From "The Man Overboard" on www.themanoverboard.com and Amazon.com

The weekend at Cow Island was loaded with tons of alcohol and cocaine. Darryl was the first on the island and the last to leave. He was drunk the whole weekend. He went swimming with his cast on and acted like he didn’t have a broken wrist with pins and screws holding him together. I came home Sunday morning. Darryl came back Sunday night.
Sunday night we watched the Red Sox game. Darryl's cast was starting to come off anyway, so that night we ripped the rest of it off. We could see a lump that was apparently a metal pin. He then hooked himself up to the IV machine with one end connected to the wall socket. Darryl suddenly said he had to take a piss. He got up but could only go as far as the IV cord allowed. He turned away from me, opened his fly, and began to pee on the hardwood floor. He turned to face me, continuing to pee.
I yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Darryl walked back to his chair and sat down. He seemed amazed at the pin popping out of his wrist. He pulled it out, showed it to me, and put it on the table. I got out a mop and cleaned up the mess. Darryl had no reaction whatsoever; to him it was like any other moment in time.
I knew Darryl was on his way out; I was watching him die. We had partied together for years, but something was different. It was like he’d given up on life. I felt so bad about it that I wrote Darryl a three-page letter telling him he was going to kill himself, either from the wrist infection or by driving drunk, probably killing someone else in the process.
I wrote, “You're going to lose your son, your house, and everything else you worked hard to get.” Darryl didn’t read the letter. He was in total denial. —Alan Joiner, roommate and close friend

I now realize that many people were concerned for my welfare. But nobody could reach me. I didn’t think my problem was serious enough to quit drinking and drugging. If you had to live my life, you’d drink and use drugs too.
Dr. Chance was frustrated that I wasn’t giving my surgeries a chance to heal and told me, “You’ll lose your right hand if you’re not careful. These casts have only been lasting a month on you. Usually it’s one cast per operation, and you’ve broken two.”
I sheepishly admitted fault and asked how the X-rays looked, concerned they’d have to re-do the operation. My fears were well-founded. Once again the doctors went to work on my hand. After several hours in recovery Dr. Chance came in to see me. He explained that my fall had badly damaged my wrist bones and the infection had eaten away the bones where the screws and pins were attached. He thought the bones should be removed.
“This will cause your hand to fall back just a little to the next set of wrist bones.”
“You mean you’ll take bones out, throw them in the trash, and one of my arms will be shorter than the other?” I asked anxiously.
“Nobody but you will know that your right arm is a little shorter than your left.”
We got a second opinion, which confirmed the need to remove the bones, but having surgery meant I’d eventually regain almost all of the original strength and motion in my right hand. I agreed and scheduled the surgery.