An account of November 5, 1996
At 1 am, I got up from watching tv and went to get a glass of pineapple juice. From there I sauntered into the bathroom. I looked at my blush that broke on the floor earlier, it's pink powdery mess still waiting to be cleaned. I opened the medicine cabinet. Inside were a bunch of full prescription bottles from my shrink.
Zoloft, and
Prozac. They both just made me scatterbrained. I don't know why but I grabbed a few bottles. The zoloft were tiny itsy bitsy pills.. light.. it would take 4-5 of them to equal the weight of a real pill. I tossed about 2 handfulls (2 months worth) down my throat. I then grabbed a bottle of Prozac. These were bigger, two handfuls were only 30 pills. I then closed the bottles and replaced them and went back to watch tv.
I was living with this guy who I didn't care about. He was just kind of there. He asked what was up, and I said nothing. About 2 hours later he came out of the bathroom and
threw the empty bottles at my head. I screamed and told him to get the fuck out. He said
"No, I will just sit here and watch you die". I told him to suit himself. Then I took the silver ring he gave me and beamed it at his head.
About an four hours after I took the pills I began to worry.
What the fuck did I just do. I wasn't depressed, I was below that I was apathetic, but I didn't want to die. I knew that you couldnt take 90 pills and have NOTHING happen. I called
poison control and asked a "hypothetical question". They told me the "
hypothetical person" has about 1-3 hours before they had a stroke, seizure, and or heart attack. Next I called
911, and told them what I did.
By the time the ambulence, fire truck, and police got there.. my vision was blurry and I was shivering. My heart was beating fast and I couldn't talk. I am not sure if I was just scared, or if the pills did all of that. They took me to the hosipital. My heart was doing something funny so they gave me an
iv with something to control my heart. While they did this, they informed me I had to drink charcoal. It made me gag, after an hour of them threatening to put a tube up my nose, I got the 32 oz of
activated charcoal down.
Some weird medicine, 32 oz of activated charcoal, and 4 bags of saline later, they sent me with a cop to the state
mental health facility. I think it was around 6am. I had to wait til noon for the doctor to get there. I was checked in and sat in the waiting room. As I looked around, I noticed that I was the youngest person there. I also noticed, I was one of the very few who seemed to be aware of where I was.
People talking to walls, or themselves. Others just zoned. They shortly brought a girl about my age in. She walked over to me and smiled, and then proceeded to tell me about her life. She went to college, and she was born in Europe. Then she proceeded to tell me how she was moving to
Disney World. Later I found out that she, like a lot of the people in the waiting room were regulars. The state is only allowed to keep them for so long. A lot of them don't want to be turned away, but they aren't "crazy enough" to become permanent wards of the state.
After puking up the charcoal and water for 15 minutes (they forgot to tell me that is what was going to happen), and then trying to wash the black charcoal off my skin I went back to the waiting room.
I was scared. I didn't belong here. I just wanted to go home. Around noon, my name was called. A dr, I don't remember his name told me to step in a small room. He looked me up and down, and then asked me to look out into the waiting room. He said,
"Miss, what are you doing here. The people out there need my help. You do not belong here." I just sat there and nodded. He asked me if I was planning on killing myself in the next 24 hours, I said "No, I think my
teen angst is now dead". He wrote something down, then advised me to go back to Florida, and to see a therapist. Then handed me a paper, and said I was free to go.
When I got home, I realized the nurse ripped my iv out wrong, and I had a bruise from my wrist, to 1/2 way up my bicep. I called my mom, and booked a ticket home. I realized that day that I was lucky. I realized I better do something with my life. I realized no matter how insane I felt, that I had it really fucking good, and not to take that for granted.
This is a true story.
The creation of his node, inspired by seeing Girl, Interrupted.
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