Thinking of You

It's been a while and certainly some things have been happening in my life that I ought to share here.

First, I think I hit a new record low rock bottom last week when, after a ten day binge I finally collapsed into medicated slumber under the watchful eye of the emergency department at the local hospital.  Strung up with an intravenous feed with valium and whatever - I spent a fitful night rolling from side to side with the fluorescent lights buzzing all night.  And the ER staff blinking over at me every time I stirred with that look of concern and at the same time resignation that I was sort of dangerous or unpredictable as a mental health admission.
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So yeah, I have been living the alcoholic dream this last few weeks and it has scared the fuck out of me.  If this doesn't shock me into sobriety, like the psychiatrist said, then I best get used to being admitted and just walking around all day looking through thick glass at the people on the other side.

Anyway, back to the story...
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When I woke up the morning after, I was all puffy in the face and my body ached from having needles and pads and those sensor things stuck to me.  I tried to get up and a big male nurse came straight over and said I should take it easy, what did I want and he would get it for me.  I just wanted to pee and that was sort of all I could for the rest of the day - walk to and from the toilet and just fumble with the gown and the drip and sit down and piss. 

Other times I just rolled from one side to the other trying to get comfortable.  Or listened to the guy next to me get evaluated.  He had a big toe and three other toes on his left foot - they were webbed or something and that's all I ever saw of him, except for hearing his voice.  Left school in year 10, was from the country, had anger issues and had punched the walls and broken his hands the night before.  He groaned every now and then and they explained he was being scheduled as an involuntary patient.

Then they said it was my turn soon.  In hospital, as I would learn over the next five days, time is something you give freely and the doctors and nurses just flit into see you for moments before flitting away again - like butterflies.  So you have to be ready for when they come with your story. 

My story was that I was a drunk and I wanted help and I wanted to stay for a while so I could detox and whatever.  I repeated this to a few different people and must have let slip last night when I was nearly unconscious from drinking that I had taken some pills too.  That I found.  On the side of the road. Just like ten or so.  I googled them and they were for Obsessive compulsive disorder - can't find the strip anywhere, but somehow this got jumbled into a suicide attempt - or self harm at least.

So, as she sat casually with her legs folded on the edge of the bed, sucking a pen, the social worker said she was tossing up whether to send me back home.

"He hasn't got anywhere to go'" my wife said grimly, "He's not coming back home - that's for sure."

It's funny how stoic and calm and rational I can be at times of sheer crisis - like right now, with my wife throwing me back to the hospital.  At the time I felt that first shiver of fear that I would be going somewhere else - into the endless corridors of the hospital to some locked ward.

A psychiatrist came to assess me and sat there asking the same questions again.  I conceded I was depressed and probably had self harmed.  Said I had 6 or 8 bottles of wine each day for the last 10 days, plus beer and vodka when I got it out.  Almost begging her to let me stay for a while - asking to be a voluntary admission.

By four o'clock I was in a van with security mesh being taken up to the country as there were no beds left in town.