The Annual Influx of Holiday Cheer in the ER

OH SHIT.  I totally forgot how much I freaking hate working around the holidays.  Really, it has very little to do with the fact that I miss the holidays themselves.  My family is pretty flexible and we don't generally do a lot of stuff on the day of anyway.  Naw dude, it is the stuff that happens at work.  
I always think I'm exaggerating it in my head, and I go a whole year without dealing with it and kind of forget it happens, but the holiday season brings the crazy assholes out of the woodwork.  
I wish I could fully do justice to how ridiculous the holiday brand of crazy is without violating the shit our of HIPAA, but holy crap.   I guess crazy really is a misleading word if you're using it in the traditional sense of a less-than-kosher term for people who are genuinely mentally ill.  I guess I should really be using the word cray, which is generally the word that I reserve for people that just act totally foolish and childish who may at some point try to throw in some kind of mental health angle, but only as a means to an end.  These are the patients that think being completely hysterical pains in everyone's ass is going to get them what they want, usually, drugs, attention, or both.  These are the trolliest trolls of the troll genome, and they have never faced a problem they couldn't solve by escalating the DRAMZ.   These are the patients that suck the compassion and life out of you, who make me ask myself if maybe I would have been better suited as a park ranger or a stripper or a barista at Starbucks. And the other night, I seriously had like, 10 of them in one shift.
I can't even count the number of IV resites I wasted my time with when somebody decided they were leaving because they weren't immediately showered with Dilaudid as soon as they stepped out of their car in the parking lot.   The one that really took the cake was seriously just a living, breathing, red flag for drug seeking.  Came in with some sketchy story that kept changing about a traumatic injury, with nary a mark on his body, multiple non-narcotic allergies, controlled substances stolen, from out of town, admitted to going to hospital x for this same problem and was treated so horribly OMGZ, you are totes suing them because BTW you're a lawyer (I know tons of lawyers with sweet homemade tattoos), lots of crying with zero actual tears. Oh, and great job dumbass, it also seems that you went to hospital y for this problem yesterday with the same story not realizing it's in our hospital system and we can see the notes from that visit.   Unfortunately for you, the Dilaudid fairy isn't working today, and all the doctors here actually read your history.  It seems this incident has led to them looking you up on both the state bar website and that state narcotic database, and those two findings combined with your IV pulling shenanigans have you at strike 3, dear. You're going to the house empty handed, unless you can pull out a really impressive performance late in the game.  And sure enough, our lack of compassion and/or generosity with IV narcotics has lead to some pretty dark times and some suicidal thoughts.  MMkay now, if you wanna blow up the call light for drugs you won't get while waiting on the psych consult, go on with your bad self, but now we gotta take all your stuff for your safety, sorry buddy. Enter dramatic family member for act 3, with all his mean-mugging and enabling skillz. And look, he's attempting to wheel you out dramatically with IV still in place because THIS HOSPITAL IS THE WORST.   But sorry, no take backs for suicidal ideation, so we're gonna get the po-po cause we're concerned for your safety and stuff.  I think you can probably guess how the psych consult worked out for the goals he had in mind.  Nope, the psych consult people won't prescribe you Xanax, but thanks for playing.
Yup, imagine this in varying degrees all night and you have what is probably going to be my life for the next month and a half.  My theory has always been that crap like this increases because they're putting on a show for family and friends that aren't paying them enough attention, but now I'm starting to wonder if they aren't trying to take care of their stocking stuffers early.