides that a pile of rags is a dead baby and calls the cops on the squat. Last time I saw her she was walking around in nothing but a sheet saying she was part of some temple called Church of the Psychedelic. ok.

Another jimsonweed story: This one happened at a regional rainbow gathering in colorado. It was a pretty big regional and somebody had showed up with jimsonweed (aka datura) that they were passing out like candy. THis is such a bad idea and for so many reasons. Number one, it is not like LSD which the majority of people can do without major incident. Datura, on the other hand, has given people heart attacks and causes vomiting. It's considered to be a toxin. Not only that but the trips are known to be much more intense and are usually not very enjoyable. So some idiots are passing it around (I was offered some and declined) and pretty soon one of the guys who had been smoking it wanders out into the middle of the lake. I was not there when this happened but later heard that he drowned from getting tangled up in the roots at the bottom of the lake. Before he died he screamed at the top of his lungs "Don't let them kill me!"

There are more but I will have to post them later.

 

[RideMoreTrains]

i have never freaked out while traveling and don't have any stories to tell about other people however there have been a few times i went hiking in Daniel Boone natl. park and got lost. Got lost one time with a guy that is not familiar with the woods and he was freaking out big time. eventually found a creek i knew we could follow out. i have lived in the woods most of my life so getting lost is not a big deal. this guy just could not handle it. eventually i had to lie and pretend everything was okay, before it was actually okay. last time i ever take a boy from the city into the woods. he said everything looked the same and the lack of noise, and commotion really bothered him. hell when i was a kid we used to get lost in the woods on purpose.

 

[Linda/Ziggy]

Me !?!?!?
Hmm my last 'Freak Out' while travelling was in Oric on Hwy 101 in Nor California.

I'd wilderness walked into the forest to go hang out with the tallest Redwoods on earth.
All ready with my 50 foot rope to hang my food and stuff away from the bears.

Crack of dawn "Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!
Crashing noises, breaking branches, something coming straight for me!!

"Ah what the fuck!!!! It's a fucking monster, that's no fucking bear !! OMFG!!!!!!!"

I peek out my little tent and a whole FUCKING HERD of Roosevelt Elk -the BIG monster sized ones you know!!
We'll there headed straight for me less than 20 foot away!!

Luckily they walk past me and don't squash me.
So I high tail it out - I panicked I am embarrassed, little old me who has wilderness hiked & camped ALL my life.

Or how bout the one about my old man !!?!?!?
Well he was a home bum old Punk rocker living under bridges in LA when I bumped into him after not having
seen him since 1984!!
So I say, "you gotta choice, be a homebum or come travelling with me, cause I aint spending my life under this
shitty overpass in Hollywood anymore!!!!"

So off we go hitching from LA, by the time we end up in Arcata he is out of his mind!!
We end up in the Community Forest and he is losing his mind, panicking!!
He sees headlights up on the top road and freaks out runs screaming in to the woods, and it's damn dark in there!!
I ifnally find him after climbing straight up a muddy hill on my knees with a full winter pack.

He's screaming 'come get me. arrrest me put me in the psych ward, I can't take anymore".

I love the little guy dearly,
but it was the case of the guy who had lived outside in the city for 20 years but got out
into the woods & freaked out.....

hahahahahahahaha

 

[playedout]

i was in LA strung out on heroin and makin a shit ton of money in pasadena. heroin addiction and alot of money may seem like they go hand in hand but they really dont. anyways the dope dealer was all the way in skid row (of course) and for a few days we didnt feel like making that trip so we just bought a bunch of meth every day in pasadena. after my 3rd or 4th day awake and tweaked out of course i started seein shit and alot of people that i know werent really there just because the hallucinations were so outragous. but they were fucking out to get me and they were everywhere. so i walk down colorado ave for hours tryin to escape all these people that just kept appearing out of no where. my road dog was with me at first but after i decided he was with them anf freaked out on him he went somewhere else. but as i was walking tryin to escape these people i decided it was safest to walk right down the middle of the street because there were no bushes or walls they could jump out from behind there. the cops didnt like that. they warned me a couple of times to get the fuck out of the street and go to bed before they arrested me. after like the 4th time they took me to jail. but it didnt stop there, these fucks were in the vents and everything. after a few hours of goin nuts in a holding cell they took me to the hospital and they gave me some shot that knocked me out and it all went away.. the whole thing was so crazy and realistic i was paranoid for a couple of weeks after too. but i got over it and ill never fuck with meth again.

 

[venusinpisces]

Ok for real now I have freaked out a bunch of times. I freaked out on the Taos mesa when my friend tried to get me to sleep in her van full of frozen maggots and trash piles. Her trailer was piled up with trash all the way to the ceiling and she said I could stay in there with her but there was literally only a tiny little 3x6 foot area to squeeze into with only a wood stove to heat it!? No. Don't do meth, kids. I got over it and slept in the maggot van. Oh well, they were frozen so it's not like they would be crawling on me. It was about 20 degrees at night then so sleeping outside wasn't really an option with my shivering dog.

And then I used to freak out from doing LSD because I lost the ability to talk and when people talked to me I had to start wandering. I got stopped by the police for wandering through traffic in Atlanta. Another time I tried to take my clothes off in Boston commons and a friend stopped me. Good thing he did because I probably would have ended up in solitary confinement. Then I took off and ended up sitting in this really rich neighborhood scribbling on a napkin until a car stopped and some computer guy picked me up. He was really weird and I don't think he talked very much either. He didn't even have a bed or sheet/blanket at his apartment, just a huge pile of books and papers all over the place. He slept on all the rumpled up papers on the other side of the room!!! And that guy had a lot of money too. WTF! I don't do LSD anymore but thinking about that guy always makes me laugh.

 

[Nelco]

same here..first time I've actually been home with mom
it's weird getting bossed around

 

[Nelco]

the ex called my mom..hence i'm here with my mom
thanks ex

 

[Nelco]

i had one friend..no, two friends strip down on an acid black out..nothing like a naked rob-a-meany with just shoes on, perched in a tree,..acid..

 

[Nelco]

damn it..keep messing this up

I've had a couple of freak outs... Normally they involve the police looking for me.. Running out of places to camp/and or hustle.. Being sick and owing the dopeman enough money that he really wants to see me.. Nothing to drastic really... But what is a freak out?? Someone fight or flight mode going into hyper drive..

speaking of freak outs
i got a personal one for yall

in arcata
siting in redwood park
i decided it would be a great idea to eat a shit ton of acid
and help the group drink 5 spacebags
bad bad idea
some screaming and yelling and a black out later
i wake up to find out
i went complete wing nut
thought i was being choked and couldnt breath
4 of my friends had to hold me down for a good while
to keep me from further riping out my hair and facial piercings
this went on for a good 2 hours

so yes
even the best of us have those moments
of complete total wingnut freak outs

i think it was fucking funny as shit
and will comtinue to stay away from lsd

 

[Nelco]

well, I had to run back home after a boyfriend beat the living shit out of me and I had a nervous breakdown because i realized just how fucked my life had become.

can't say i know anyone personally whose done that. usually those things happen in your own time when you're alone and at your weakest so others don't get the satisfaction of seeing it happen.

 

[Nelco]

i've had a whiskey freak out moment..
i was with the ex and his new friend was hitting on me and my ex is usually the crazy jealous type..but not this time..so shit was driving me crazy..i ended up blacking his buddies eye, for not putting his clothes back on, while looking at me like "that", than immeadetely blacking my ex's eye for laughing about it..because i was drunk..
..than we got kicked out of dude's apartment in colorado
..than into beating up the local yuppie for pulling a knife on me and the ex, for arguing with eachother about everything..i don't think we tryed to spange him..
..and than i accidentally broke a store window with my head, when i was sitting up against the wall, shaking my head to close to the window..trying to tell my ex he was driving me crazy...
..than kicking out random cars tail lights out of a rage..
..it all ended happily, when the ex told me he finished knocking out the tail lights for me, when i was storming off cussing about it all, looking for a place to drop and sleep off the whiskey..
..last time i've drunk whiskey

 

[Diagaro]

Well now this thread has piqued my curiosity . . .
Recently I had two in tow one claimed simply to be what I call "old hat" claiming a substantial number of rydes under their belt, but in a drunken slurry of idiocy accidentally lamented that "this is the first time I've rode trains" I took note of this and our next hop was inside of a rear unit (not rear facing but forward facing - just behind the lead) due to the entire length being AT's
said individual was so amazed by the commonplace high risk ryde that It became apparent that he was greener than even I and had been faking the funk - Not really a freak out just similar in my mind. on an unrelated note we had to go on without this person because of some incidents having to do with weed, money mongering personal space concerns.
It may be a wile before we take a perfect stranger along with us its hardenough for me to compromise with Hippychick, I'm so used to traveling alone . . .
I loath the idea of holding others hands If I wanted to be a father I would go home . . .

 

[Myechtatel]

Haha. I never even thought that other people might have this problem too. Well here's mine:

Since I was sixteen me and my friend, we'll call him Brooks, were in this punk band and played lots of shows in Atlanta. By the time I was 18 it had gotten pretty big but then fell apart for a few different reasons. Anyway, me and Brooks still hung out all the time along with Matt, the singer. But after the band fell apart we had no idea what we were gonna do. We tried starting other bands but it all proved useless. We were too punk rock to get jobs or go to college. We had heard stories of these mystical squatters and trainhoppers but never really had any proof. Eventually I ran out of money and had to move back with my parents whom had moved to Florida. Matt had gotten a job doing some half assed construction work and eventually became too involved with his new girlfriend to care about anything else. In the meantime Brooks had started going to college. Partly because his parents were making him and partly because he wanted to. I was finishing my last semester of high school, my girlfriend had moved down to florida with me and soon I found Crimethinc. That was it for me. I started going to the local Food Not Bombs and when I found dumpster diving I was convinced that I didn't need no fucking job. I could live out of dumpsters! Anyway my girlfriend and I got real excited and started really looking into traveling the country hitchhiking and dumpsterdiving. I had kept contact with Brooks and he was excited about it too. Eventually I convinced him to come down to Florida and we could start living our dream. So he did. He quit college, told his parents to go fuck themselves, left his girlfriend and planned to disappear with me and my girl. dumpsterdiving, hitching, train hopping and playing music for the rest of our days. Well we spent about 2 months planning and obtaining gear. we had somewhat limited funds and very limited knowledge. When all was said and done we left and came back three times within 2 weeks. We had no clue what we were doing. so we inally got everything worked out but decided we had to leave florida. so we got three tickets to Athens, GA. A town brooks and i were pretty familiar with and knew we could make it and have a good time. so we got there and had a pretty rough start. id say the first three days. we figured out not all dumpsters are magical, walmart tents are NOT waterproof, military backpacks SUCK and don't pack your bag like you're going into the himalayan mountains for 2 weeks! me and my girl were pretty determined but we could tell he was caving in. yeah, we got wet in our cheap ass tent, our shit was HEAVY, we looked RIDICULOUS, we werent eating good and we were just pretty miserable. so by the fourth day he decided to go back home. that was the day things really turned around. We snuck into a folk festival, and got tons of free food. We calculated over $100 that we didn't have to pay. Then we discovered spanging. downtown Athens on a friday night we were making serious cash. But he still left. He said he'd come back and start traveling eventually... now he's got a job and an apartment. never to return. me and my girlfriend have learned a lot and are able to travel very comfortably and happily. I couldn't be more happier with how I'm spending my life.

That's my traveler freakout story. hope you enjoyed it!

 

[Diagaro]

Well lemme say thanks for that story.
But I am perplexed. Maybe this may make me seem en "elitist asshole" if so, so be it.
How can someone screw up dumpstering? It stands to reason: If the establishment sells food chances of discarded food are 99.8% likely to be present. food is the one thing you should never have to go without. between straight up telling a restaurant manager "I'm a traveling bum, please feed me?" asking full patrons with "white boxes" (white to-go Styrofoam boxes) "spare some leftovers for a traveling bum" and when they are all sleeping in there comfy beds at night or shooting dope, your rooting around through there tossings behind the restaurant. Course most food in a restaurant dumpster has been dropped on a floor, half eaten or something else nasty truth told you have to have a steel lined stomach - see me for instance I can eat week old pizza, raw hamburger, dirt and in all probability day old dog diarrhea - course I have been doing this for over a decade but I'm sure you got the hang of it by now

 

[coolguyeagle76']

ive never freaked out. im fucking smooth. EXCEPT the very first time i ever "traveled" i was like 16, i hitched to nola with a girl id known for about three weeks prior. somehow for some reason i wound up telling her i loved her and then immediately took it back, and then decided that she was a burden on me or something and id have much better luck hitching without a beautiful girl at my side... she wound up following me through the worst ghetto imaginable crying while i tried to ditch her, ended up giving up and kinda making up and she got her mom to put us up in fancy ass hotels for three nights, then we hitched back to florida...

 

[Myechtatel]

Well lemme say thanks for that story.
But I am perplexed. Maybe this may make me seem en "elitist asshole" if so, so be it.
How can someone screw up dumpstering? It stands to reason: If the establishment sells food chances of discarded food are 99.8% likely to be present. food is the one thing you should never have to go without. between straight up telling a restaurant manager "I'm a traveling bum, please feed me?" asking full patrons with "white boxes" (white to-go Styrofoam boxes) "spare some leftovers for a traveling bum" and when they are all sleeping in there comfy beds at night or shooting dope, your rooting around through there tossings behind the restaurant. Course most food in a restaurant dumpster has been dropped on a floor, half eaten or something else nasty truth told you have to have a steel lined stomach - see me for instance I can eat week old pizza, raw hamburger, dirt and in all probability day old dog diarrhea - course I have been doing this for over a decade but I'm sure you got the hang of it by now

there was still food. just not the quantity or quality we were used to. we were used to driving to the local supermarket(winn dixie, sedano's, natural foods stores) and having enough food to feed 50 people a week. which is what we did. we eventually started our own FNB chapter in kissimmee and made awesome vegan meals for 30-50 people. and we brought leftover food to orlando FNB the next day. but anyway, we were downtown Athens. I don't know if you've ever been there but they have a weird way of picking up trash. on a certain day they bring big trash bags out to the sidewalk for pickup. there are no dumpsters downtown. if you go after those trash bags, people will stare you down until the owner comes out and beats you with a broom. haha. and all the supermarkets were quite a walk. but we figured it out. we didn't starve.

 

[venusinpisces]

All the most interesting freakout stories I have involve psychedelics. Of course there are plenty of alcohol/speed freakouts but those are mostly just depressing. So this one is about my friend who took some LSD and then invaded a donut shop, started babbling nonsense and then got arrested for disturbing the peace. She said the cops were transforming into actual pigs in the squad car and she couldn't stop laughing. When they placed her in solitary confinement she ran over to the guard and asked him if he had a penis. He said no. (She was 15 at the time so I'm sure that fact had something to do with his response.) She then decided that the best thing to do would be to break out of jail using her own piss as an acid to dissolve the floor which would then break through to the other side of the planet. So she took off all her clothes and proceeded to try it. ineffective. She then tried using her clothes to try to scrub it in, working at this for some time before getting discouraged.

I don't remember the rest of the story at this point. I thought it was funny when she told me but it's also kind of sad since she was a foster kid and isn't doing too well these days.