I bring up this morbid topic on a rather morbid-looking Monday (it's raining pretty nasty outside), b/c I was thinking about my suicide attempt.  About four months ago I tried to off myself.  Naturally, I failed.  The whole thing was a rather educational experience.  I was depressed one Sunday afternoon, so I took the 2+ hour trip out to Santa Monica to buy some clothes to cheer myself up.  I spent money foolishly (is there any other way?), but wasn't feeling any better.  Phone calls to Maya and Akiyo had gone unanswered, so I figured maybe I could get some writing done.  I spent, seriously, an hour looking for a cheap journal and pen to buy in Santa Monica.  I couldn't find one, so I accepted getting raped at Papyrus and bought a journal and a pen.

On the 3 hour commute home, I basically spelled out a suicide note in my new $10 journal, with my new $5 pen.  I wrote a lot.  Most of it is illegible to the untrained eye, but that's beside the point.  Ray picked me up from the station, and I returned home to find the boys were over, playing video games and imbibing beer.  I felt left out. I'm not sure why, but they were all sitting around, playing NCAA 99', and I couldn't get in a game, and I just felt lonely and pathetic and worthless and without a future.  So I went downstairs and waited for them to leave, figuring they would get hungry after a while.  My Sherlockian instincts proved correct, as they all bailed soon after to get some Jack-in-the-Box.  I went back upstairs and began to ingest the first of the two bottles of Maximum Strength Unisom I had bought.  (I figured "Maximum Strength" was the way to go -- I wasn't concerned about paying the extra $1 or two.)

Well, it didn't have the effect I was hoping for.  By the time I finished the first bottle, I was starting to feel ill and shaky.  I started to consume the second bottle, and the effects worsened.  I laid down and tried to go to sleep, but no dice -- I was wide awake, and my hands were shaking, and I was having visions of a trail of vomit leading from my futon to the toilet.  I realized I had two courses of action: One, call the Better Business Bureau and complain that Unisom was not helping me go to sleep.  Or two, I could get some medical help.  So I put on some sweats and a pair of Nikes (gotta go to the hospital in style), and I managed to get downstairs where I told Ray, who had since come back home sans company, that I needed to go to the hospital because I had just ingested some sleeping pills. 

Feeling like an absolute schmuck, I went with Ray, as he tried to find the nearest medical center.  After about 15 minutes or so, during which time my capacity for intelligible speech sank to the level of primates due to uncontrollable stuttering, we arrived at a Kaiser hospital.  I don't remember much after that until the next day, when I came to in a hospital bed, wearing a gown that I don't remember having in my wardrobe.  The elastic bands securing my wrists to the bed were a new addition to, and boy, were they ugly. 

I then noticed the horror of horrors - a plastic jar for me to pee in.  I couldn't use one of those on fairly trips as a kid, and hated the potential for prolonged indignity of using them as an adult.  My drug addled brain immediately began to formulate a plan for escape.

After a day of bad TV, nurses with faulty English skills, and, yes, peeing in a plastic jar (this wasn't ER), my plan came to fruition.  I was moved upstairs in preparation for a transfer to a different facility.  But what if I didn't want to be moved? What if I wanted to go home?  I began to bicker with doctors and nurses about my desire to go home.  By the grace of God, Ray showed up in my room, and he joined the fight to take me home.  Finally, after a few hours of arguing my case to anyone who walked by, I signed a few waivers, and they rolled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair (at their insistence), into Ray's Civic, and I escaped from Castle Wolfenstein with the Spear of Destiny in hand!  The Fuhrer's days were surerly numbered!

Oh wait, wrong story.  So, Ray and I made it to Denny's, where we ate at around 11:00 PM, and then I went home and to work the next day, where Duc, the Deej, and the rest of the wild and crazy gang here had no idea how much trauma I had been though a few hours before. 

And so what have I learned from all of this?  Not much.  Well, I quit drinking, and got into therapy, which I've since gotten out of.  I'm on medication, which isn't working very well.  And I've got a $7000 medical bill my HMO is supposed to take care of.   Basically, the lesson is this -- hospitals are hellish places, and 42 sleeping pills won't put you into an instant coma.  Yeah, looking back on it, I don't really have any feelings about it, besides regretting what I put Ray through.  And Nicole -- I called her and left some farewell message or something on her answering machine, and she freaked.  But besides that, at this point, it's just something that I did.  I might do it again, I might not, but seeing it here in print (or hypertext, whatever), it doesn't evoke any sort of emotional response from me. 

Oh well.