Doctors are asking Montreal ravers to refrain from performing surgery on themselves after 21 year old Boris Melvin was rushed to a hospital on Thursday afternoon with life threatening injuries. “Mr. Melvin twisted his ankle at an underground party last Saturday,” says Dr. Gringas Khan of the Montreal General Welfare Hospital. “He was high on a variety of drugs, and in his drug induced haze, he had convinced himself that he would never dance again unless he performed surgery on himself. He thought he was a doctor. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't that."

After twisting his ankle, Mr. Melvin left the main venue, an underground tunnel in St-Henri, and found an abandoned area nearby where began his operation to devastating result. “He broke a beer bottle and then used a piece of sharp glass as a makeshift scalpel,” says Dr. Khan. "It’s a miracle that he didn’t die. He cut off several chunks of his own leg, right down to the bone. In the process, he lost his ability to walk as well as a great deal of blood. The fact that he didn’t bleed out beggars the imagination. A normal person would be dead. But Mr. Melvin is definitely not a normal person."

He was stranded for several days and is lucky to be alive. “Anyone who is hardy enough to perform surgery on themselves isn’t going to go down all that easily,” says Dr. Khan. “If Einstein had a baby with this guy, that baby would be both brilliant and indestructible. Sometimes good genes are wasted on stupid people."

By the time the police found Mr. Melvin, his wounds had become infested with maggots. “We received a phone call from his parents on Monday, and it took several days for us to piece together what had happened to him,” says Sgt. Mason Peralta of the Montreal police force. “We are thankful to the ravers who told us about the underground party’s location, otherwise there’s a very good chance Mr. Melvin wouldn’t be with us today."

Ravers, for their part, say that self-surgery isn’t likely to catch on. “Boris was always a bit weird,” says Tiffany Dyson, an ex-girlfriend. “Normal ravers like to pretend their chemists or psychiatrists, not surgeons. We try to improve our lives by using drugs we know nothing about, not by cutting off our ankles."