Stories of avalanche or plane crash survivors eating human flesh just to live or earthquake victims trapped in rubbles drinking their own pee are stuff that media reports whenever a major disaster strikes a place.

However, in the case of a 23-year-old engineering student at the University of California San Diego, he had to drink his own urine to survive because federal justice officials left him abandoned in April 2012 in a windowless cell for five days without food or water.

Daniel Chong was arrested during a raid at a friend's house where police where the Drug Enforcement Administration found 18,000 Ecstasy pills, other drugs and weapons. Mr Chong was there to smoke marijuana.

Upon being taken into custody, the student was placed in a cell, but the police officer assured hum he would not be charges and promised to get him out in a minute.

While inside the cell, he started to hallucinate on the third day, peed on a metal bench to quench his thirst and stacked a blanket, his pants and shoes on a bench in an attempt to reach an overhead fire spring and trigger it to operate.

At one point, he thought he would die in jail and broke his eyeglasses to carve a message to his mom on his arm, but he managed to write only the letter S for the "Sorry Mom" message.

Upon his release, he was sent to a hospital for treatment of dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and perforated esophagus.

For the five-day delay in releasing Mr Chong, the federal government agreed to pay the student $4.1 million settlement. Mr Chong said he plans to buy his parents a house and save some of the windfall from his drinking his urine.

Besides agreeing to the settlement, Mr Chong also accepted the Department of Justice's apology, saying, "The Department of Justice have shown me every step of the way that they did take it seriously, and their apology was sincere. I do see it as an accident. A grave one, but an accident nevertheless."