Same thing happened to me once.

I was 17 and had been sentenced to 3 months of rehab by a drug court in Jersey. Unfortunately, I didn't really feel my place was in rehab at such a young and precious age so on day three, during an overwhelming drug craving which I was more than willing to succumb to, I decided to flee the facility.

I inconspicuously slipped out the door during an afternoon movie group where anyone who would have missed me was too preoccupied watching 'Requiem For A Dream' to notice.

Once outside, my heart pounding, I began walking the streets around the neighborhood figuring my next move. I had a wee bit of money to ride the bus to Newark but decided the currency would be more wisely spent on hard drugs.

So I started looking into the windows of cars along the street for one whose driver may have absent-mindedly left keys in the ignition (note at this point in my life I still had no clue as to hotwire an automobile).

I finally found an old Probe in a post office parking lot that, luck be have it, had a pair of keys dangling in its ignition and its windows wide open. I suspect the driver stepped inside momentarily and thought nothing of leaving his car so vulnerable.

I knew to act fast so, my heart now clearly visible through my shirt as it violently pounded its way to escape from my chest cavity, I jumped in the car, started it up and then... nothing. I couldn't even get the thing out of the parking lot as I would start it up, try to leave and it would suddenly stall out.

Alas, it was stick shift and I had no idea how to drive such an unwieldly beast of an automobile. I sat there and damned God for my rotten luck of which, my being a hapless child, I certainly did not deserve. I jumped out of the car, ran behind the post office and through the woods until I got to a residential street on the other side.

Long story short: I found another car, a truck..rather, a beat-up shiatebox of a truck which nonetheless had keys in the ignition, no stick shift and an unlocked door. Hopped in the truck, started it up and drove away, certain that the driver was in his house watching his truck ride down the street without him.

Drove to Newark petrified, waiting to get pulled over by the police the entire way, finally got to the dope spot and offered to sell them the truck for $100 to no avail. I can still hear the dealers voice in my head as they shouted, "Get that shiate off the block, crazy ass white boy."

Vexed, I proceeded to buy hard drugs with the wee money I had, still satisfied that my ordeal was worth this grand result. Drug injestion commenced and now, anxiety subsiding,k I drove to a supermarket parking lot a few towns over, parked the car inconspicuously among a sea of automobiles and then made a phone call on the payphone asking my friend to bring me back to rehab.

The rest of the story I'll save for another more applicable thread... perhaps one dealing with getting your ass handed to you on a silver platter.