I'm really glad that this isn't only me! Thanks everybody for this thread. My mess:

After a couple years in graduate school, I'd managed to scrape together $10,000 or so by living on a shoestring budget (<$900/mo) and managing my finances to the dollar. Managed to spend ALL of it in a manic month and a half.

My accounting became nonexistent. I was vaguely aware that I was blowing through the ~$10k, but I had gotten an email about a cost-of-living increase that was going to include some retroactive payment. I figured I could spend myself broke and the incoming payment would provide a financial deus ex machina....

The most crushing moment came a few months after the mania, still super broke, and by then pretty depressed. I knew I had to dust off the old spreadsheet, start tallying up my mess, and get it back together. Digging back through bank statements, I realized that the retroactive $5000 deposit had come (and gone) in the middle of the mania. Never even realized it. That was a punch in the gut, realizing I really had to dig myself out from square zero.

I'm not sure where all of it went... I've tracked down half of it, and I'm OK with most of it... I gave a few friends cashiers checks for $500 here, $1000 there. I don't really regret that - I was helping good people out of sticky financial situations (oblivious to my impending financial crash). I spent probably a few hundred personally sharing food and cash with homeless people around the city - I'm glad it went to some good. A few thousand ended up in gold and silver, which is good/lucky since they retain value. Also some palladium... but I flipped out 3 days after buying it and decided to pay for a $25 meal with a $400 coin. Long story.....