Last night

Here's a question for my loyal readers--what is the proper (and successful) way to take someone's keys to keep him from driving drunk? It is amazing, but I have had the Kabuki Rodeo for two years now, and this is the first time (and hopefully the last) that this has ever been a concern.

Last night I hosted my first poker game in my new place. We had seven players and the night went really well. There was one rebuy, and the game ended with the last three standing agreeing to split the pot. This was about 1:00 am. We were ready for the night to end, so we continued playing another card game, followed by a drinking game. By 3:00, as you can imagine, everyone that was drinking was pretty well toasty.

It was at this point that people decided they were ready to leave. All but one person in the group had a designated driver with them, so there was no problem letting them leave. This left me and this guy Elliott. Here is a little history about him--the last time I had him over he and his friends refused to stay and sober up before driving home, and we couldn't get their keys from them. So this time, early on in the evening, I got Elliott's keys and put in my pocket so he wouldn't have them at the end of the night, just in case. By the time he was ready to leave he and another guy had finished off a bottle of Jack Daniels, plus many other drinks. His eyes were completely glassed over and he was barely able to stand straight, but to him he was "perfectly okay."

I tried at first to get him to stay without him knowing his keys were missing. This didn't work. The first time he "left" he made it out the door and up the steps before he realized he didn't have his wallet, keys, phone--anything. He came back in and we argued for a few more minutes about him leaving in the shape he was in. The second time he "left," again he made it to the top of the steps, but then I told him I would be there when he figured out he actually couldn't go anywhere. It was only then that he realized his keys were missing. He came back in and IMMEDIATELY was pissed. We kept talking, me telling him why I had took his keys, him telling me that he was "perfectly okay" to drive. His next argument was that I let everyone else leave, why not him? When I told him that they had all had a designated driver he tried arguing with me that they didn't. Had he not been so freaking drunk, he would have seen that we had multiple people NOT DRINKING, even during our DRINKING game. By this point he was starting to yell and curse like crazy--another way to tell that he was "perfectly okay." I told him it was fine for him to be pissed, I could understand, but that it wasn't getting him his keys back, which just managed to piss him off even more.

It was at this time that he decided it was time to use force to get his keys back. Again, another way to tell that he wasn't drunk, no, not at all. He backed me up against the couch and stood on my feet so that I couldn't move and began pretty much groping me looking for his keys. He finally found them in my front pocket and I fought back the best the I could trying to keep him from getting them out of my pocket, but in the end I lost when my finger got cut (just a small cut, but it hurt like hell) and I jerked back from the pain. He stormed out the door and left. At this point, I don't know if he made it home okay or not. I figure he will call eventually if he did because in his haste he left his CDs here.

So, back to my original question--what is the proper, and successful, way to take someone's keys to keep him from driving drunk? Luckily, all of my close friends are smart enough to know not to do this. At all of my parties in the past they have either come prepared to stay or had a designated driver. Had there been other people left here, maybe the group of us could have kept Elliott here, but I am not even sure about that. He will NEVER be invited back, so I won't have to deal with him again, but, it could happen with someone else, so I need to figure this out. Any help?