why tradesmen's pubs suck balls

Last week I went to the only pub that is open until very late on a weekday, the Dickson Tradies. It's a shithole, I admit - full of poker machines, old fogies who like to whittle away their pension cheques, and Chinese people who gamble excessively and rub the screen up and down hoping to improve their chances of winning. Regardless, if one wants a beer in the inner north of Canberra after midnight on a weekday, one has no choice.

Anyway, I was playing pool when this rather haggard late-40's guy comes up to me. He seemed to be full of energy - so much so that he was twitching! He says he wants to play pool, so we have a game. He keeps talking and talking all this really crazy stuff until I finally said: "Man, are you on speed or something!?"
"Yeah, and a bit of cocaine" he replies.
"Riiight, that explains it" I say...

Then he goes: "Do you want an ECKY?"
"Haha, Ok" I say, curious as to what the hell he was going to give me.
So he hands me this pill - about as big as a panadol tablet with some writing on it.
Dubious, I tell him that I won't take it tonight, but maybe another night. He seems fine with that - I couldn't believe that he was just giving me something worth at least $40.

Anyway, he kept on talking and talking at super-speed. At one stage he wanted to pay my friend $200 for his leather jacket which he got in China for < $10. Then he wanted to swap his brand-new Nokia 6230 for my shitty old blue-screen 8250! I was going to go through with it, but I thought it was probably stolen or something, and he seemed to forget about it.

Regardless, I came home eventually and looked up the words that were written on the pill on the internet in the hope of finding out what the hell it was. And guess what it was - "Seroquel - Anti-schizophrenia medication" !!! Erowid had some contributions from people who had tried it, all saying: "Don't ever use this as a recreational drug - it's HORRIBLE!"

Jeez, no wonder he was nuts ! What was even more surprising was that I was describing these events to one of my housemates, who said that he KNOWS that guy! Apparently he has an 'acquired brain injury' and lives (or lived) in some kind of halfway-house for people with crazy brain injuries.

Still, who palms off their meds to a total stranger in a pub? Lucky I didn't take it!!