He awakened in his apartment two Wednesdays ago in agony. “Searing pain,” he said later. He found a mirror. Two of his teeth — a front one and one beside it — were missing.

The discovery sounds familiar, a reminder of the comedy “The Hangover,” but the real-life story for a 29-year-old Manhattan bartender was anything but funny. For him, it is as if “The Hangover” had been remade as a horror film.

Actually, the two teeth were not entirely gone. They were broken, but the roots were still embedded in his gums, he said. His head was throbbing, he said. He picked up his cellphone and saw several missed calls and text messages from Citibank. There appeared to be fraudulent activity concerning his debit card, the bank told him.

That would be putting it mildly. But the bank had to wait. First, he went to a nearby hospital.

Doctors told him the teeth could not be saved, and pulled the roots. He said he believed he had been struck in the head with a pistol. The bartender, who insisted that his name be withheld, said in an interview on Thursday that the doctors told him he had suffered a powerful concussion. Powerful enough to contribute — along with being, in his words, “blackout drunk” — to the amnesia he said he had about what had happened to him earlier that day.